Fuse - the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator

What is it?

Fuse (the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator) was originally, and somewhat unsurprisingly, a ZX Spectrum emulator for Unix. However, it has now also been ported to Mac OS X, which may or may not count as a Unix variant depending on your advocacy position. It has also been ported to Windows, the Wii, AmigaOS and MorphOS, which are definitely not Unix variants.

What features does it have?

Accurate 16K, 48K (including the NTSC variant), 128K, +2, +2A and +3 emulation.

Working +3e, SE, TC2048, TC2068, TS2068, Pentagon 128, Pentagon "512" (Pentagon 128 modified for extra memory), Pentagon 1024 and Scorpion ZS 256 emulation.

Runs at true Speccy speed on any computer you're likely to try it on.

Support for loading from .tzx files, including accelerated loading.

Sound (on Windows and Mac OS X, and on systems supporting ALSA, the Open Sound System, SDL or OpenBSD/Solaris's /dev/audio ).

). Kempston joystick emulation.

Emulation of the various printers you could attach to the Spectrum.

Support for the RZX input recording file format, including 'competition mode'.

Emulation of the Currah μSource, DivIDE, DivMMC, Interface 1, Kempston mouse, Multiface One/128/3, Spectrum +3e, ZXATASP, ZXCF and ZXMMC interfaces.

Emulation of the Covox, Fuller audio box, Melodik and SpecDrum audio interfaces.

Emulation of the Beta 128, +D, Didaktik 80/40, DISCiPLE and Opus Discovery disk interfaces.

Emulation of the Spectranet and SpeccyBoot network interfaces.

Support for the Recreated ZX Spectrum Bluetooth keyboard.

What is it lacking?

Quite a lot! However, it's a lot better than it used to be...

Downloads

Fuse is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. Please read this before downloading Fuse if you're not already familiar with it.

Unix

Packages are available for some Unix distributions; in general, any problems which are specific to the packages should be sent to the package maintainer.

Packages of older versions of Fuse are also available for some other distributions:

Nokia's Maemo platform has a port of 1.0.0 available by Alberto Garcia.

macOS

A native port to macOS by Fredrick Meunier is available on its own SourceForge project here, as well as a Spotlight importer for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger users. Alternatively, the original version of Fuse will compile on OS X 10.3 (Panther) or later.

Windows

A port to Windows of 1.5.7 by Sergio Baldoví is available here, and the utilities are available here.

Android

BogDan Vatra has ported Fuse 1.3.2 to Android OS, which could run on smartphones, tablets and TVs. Sources are available from GitHub and binaries from Google Play.

Haiku

Adrien Destugues has ported Fuse 1.1.1 to Haiku, available from haikuports as app-emulation/fuse and app-emulation/fuse-utils.

AmigaOS 4

Chris Young has ported Fuse 1.0.0.1 to AmigaOS 4, with binaries available from Aminet as misc/emu/fuse.lha.

MorphOS

Q-Master has ported Fuse 0.10.0.1 to MorphOS, with binaries available from AmiRUS.

PSP

Akop Karapetyan has ported Fuse to the PSP. Binaries and source, based on Fuse 0.10.0.1, are available from the Fuse PSP page.

Wii

A Wii port, based on work by Björn Giesler, is available from WiiBrew. This is based on what is essentially 0.10.0.2.

Gizmondo

A port of 0.9.0 to the Gizmondo tablet is available. The source was available via csie.org.

GP2X

Ben O'Steen has made a GP2X port, based on Fuse 0.6. Binaries and source are available from his homepage.

XBox

Crabfists's has made an Xbox port, based on Fuse 0.6. Binaries and source are available from the FuseX project at SourceForge.

PocketPC

Anders Holmberg's ported Fuse 0.4 to the PocketPC as PocketClive.

Windows Mobile Smartphone

Keith Orbell's then ported PocketClive to the Smartphone as FuseSP.

Source

Installing Fuse

First, check the requirements below and ensure all the libraries you want/need are installed.

Secondly, install libspectrum.

Get the source code (PGP signature) .

The utilities which were previously packaged with Fuse are now available in their own package (PGP signature). Note that you'll still need libspectrum installed to run these.

