You may have heard about it already, but if you haven't... this is the official first release of a new TI-Nspire emulator!
The core of it is based on Goplat's renowned "nspire_emu", but with quite some changes.
The name is subject to change. If you have an idea, please post it here!
Major changes:- Supported platforms: Linux, Mac OS X (10.7+), Windows, Android (ARM and x86), iOS (without JIT, except if running on a jailbroken device)
- Flexible GUI with many user-friendly additions
- Supports nspire-linux
Also, GDB support for debugging of ndless apps has been improved and nspire-linux boots successfully, like in the second screenshot.
So, if you want to debug your Ndless programs, test Lua scripts or just use the calculator, this is the right emulator for you.
Please note that like nspire_emu, you need to provide a Boot1 file, which you can obtain from your own device easily with PolyDumper (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=3829). Of course you can still use the flash files from nspire_emu.
Download:Prebuilt packages for Android (armv7), Linux/X11 (64-bit), Mac OS and Windows are on GitHub: https://github.com/nspire-emus/nspire_emu/releases
Screenshots:Running on Mac OS X, in English, custom dock arrangement
(https://i.imgur.com/O88QXXf.png)
On Linux, in German
(https://i.imgur.com/ckllXeW.png)
On Windows, in French
(https://tiplanet.org/images/nspireemuqtwin.png)
On Android
(https://i.imgur.com/hwdLhbK.png?1)
and a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTV2g-0uaPs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTV2g-0uaPs)
On an iPhone, although not really useful right now, probably better on an iPad
(https://i.imgur.com/VGFpXxs.png)
Contributors to the project:
- Fabian "Vogtinator" Vogt: UI design, work on emu core, German translation
- Antonio Vazquez: code cleanups, linux support work, archlinux packaging
- Adrien "Adriweb" Bertrand: mostly testing (especially Mac and iOS), French translation
- Lionel Debroux: some x64-related cleanups
- You? ;)
This post is also on tiplanet: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16652&p=183653#p183653 (http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16652&p=183653#p183653)
and omnimaga: https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/new-ti-nspire-emulator (https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/new-ti-nspire-emulator)
Sweet! I'm totally going to put this on my (jailbroken) iPad! Congrats to all involved!
Darn, this looks nice. I was always wondering when this would happen. There was KarmTI but with it being closed-source, the day that SpiroH would vanish it was clear that nobody would be able to contribute to it anymore, so I'm glad to see an open-source alternative to a Nspire Emu expansion. Thanks for the initiative :)
I'm also happy to see the emulation speed setting feature preserved, because that was quite handy when making animated screenshots of very hard games. :P
EDIT: Front-paged.
Nice project!
If I find a rom, I might once give it a try ;)
I'm going to leave this here...
(https://i.imgur.com/rmDhXBIt.png) (https://i.imgur.com/rmDhXBI.png)
(One day, maybe, when/if it is ready...)
Quote from: Adriweb on June 05, 2015, 02:29:19 PM
I'm going to leave this here...
(https://i.imgur.com/rmDhXBIt.png) (https://i.imgur.com/rmDhXBI.png)
(One day, maybe, when/if it is ready...)
If I am gonna have to spend as much on a watch that gets stuck everywhere than a smartphone, then I would rather have the smartphone. But I guess having the emulator on a smart watch would be nice too if there is a way to make it easy to press the right buttons. After all, there used to be calculator watches out there :P
This is just a photo, I just wanted to see how it looked on the wrist :D
But I've started looking around in WatchKit, too... so maybe some day the iPhone app will "broadcast" the screen to the watch. Or even get to compile the emu for the watch itself (btu I doubt it, that would require Qt to be ported there, and there's pretty much no way that happens :P)
Evidently, it would be just for fun, considering the screen size, though.
Can Apple watches be jailbroken yet? And would the emulator requires heavy modifications to run on an Android watch instead of phone?
And yeah, screen size would be a serious problem lol. Even on my Nexus I sometimes have troubles typing. With how small the Nspire Touchpad letters are, I can't imagine how much worse it would be.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:39:42 PMCan Apple watches be jailbroken yet?
