Tool ticks - marinus-lab/z88dk GitHub Wiki

Ticks is a command line CPU emulator that can be used for testing and debugging algorithms and code. The classic library can compile binaries that run on ticks using the +test target.

Usage

In it's simplest case, launch ticks with:

z88dk-ticks [binary file]

It will run for around 10,000,000 ticks which may not be sufficient, to increase the time it will run use the -w option:

z88dk-ticks -w X [binary file]

Where X counts the number of 400,000,000 cycles to wait before exiting.

To specify command line options (which are picked up main in the argc and argv parameters invoke ticks as follows:

z88dk-ticks [binary file] -- [argv0] [argv1]

CPU Features

Ticks supports emulating the z80 (default), 8080 (-m8080), 8085 (-m8085), gbz80 (-gbz80), z180 (-mz180), ZX Next z80 extensions (-mz80-zxn) and Rabbit processors (-mr2k), reporting accurate timing information for each target. Note: Not all Rabbit instructions are emulated.

When emulating the ZX Next cpu, ZX Next style MMU paging is available.

CP/M Emulation

Ticks supports a limit number of BDOS calls launching it to run a .COM file will enable this mode and can allow some CP/M programs to run.

Debugging

Ticks provides a command line debugger, this can be launched as follows:

z88dk-ticks -d -x [map file] [binary file]

Specify -x [map file] is optional, however specifying it allows symbolic debugging. Ticks will then sit at address 0 waiting for an input from you. Type help to view the available commands.

Hotspot detection

Ticks can also report hotspots for code execution, launch the debugger, type hotspot on and then cont, on exiting a file called hotspots will be written in the current directory. This file reports the number of times an address has been executed along with a disassembly of that line. To order this in terms of frequency you can use the standard sort tool. For example:

sort -nr hotspots

Will show the commonest hit addresses first of all.

 sort -nr -k2 hotspots

Will show the number of clock cycles spent at each address.

Stdio and File I/O

Ticks provides a full stdio that will output to the console, alongside this, file I/O is supported as well.

Hardware emulation

• Ticks provides an ACIA emulation that is accessed using ports 0x80 (Ctrl/status) and 0x81 (in/out) that can be used to simulate the serial port on an RC2014 board.
• An emulated AM9511 maths co-processor is available on ports 0x42 and 0x43