The source code releases above are signed with the Fuse Release Key, ID D0767AB9 , which has fingerprint 064E 0BA9 688F 2699 3267 B1E5 1043 EEEB D076 7AB9 . This is different from the key used to sign the 0.6.0(.1) releases as I forgot the passphrase for that key :-( .

Requirements

Required: X, SDL, svgalib or framebuffer support. If you have GTK+ installed, you'll get a (much) nicer user interface under X.

libspectrum: the Spectrum emulator file format and information library. Optional: libgcrypt: the ability to digitally sign RZX files (note that Fuse requires version 1.1.42 or later).

libpng: the ability to save screenshots.

libxml2: the ability to load and save Fuse's current configuration and capture BASIC video functions to SVG.

SDL or libjsw: allow joystick input to be used (not required for joystick emulation).

zlib: support for compressed RZX files and zipped files.

libbzip2: support for certain compressed files.

libaudiofile: support for loading from .wav files.

Versions previous to 0.10.0 used John Elliott's lib765 and libdsk for the +3 support. 0.10.0 and newer include this support natively, so these libraries are no longer necessary (or used).

What's new?

1.5.7

GTK+ 3: Make the offset entry wider in memory browser

GTK+: Remove duplicated surface creation code

GTK+: Remove use of deprecated gtk_device_(un)grab functions

GTK+/Win32: Add *.bin as an allowed filetype to file selectors and amend .fmf filetype

Improve Fuse's Kempston mouse handling under GTK+ 3.x

"Save binary" command can now save 65536 bytes again (regression introduced in 1.5.6)

Various minor bugfixes

1.5.6

Z80 flags register is now correct after SCF and CCF

"Variant" Alkatraz loaders (e.g. Gauntlet 3 and Shadow Dancer), "Variant" Search Loader programs (e.g. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge and Space Crusade) and Dinaload loaders (e.g. Astro Marine Corps) are now accelerated

More improvements disabling phantom typist after finishing loading TAP or standard ROM TZX files

Saving and loading binary data no longer increments tstate count or triggers breakpoints

Stop RZX playback/recording on machine reset/change

Various minor bugfixes

1.5.5

Improve sound accuracy on Unix 64 bit systems

Allow the use of real joystick hats/dpads in the SDL joystick code

Various minor bugfixes

1.5.4

Add *.FMF as an allowed filetype to file selectors

Save SCR from current display file

Use 44.1KHz as default sound frequency

Upgrade to libspectrum 1.4.3 to fix TC2048 and TC2068 timings regression

Various minor bugfixes

1.5.3

Disable inactive peripherals after loading a snapshot

Re-enable sound after phantom typist finishes loading TAP, standard ROM TZX or +3 DSK images

Upgrade to libspectrum 1.4.2 to fix writing RZX files containing a snapshot which cannot be compressed

1.5.2

Emulate ROM bug loading zero length blocks when using tape traps

Fix the format of double-sided +3 disks

Spectrum reset is accelerated when phantom typist is enabled and a file is loaded from the menu

Add options UI for phantom typist

GTK+ 3 UI: Memory browser dialog allows to go to specific offset

1.5.1

Prevent crash when we try to disassemble an instruction with many DD or FD prefixes

Fix crash when setting debugger variables

Prevent crash when we try to profile an instruction with many DD or FD prefixes

GTK+ UI: Improve behaviour of default button on dialogs

GTK+ and win32 UIs: Support hex numbers in load/save binary and pokefinder dialogs

SDL UI: Allow to select the video mode used in full-screen

1.5.0

Autoload snapshots replaced by a "phantom typist" which types LOAD "" or similar

Alkatraz loaders (e.g. Cobra and Fairlight) are now accelerated

Debugger: Ensure conditional timed breakpoints work correctly

Development

If you're just want news of new versions and the like, the (low volume) fuse-emulator-announce list is available. If you're interested in the development of Fuse, this is coordinated via the fuse-emulator-devel list and the project page on SourceForge.

The latest version of Fuse is always available by checking out the 'master' branch from the git repository on SourceForge. Note that this isn't guaranteed to compile, let alone work properly. Also, don't expect any support for this version! (You'll also need libspectrum from git; this is from the libspectrum repository). Similarly, the utilities are available in the fuse-utils repository.

One thing which isn't in the SourceForge tracking system (and is now very outdated):

David Gardner has produced a patch to give XVideo support for the Xlib UI, allowing arbitrary sized windows.

Are there any related projects?