Not that I know of.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:39:42 PMAnd would the emulator requires heavy modifications to run on an Android watch instead of phone?
Hmm, I don't know, I'll let Vogtinator reply, but I suppose as long is Qt runs on the platform you want it on, it's OK.
Quote from: Adriweb on June 05, 2015, 02:46:30 PM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:39:42 PMCan Apple watches be jailbroken yet?
Not that I know of.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:39:42 PMAnd would the emulator requires heavy modifications to run on an Android watch instead of phone?
I suppose as long is Qt runs on the platform you want it on, it's OK.
Wait, Quicktime is required to run the emulator? I thought that Qt was an Apple thing. O.O
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:50:25 PM
Wait, Quicktime is required to run the emulator? I thought that Qt was an Apple thing. O.O[/quote]
Different Qt: http://www.qt.io/
Oh :P. I was checking Google for Qt and it was returning results for Quicktime Player. <_< Not that I would mind having to install Quicktime on my computer, but I bet it would take like 10-90% of my Nexus 5 disk space alone, so that would be a big no.
I would definitely mind having Quicktime anywhere near me, it's even worse than MSN messenger, AOL and KB3035583/GWX together.
I have no idea how the android wear stuff works and I don't have one (I don't even own an android device), but it's definitely doable to use the watch as a display with a simple receiver app and some modifications to the Java code on the emu side.
Wow, awesome. I still prefer to test on hardware but this comes in handy when debugging. The old version of the emulator was really annoying to use.
Cool emulator! Alsao you can probably do something on android with native code for an emulator :P
Whoa this is awesome, if I start using the Nspire again I will definitely keep this in mind O.O.
Indeed, this emu look really cool. Good job here :D
By the way, does this new emu fix the connectivity issues found in the original? In the original, it often would only let me send stuff to brand new folders and it would often take multiple tries before my program finally sends.
I heavily modified that part to add the file browser stuff and a queue, which should fix most issues, but there may be some breakages,
however, I haven't found anything like that (yet).
Cool to hear. Can we drag and drop files like we could do in WabbitEmu and TI-Nspire Student Softweird?
Yep, but not yet into the file explorer. You can drop files on the screen, the destination directory for drops can be changed in Settings->File transfer.
Ok thanks, glad to hear :)
Man I wish the Nspire wasn't locked down like the HP Prime then I would use it more <_< But there are not many people that can mod the HP Prime that have one (if any) so that is probably the reason why :-|
Like the TI community, the HP community contains a number of good programmers and tinkerers. But they seem to stick to the older models, e.g. the 50g, whose potential hasn't been fully tapped.
Yeah, the Prime has a lot of potential for awesome stuff...
Quote from: alexgt on June 09, 2015, 08:25:43 PM
Yeah, the Prime has a lot of potential for awesome stuff...
The thing is that on the HP Prime, to make shells/kernels/program launchers (yes, I am serious. Even Doors CSE 8.2 and PreOS would be possible in HP PPL), 3D graphers and high-end games, you don't even need ASM/C. Since HP PPL is so fast and powerful compared to its TI-Nspire Lua counterpart, that is probably another reason why not many people are interested in hacking the Prime.
On the TI-Nspire, with Lua you can do far less and what you can do will run much slower, so Ndless is seen as even more needed.
And of course HP market share is incredibly tiny, so I bet there are about 100 times fewer HP Prime owners than there are TI-Nspire owners.
QuoteOn the TI-Nspire, with Lua you can do far less and what you can do will run much slower, so Ndless is seen as even more needed.
Before 3.0 there wasn't even lua so you couldn't program at all (TI-Basic is a joke).
QuoteAnd of course HP market share is incredibly tiny, so I bet there are about 100 times fewer HP Prime owners than there are TI-Nspire owners.
Yep. If I had a Prime I'd definitely code the hell out of it...
</offtopic>
Yeah I still remember the days where only BASIC was available. But even with Lua, try to achieve this in OS 4.0, for example:
(http://img.ourl.ca/nitackuanim.gif) (http://img.ourl.ca//ssballfadein.gif) (http://img.ourl.ca//fireeffect.gif)
Back in the days, I doubt anyone currently in the TI community would even have bothered making an emulator for the TI-Nspire if only BASIC was possible, and even with Lua, I am betting that it would still not have happened, because emulators for calcs are often made so that developers can debug their softwares easier.
