Skip to content
Andy Piper edited this page Jul 22, 2025 · 19 revisions

ESP32 Rainbow Loader

see also Firmware

related repository: Firmware/Software (this one, you're in it)

➡️ Using the device section on main website

Hidden feature: on the About screen, press T to get a Test screen which allows you to also test keycode input on the touch keyboard / attached peripherals. It also (loudly!) tests the speaker and mounts the SD card if present. (requires updating to firmware 0.0.9 from the esp32rainbow web page)

Tip: on the About screen, as well as 6/7 for down and up, press the first character of a menu entry to jump to that item, e.g. hit G to highlight Games.

ZX Spectrum emulator(s) 🌈

Heavily based on OpenVegaPlus and ASpectrum

  • 48K
  • 128K

Note that the menu presented when you start the 128K emulator must be navigated with CAPS/SHIFT held and 6/7 as UP/DOWN. This differs from the ESP32 Rainbow Main Menu / Loader menu, where 5/6/7 work as arrow keys regardless of CAPS/SHIFT being pressed.

LOAD/SAVE

LOAD and SAVE currently will trigger attempts to access tape files. Z80 and SNA files can't be loaded by this method.

Tape loading is rudimentary at the moment. We don't handle any games that involve multi loading (eg load the first level from tape and then load later levels as required).

SAVE - won't do anything right now - but you can use the snapshot feature for that - just push the "boot" button and you'll get a special menu.

This area is under investigation for improvement.

See also this issue discussion.

BASIC

(things specific to BASIC in emulators go here)

Desktop wrapper / launcher

In desktop there is a small wrapper that uses SDL to load the emulator in a desktop window for testing.

See the README file for more information. Uses Cocoa on macOS and GTK on Linux for file chooser widgets.

Tools

Tools on the website

(to be written, maybe? but the content for each tool on the website is already very complete)

Command-line tools

There are command-line versions of the tap_2_z80 and tap_2_audio programs that can be built from Makefiles in the desktop directory.

Clone this wiki locally