How to install Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator in Debian Wheezy Beta and Raspbian

On the Raspberry Pi site there is a thread about how to install this spectrum emulator in Arch. I figured it was time to have a go in Wheezy – just for the heck of it – and it worked. Not 100% – still can’t get it to make sound reliably and satisfactorily through HDMI, but I have managed to get it working well through the analog audio out – *so you can use headphones or speakers to get those primitive speccy sounds. :yes:

* This seems to work OK now.

The good news is it’s a lot simpler in the Debian Wheezy Beta as well. Just a couple of commands.

So, let’s get going…

Boot up your Pi into Debian Wheezy. Once logged in (command line), type

sudo apt-get install fuse-emulator-common

Y to confirm that you want it.

This then installs fuse-emulator-gtk, libaudiofile1, libspectrum8 and opense-basic

It also suggested installing spectrum-roms and fuse-emulator-utils.

I tried running it without installing these and a message came up about not using the original spectrum ROM. So I installed the extra packages with…

sudo apt-get install spectrum-roms fuse-emulator-utils

Then, before you go into X, you may need to sort out the sound…

sudo amixer cset numid=3 1 (You don’t need to do this in Raspbian).

Changing the final 1 for a 2 would force HDMI – but this didn’t work for me. It only works on headphone socket for me – pity, but a step in the right direction. I’ll have to attach some speakers as the sounds of manic miner are a bit too raw for headphones.

Then, to get to the graphical user interface (GUI) type…



startx

Once you’re in LXDE, click the icon in the bottom left of the screen and select



games > Fuse Spectrum Emulator (GTK+ version)

This will fire up the emulator. First thing you’ll want to do is enlarge the display by clicking the maximize square in the top-right of the FUSE window.

Loading a game

Then click

Media > Tape > Open

Then browse to where your tzx files are and select one and click Open . If your tzx contains more than one file, choose the one you want and click open . Then you will get a blank screen, that’s rather puzzling until you realise all you’ve done is simulated putting a tape in the tape recorder. You still have to load it.

Type J (LOAD)

then CTRL+PP (“”) and press enter

Your game will load – simply follow the on-screen instructions to play it.

If the sound is too loud, options > sound and change beeper volume to a lower figure.

At any time you can press F10 to exit FUSE.

Getting hold of games/software

Many spectrum games and programs can be downloaded from world of spectrum.