Anyway, I'M glad that the Nspire got so much support despite all actions from TI in the last few years and that the emulator is still updated. Hopefully it eventually becomes on-par with WabbitEmu in terms of features, while still remaining open-source.
That reminds me, would a Nexus 5 be enough to use New TI-Nspire emulator?
QuoteThat reminds me, would a Nexus 5 be enough to use New TI-Nspire emulator?
It runs on a tablet (dell streak 7, 384 MB RAM, 1 GHz) at a usable speed (see also the video), but not fast enough for games.
As a nexus 5 is about 2.5 times faster, it's probably much better, just try it.
The smaller screen is a more limiting factor, although it might work in landscape orientation.
Both speed and a better mobile UI are being worked on ATM.
Isn't the streak 7 x86 ?
No, it's based on an Nvidia Tegra 2 (armv7).
Ah ok. Tegra 2 is slow as hell, I bet even my nexus 4 would run it better.
Then please try it and measure the boot time of 3.1 CX CAS for comparision :P
I'm kinda bored, let's do this.
QuoteEven Doors CSE 8.2 and PreOS would be possible in HP PPL
Not quite; most of their functionality (hooks, crash protection, general filesystem access, etc.) needs lower-level access :)
Quote from: Lionel Debroux on June 10, 2015, 05:16:26 AM
QuoteEven Doors CSE 8.2 and PreOS would be possible in HP PPL
Not quite; most of their functionality (hooks, crash protection, general filesystem access, etc.) needs lower-level access :)
Oh I know, but they could probably be emulated to a certain extent to make the HP PPL shell behave similarily on the surface. For example, we can launch any program of your choice and get the program list in HP PPL (as demonstrated by S.I.F.S project at http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=476.0 ) and from what I can gather, we can run sub-routines from other programs. It wouldn't be direct memory access per se, but someone who is not familiar with HP PPL would probably mistake the shell as an ASM/C program at first.
It might be best to continue that discussion in the SIFS thread, though, or preferably a new topic. :P
Would it actually be possible to run a full z80 emulator on the prime? O.O
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on June 10, 2015, 02:23:48 PM
Would it actually be possible to run a full z80 emulator on the prime? O.O
Not with HP PPL :(
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 10, 2015, 05:35:26 AM
Quote from: Lionel Debroux on June 10, 2015, 05:16:26 AM
QuoteEven Doors CSE 8.2 and PreOS would be possible in HP PPL
Not quite; most of their functionality (hooks, crash protection, general filesystem access, etc.) needs lower-level access :)
Oh I know, but they could probably be emulated to a certain extent to make the HP PPL shell behave similarily on the surface. For example, we can launch any program of your choice and get the program list in HP PPL (as demonstrated by S.I.F.S project at http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=476.0 ) and from what I can gather, we can run sub-routines from other programs. It wouldn't be direct memory access per se, but someone who is not familiar with HP PPL would probably mistake the shell as an ASM/C program at first.
It might be best to continue that discussion in the SIFS thread, though, or preferably a new topic. :P
you could run subs from with in a program from another program that are not exported but it would be best if they were exported for ease of use. What I do with the shell is look for EXPORT then look for () and then you have the code you need to run the program :) (usually) it wouldn't work on programs that have exported subs before the main function (although I think the source runs the first exported function so that may not be a large issue) and also programs that have arguments (it would be possible but I am still working on detecting if they are EXPORTED vars or not :P)
All in all it could be possible but it is and would be limited
Also we can move this to HP Programming help (http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=402.msg14905;topicseen#new) :)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 05, 2015, 02:51:53 PM
Oh :P. I was checking Google for Qt and it was returning results for Quicktime Player. <_< Not that I would mind having to install Quicktime on my computer, but I bet it would take like 10-90% of my Nexus 5 disk space alone, so that would be a big no.
