Wanted to share a bit of my experience testing this experimental core out and someone had a question on how to run it so made a permanent post here.
-What is the Amstrad CPC?
The Amstrad CPC (short for "Colour Personal Computer") is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe. (from wiki)
-What machines are emulated in the experimental core?
Of the six models of CPC the experimental core supports CPC 464 and CPC 6128.
-Warning on Load: "You are trying to load one or more disc images. Please select something other than _______ emulation immediately and reboot the core."
If you receive a message after loading a game use the emulated machine can be switched after loading the game by selecting the menu "Amstrad CPC" -> "Core Emulation Settings". Then changing the "Emulated Machine" selection in the dropdown. Then select in the menu "Emulation" -> "Reboot Core".
-Setting up Controllers
In my limited experience, this has worked well. First Go to the Config -> Controllers and setup a joystick. It has up down left right and three fire buttons. Then go to the Keyboard tab and go through and
-How to get past blue menu screen?
First you want to find the file you need to run.
1. Type out CAT and you can view a list of files. The file to run should be similar to the name of the game. EX: Gryzor is GRYZOR.
2. Then you need to type out RUN" then the name the game with no spaces like below. On the Amstrad CPC the quotation is SHIFT+2, right between the @ and the $ sign. Look at an image of an Amstrad CPC keyboard if that is not clear. Although for some reason that was not working well for me so I used TasStudio instead. In TasStudio menu select Columns -> "Show Keys" to see all the other keyboard buttons in addition to the joystick keys. To input the quotation Select the "!" cell and 2 on the same frame. That should enter the " " ".
3. run"Gryzor
4. Then be prepared to wait for several minutes maybe. The little blinking yellow light on the bottom of Bizhawk seems to indicate it is loading.
Included a test bk2 file here for running Gryzor with some human gameplay.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638408082422448233
-Ram Search and Ram Watch
In Ram Search -> Options -> Memory Domains you can select the System Bus or the RAM domains. Although oddly enough I was only able to find relevant fields in the System Bus domain instead of the other 7 RAM domains.
-Virtual Keyboard
Not setup at the moment.
Thanks to TakuikaNinja and YoshiRulz for their help in walking me through the process.
If anyone can add additional info or correct info here that would be helpful for me and others interested in tasing games on this system.
