Debugcart

The debug cartridge is a virtual "cartridge" which provides a few features for automatic testing and debugging.

primary features

The primary features are the minimal features required for the Testbench.

• one register in I/O space. when a value is written to this register, the emulator exits with the respective value used as exit status code.

$d7ff - C64 (and VSID), C128, SCPU, DTV

$910f - VIC20 (discussion)

$fdcf - Plus4 (discussion)

$8bff - Pet

$fdaff - CBM2 series (CBM510, CBM610 etc)

the respective memory locations have been choosen so they will most likely never collide with any kind of extension, allowing to also test cartridges and i/o extensions.

secondary features

These are additional features not required by the testbench, which could be useful to debug software running on the emulator

Feature Wishlist

• log something like "debug cart enabled" and print the available features too
• output CPU status (registers, flags) and timing info (cycle count, rasterline) to console of the host
• output strings to the console of the host (printf-alike, allowing memory peek)
• pause the emulator
• load and save blocks of memory from the host
• save screenshot with auto-generated filename
• save vice snapshot with auto-generated filename
• Possibility to measure performance. Start/stop cycle clock and print it. Preferably nested to see the whole calling tree. Think gprof
• Block CPU until cycle x, line y. Useful for quickly testing VIC-tricks without implementing boring stable timing.