When I google Qt, Quicktime isn't even on the first page :P
Canadien brower? :P Or is DJ an apple maniac? O.o
Oh nice a new emulator it's great :D
New release!New features:
- New Mobile UI, to be usable on Android and iOS devices
- Improved ARM JIT to be fast enough even on slower CPUs
- Firebird-send script added (not on windows): Send files programatically
- Various bugs and other annoyances fixed
Download on GitHub: Firebird (https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/releases/tag/v0.20)
Videos of the Mobile UI in action:
Android (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7Vmn61Ai0)
iOS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSX2pGrJMlY)
(http://i.imgur.com/fISr18Dm.png)
Awesome! To bad I can't try out the Android version :(
Extremely awesome! I doubt I can run the IOS version on account of the iPhone being sooo old. :P
Everything with iOS 5.0 or newer (iPhone 3GS and later) is supported!
Oh, cool! I'll try it out then :)
Glad to see this updated. :D Also I'm glad to see an Android version. TI's Nspire app is only for iPads for some reasons, so being able to use the calc on my Nexus 5 would be nice.
Are CX models supported? (I am asking since the video only shows Clickpad/Touchpad in action.
The iOS video shows a CX CAS in action! On my device (S3 mini) there wasn't enough RAM for the CX CAS, it froze at the home screen while it workes on all other devices.
For some reasons, only one of the two videos in your post showed up when I replied O.O. Now I see the 2nd one, so I'm glad to see CX support. :)
Quote from: Vogtinator on July 17, 2015, 02:57:36 PM
Everything with iOS 5.0 or newer (iPhone 3GS and later) is supported!
Well actually 5.1 (that's what the xcode project file was at for the minimum version, anyway)
And the new icon is awesome ;)
Quick update, I added firebird (v0.20 for now) on the openSUSE build service, so packages for openSUSE and Arch Linux are available on:
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:Vogtinator/firebird
Good to hear this is still being updated :)
Cool, I didn't know that openSUSE used pacman. And yeah DJ, apparently most of the discussion for this is on Omni since there's more Nspire (Ndless in particular) activity there.
It doesn't, it has zypper, the best tool ever invented (seriously, it's so awesome that even fedora migrated to the same base, libsolv) :P
OBS is able to build packages for various distributions: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_supported_build_targets
Ah that's pretty cool. I love pacman though, it's nice and fast and does everything it needs to.
Quote from: Streetwalrus on September 17, 2015, 08:37:25 PM
Cool, I didn't know that openSUSE used pacman. And yeah DJ, apparently most of the discussion for this is on Omni since there's more Nspire (Ndless in particular) activity there.
I had my hopes up for new feature additions that I might have missed, but then I went to the topic there and it was mostly people asking for help :P, but yeah I get what you mean lol
I know I probably sound really stupid saying this, but how do you get a rom for the emulator. I can't figure it out.
Did you check the emulator's readme? I am unsure if it had the instructions. However, Nspire_emu by Goplat on ticalc.org had some instructions, if I remember correctly. You need the real calculator, then you need your boot1 IIRC.
Yes, dump everything you need with Polydumper: https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=3829
If you use nspire_emu v0.7, see this tutorial: https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8698
If you use Firebird, go look in the Flash creation tool wizard in the menu
Oh wow, I didn't even know there were dumping tools. IIRC when I first used Nspire_Emu there weren't any. >.<
I'll have to download it to give it a try in case it's less complicated than what I previously used. Thanks Adriweb :)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 19, 2015, 02:00:13 AM
Oh wow, I didn't even know there were dumping tools. IIRC when I first used Nspire_Emu there weren't any. >.<
How could you use the emulator then ? O.O
Didn't the original nspire_emu have command prompt tools built-in that were super-complicated to use? IIRC I tried using them to no avail, so back then someone sent me a copy of the emu with everything set up including a dumped boot 1 and stuff. >.<
New version 0.30 with greatly improved usability!With more than 120 commits since the previous release, this version contains various new features, improvements and bug fixes.
The main goal was improved usability across all platforms.
There's also a Wiki at https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/Installing-firebird now. And by the way, the license is now GPLv3.
Download:- Latest release (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS): https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/releases/latest
- Repo for Arch and openSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3AVogtinator%3Afirebird-emu&package=firebird-emu
- Source: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird
New features:- Suspend and resume to/from snapshot files. Now you don't have to wait for the calc to boot, it's instantly available.
- The USB file explorer now supports file dropping, renaming, downloading and creating folders (right-click)
- Animated screen-capture (GIF recording)
Mobile UI:- Android: Properly implement being in background (paused)
- More responsive: Fix sidebar buttons and add a toast-based message system
- Fix layout of settings page with long filenames
- Add labels to the sidebar buttons
- iOS: Re-enable landscape mode
- Auto-resume
- Save button saves flash and takes a snapshot
- Support keyboard input (desktop and HW keyboards (untested) only)
Improvements:- Refine UI: More icons, utilize status bar and wait cursor
- More responsive UI: Can restart and resume instantly while in debugger
- Slight performance improvements: Load flash with COW and speed up memory access in x86_64 JIT
- Ask whether the created flash image should be used after creation
- Add "Docks" submenu to show/hide docks
- Disable JIT on non-jailbroken iOS devices: No longer two seperate packages
- Better/Updated translations
- Support of UTF-8 file names/paths on Windows
- Misc. code improvements, refactorings, etc.
Bugfixes:- Make usblink much more reliable
- Fix dropping multiple files at once
- Fix speed display: Using C++11 std::chrono instead of OS specific functions now
- Fix gpsp_nspire: RGB555 not implemented and implement the CPU's behaviour if add changes the PC's lower bits
- Fix polydumper: CP15 instruction was not implemented
- Fix boot2 going into standby: bad_read_word
- Fix some crashes on OS X (compiler bug recently fixed)
- Set focus to the LCD on startup: Can type instantly now
- Show "In debugger" overlay if GDB is connected
- Cut long boot1 and flash filenames in the UI
- Fix last keypad row on iOS: Added some padding on the bottom of the keypad to avoid triggering the control center
- Not really an actual bugfix, but the license got changed to GPLv3.
Screenshots/Videos:Linux (video):
Video, showing file explorer and snapshots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcJucyp9G4)
Windows:
(https://i.imgur.com/aibTt9Cl.png) (https://i.imgur.com/aibTt9C.png) |
Android (video):
(http://i.imgur.com/fpN81kom.png) (http://webm.host/c8884/vid.webm)
|
Mac OS X:
(https://i.imgur.com/5Rl7VTG.png) (https://i.imgur.com/YhqkwIN.png) |
iOS (video):
(https://i.imgur.com/Gly3Mzhm.png) (http://webm.host/bd282/vid.webm)
|
Planned:- Using the mobile UI on desktop: Seamless switching, file explorer, etc.
- Better debugger integration
- Some more performance improvements
- Communication with USB devices over libusb
What was the license before? I recall Nspire Emu being released with no license at all (thus, making it "all rights reserved" by default, according to certain people) so it's always good to release your stuff with a license (and/or preferably under your name, not the name of a company). Also, does the new license override the license of past versions of Firebird Emu?
Animated screen capture is an awesome addition by the way. When the emulation is slowed down, will GIF capture still set the GIF back to 100% emulation speed like WabbitEmu does or will we need to manually speed the GIF back up in VirtualDub or something?
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 15, 2015, 07:29:53 PM
What was the license before? I recall Nspire Emu being released with no license at all (thus, making it "all rights reserved" by default, according to certain people) so it's always good to release your stuff with a license (and/or preferably under your name, not the name of a company). Also, does the new license override the license of past versions of Firebird Emu?
The license was CC, but that wasn't really suited for code, so we changed it to GPLv3. I don't even know whether it's possible to override the license of past work by a license change, AFAIK only new granted rights are possible to be "backported", but I'm not really informed on that topic at all.
Quote
Animated screen capture is an awesome addition by the way. When the emulation is slowed down, will GIF capture still set the GIF back to 100% emulation speed like WabbitEmu does or will we need to manually speed the GIF back up in VirtualDub or something?
It always runs at emulation speed and records with 60 / 3 (=20) fps. It's possible to enable turbo_mode and get a 1 hour GIF in a matter of minutes or even seconds...
Sadly GIF doesn't really offer compression, but adding a dependency on ffmpeg or any other lib for supporting proper video formats is quite annoying, as it's needed for building and running on all platfoms...
Ah I see. I was concerned about past versions because if the past license allowed for example to re-use your code in a commercial product and the new license doesn't, then the person could simply take an older version of Firebird Emu if there's no overriding. Of course if the previous license doesn't allow such stuff then that's not as bad, though.
Does GIF capture only change the updated pixels every frame? That's how some WabbitEmu screenshots ended up being very small. Some GIF capture programs will just make an entire new frame every frame. I am ok with both, but for the former it would be good to know so that CW admins keep an eye on 100 MB large screenshots in posts/signatures/avatars. :P
QuoteOf course if the previous license doesn't allow such stuff then that's not as bad, though.
I'm not even sure whether it allowed using parts of the code at all, it's a bit hard to argue with a license that was made for artwork about software and source code...
QuoteDoes GIF capture only change the updated pixels every frame? That's how some WabbitEmu screenshots ended up being very small. Some GIF capture programs will just make an entire new frame every frame. I am ok with both, but for the former it would be good to know so that CW admins keep an eye on 100 MB large screenshots in posts/signatures/avatars. :P
Nope, https://github.com/ginsweater/gif-h/blob/master/gif.h#L801
For a 20fps GIF it's not that bad, a static image for around three minutes is 5 MiB.
Nice then. I remember some complex WabbitEmu screenshots took about 5 MB for just 30 seconds at 27 FPS, although simpler ones (especially pure BASIC games) took less than 100 KB.
I've been compiling from master for a while now, and Firebird works very well at this point :)
If you're still using the old nspire_emu, you should definitely try it.
Quote from: Vogtinator on December 15, 2015, 07:39:09 PM
I don't even know whether it's possible to override the license of past work by a license change, AFAIK only new granted rights are possible to be "backported", but I'm not really informed on that topic at all.
Yeah, at least the CC licences and the GPL are explicitly irrevocable.
My only issue is that even with help, I never was able to get Nspire Emu to work properly on my own in the past, mainly acquiring Boot1, thanks in part to Nspire Emu dumping tools being command line-based. I had to get someone to set the folder up for me. I wonder if Firebird Emu makes it easier?
Firebird does not require any command line, it is fully GUI-based (except for the built-in debugger).
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 22, 2015, 05:17:17 PM
My only issue is that even with help, I never was able to get Nspire Emu to work properly on my own in the past, mainly acquiring Boot1, thanks in part to Nspire Emu dumping tools being command line-based. I had to get someone to set the folder up for me. I wonder if Firebird Emu makes it easier?
Setting it up is very easy:
(https://b2aeaa58a57a200320db-8b65b95250e902c437b256b5abf3eac7.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/media_entries/6855/firebird_flash.png)
You still need boot1, but you can get that using Polydumper (https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=3829).
There's also a guide here: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/First-Time-Setup
That's good to see this emulator improves that. Also yeah I always forget about Polydumper because I don't think it existed when Nspire Emu came out, or I forgot.
Thanks :)
Thanks to pimath, nightly builds for Windows are available here! (http://pimathbrainiac.me/firebird/)
Note about the nightlies: They are not signed, so if you have issues with SmartScreen or Norton, like I do on one machine I use, you might not be able to run it. Also it is a static build, so no dlls required (although the qtquick folders have to be there).
That is good to hear. It should make it easier and faster for Windows users to get the latest version at any time :)
An experimental emscripten version can be found on https://nspire-emus.github.io/firebird/firebird.html
OS 3.1 boots in around 40 seconds.
What is emscripten and what is the difference with the regular version?
Emscripten (https://github.com/kripken/emscripten) is an "LLVM to JS compiler", mainly used to yield JS code from C/C++ source code. IOW, it can provide a way to retarget native code computer programs to running inside browsers.
Back when jsTIfied and Patrick Davidson's TI-68k JS emulator were created, Emscripten wasn't such an usable option. However, by now, Emscripten is the way to have native code emulators which run fast on computers run fast in browsers, too. The manual approach is outdated.
Oh thanks for clarifying. That is definitively useful. I wasn't aware that this existed, probably because it's more recent or mainstream. Is it as fast as regular executables? (I know that jsTIfied tends to lag when I take animated screenshots)
New release: Firebird 1.1
Get it on GitHub (https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/releases/latest)!
(https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1622084/20639965/1510cd98-b3d3-11e6-8068-098b58449708.png)
New features:
* Add new configuration dialog
* Add easier way to manage multiple flash images with Kits
* External LCD window, useful for presentations or saving screen space
Core improvements:
* Emulation of different HW revisions (A, J and W) of CX
* Support boot1 4.0 found in HW-W+ calcs
* Support lcd_compat mode used by ndless
* General speedups for x86_64 and ARM JITs
* Supports CX installer images
* Add headless and emscripten platforms (no binaries, not really that useful)
* Emscripten demo on https://nspire-emus.github.io/firebird/firebird.html
Keypad improvements:
* Add labels to the keypad
* More intuitive keymap for mapping host keyboard to calc keypad
* Touchpad can now be used to move the OS cursor
* Make active area of buttons bigger to make typing with touchscreens easier
* Avoid buttons appearing stuck after hovering with mouse
Misc. / other fixes:
* The 32bit iOS binary detects JIT capability on runtime to avoid crashes
* Some minor bugs fixed, like potential deadlocks in the debugger
* Fix running functions from GDB
* Improve HiDPI scaling
* Mobile UI optimized for tablets in landscape orientation (right- and left-handed mode)
* Add an update-checking feature to the about dialog
Notes:
* The internal format of snapshots changed - firebird will refuse to load snapshots created with an earlier version.
You can use the old version to save your work to the flash image first.
The macOS version isn't codesigned, so to launch it you may need to either right-click the .app and choose Open*, or simply disable GateKeeper entirely.
* The iOS version is 32-bit only (for now anyway) and is built with JIT (which will disable itself if your device is not jailbroken)
* The Windows version also has a mobile/tablet .exe that may suit those platforms better.
Repo for Arch, Fedora and openSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3AVogtinator%3Afirebird-emu&package=firebird-emu
Great update Vogtinator. I was wondering if this was gonna be updated for newer hardware revisions and I'm glad it did :)
Quick update: v1.1.1 has been released with a small bugfix for touchpad cursor handling.
Previously the handling of dragging (like the graph view) was a bit bad, it should work fine now.
Also, v1.1 has already been downloaded a whopping 268 times (on GitHub, not counting the linux repo) and all releases together 45337 times!
Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it. :)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 05, 2016, 07:39:10 AM
Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it. :)
No, I always like to keep binaries at a single place, in this case GitHub. It makes it easier to update it: All links that point to firebird automatically
show the latest release.
Quick update: v1.2 got released with an important bugfix: The snapshot path of kits is no longer ignored!
Great news for iOS users: This version supports the much quicker JIT also on 64bit phones, even if they are not jailbroken!
Download it here (https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/releases/latest)
Quote from: Vogtinator on December 05, 2016, 08:07:27 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 05, 2016, 07:39:10 AM
Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it. :)
No, I always like to keep binaries at a single place, in this case GitHub. It makes it easier to update it: All links that point to firebird automatically
show the latest release.
Ah that's a shame, because ticalc.org is the main TI community hub so it would have gotten extra visibility there. But it's your choice. At least it would be good if
@Travis added it to the emulators page (http://www.ticalc.org/programming/emulators/software.html) if that hasn't been done already and link to the Github page, because there isn't even a single emulator for the Nspire listed there, not even nspire_emu. Even CEmu isn't there.
Also glad to see support for iOS mobile devices even if they are not jailbroken. :)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 08, 2016, 08:47:53 PMAh that's a shame, because ticalc.org is the main TI community hub so it would have gotten extra visibility there. But it's your choice. At least it would be good if @Travis added it to the emulators page (http://www.ticalc.org/programming/emulators/software.html) if that hasn't been done already and link to the Github page, because there isn't even a single emulator for the Nspire listed there, not even nspire_emu. Even CEmu isn't there.
Thanks for the mention. The static content is virtually unmaintained right now due to lack of time to research things, so I'm really dependent on people pointing things out to me to change/update on those pages. I'll stick this on the to-do list, and if someone could give me links to the other Nspire emulators, that will be helpful.
Well, Firebird is the go-to community Nspire emulator, derived from nspire_emu and ExtendeD's ncubate_emu fork (with GDB support, later reintegrated) :)
There's an inferior, closed-source emulator derived from the open-source code base, on which his author mostly gave up by now, per his own words. He cannot integrate Firebird's changes anyway, for licensing reasons. ticalc.org definitely doesn't want to advertise for that emulator.
Only the up to date emulators should be added I think. Less problems for the users.
Quick question, sorry if I overlooked the answer somewhere (this is about adding Firebird to the ticalc.org emulators chart): Is this for all Nspire models or particular ones? i.e., out of the TI-Nspire, TI-Nspire CAS, and TI-Nspire CX pages, should this be listed on all of them or just some?
If I recall correctly, this emulator is pretty much the successor of nspire_emu and replaces it, so it should be compatible with clickpad/touchpad models (CAS/non-CAS).
@Vogtinator would need to confirm, though, in case he killed grayscale calc support.
Firebird supports all Nspire models except for the CAS+ (which nobody uses anyway, but readding support wouldn't be too hard).
Only issue is that there is no keypad for the clickpad implemented, which the classic CAS OSs somehow need. Classic non-CAS OSs work just fine.
Aren't keys scrambled on the non-CAS clickpad when used with a Touchpad, though? I seem to recall some keypad combinations on real hardware that had similar problems in the past.
Yes, the CAS non-CX OSs are practically unusuable on firebird right now.
Okay, done! http://www.ticalc.org/programming/emulators/software.html
Let me know if anything needs to be changed or corrected.
@Travis you forgot to add CEmu to the emulator list D:
Also for getting an Nspire ROM, see here: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/First-Time-Setup (I noticed the ticalc tutorial didn't have an nspire section on that page)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on March 05, 2017, 05:45:15 AM
@Travis you forgot to add CEmu to the emulator list D:
Oh, I thought people were recommending that I only add Firebird. Looking back at the previous posts, though, I think I just misunderstood.
Looking here (https://github.com/CE-Programming/CEmu), though, it seems to say there are no official "stable" binary releases yet. Perhaps we should wait until then? (Though there appear to be what I guess would be considered "development snapshot" releases for Windows.)
Quote from: Adriweb on March 05, 2017, 11:34:15 AM
Also for getting an Nspire ROM, see here: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/First-Time-Setup (I noticed the ticalc tutorial didn't have an nspire section on that page)
Thanks! I'll look into that.
@Travis IMHO, I think CEmu is stable enough to be included, plus it's the only community CE emulator available. After all, WabbitEmu was even less stable when it first got included.
Sounds reasonable enough; I've added it.
Also, I reformatted the whole table because it was growing too many columns and starting to get really scrunched (it was originally designed back when there were only a handful of calc models). Now, the supported calcs are simply listed in a row without trying to vertically align each model. The drawback is that you can no longer as conveniently scan down a column to find emulators for a particular model. Would this be a problem for anyone?
I like it better this way actually, plus now most people knows that their browsers have a search function with CTRL+F, so they can just type 85, for example, and it will highlight all 85 emulators. The recommended emulators are definitively the most up-to-date for each category. There are other more obscure emulators such as KarmTI, PindurTI and CalcforgeEmu, but they're outdated.
By the way, something cool about TilEm is that you can change the LCD colors as you wish.
@Vogtinator should add this to Firebird Emu for grayscale TI-Nspire emulation in the options, perhaps allowing the user to also change individual shades of gray if he wishes, so that old Ndless/Lua games designed for the grayscale models can be emulated in colors in the style of SNES Super Game Boy, Gameboy Player, TI-Boy CSE, etc.