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3 Invoking the emulators

The names of the available emulators are:

  • x64, the C64 emulator
  • x128, the C128 emulator
  • xpet, the PET emulator
  • xvic, the VIC20 emulator
  • xcbm2, the CBM-II emulator

You can run each of them by simply typing the name from a shell. If you want to run them from another application (e.g., a window manager or some other sort of program launcher) you should always run them from a terminal window such as xterm or rxvt since VICE provides a lot of debugging information that is sent to the terminal and has built-in monitor that also appears there. For example, you could do 

xterm -e x64

3.1 Command-line options used during initialization

There are several options you can specify on the command line. Some of them are used to specify emulation settings and will be described in detail later (see section 6 Settings and resources for a complete list). The remaining options are used only to give usage information or to initialize the emulator in some way:

-help
-?
List all the available command-line options and their meaning.
-default
Set default resources (see section 6 Settings and resources). This will override all the settings specified before, but not the settings specified afterwards on the command line.
-autostart IMAGE
Autostart `IMAGE' (see section 3.2 Autostarting programs from the command-line).
-1 NAME
Attach `NAME' as a tape image file.
-8 NAME
-9 NAME
-10 NAME
-11 NAME
Attach `NAME' as a disk image to device 8, 9, 10 or 11.

3.2 Autostarting programs from the command-line

It is possible to let the emulator autostart a disk or tape image file, by simply specifying its name as the last argument on the command line, for example 

x64 lovelygame.x64.gz

will start the C64 emulator, attaching `lovelygame.x64.gz' as a disk image and running the first program on it. You can also specify the name of the program on the fisk image by appending a colon (`:') the name itself to the argument; for example 

x64 "lovelygame.x64.gz:run me"

will run the program named `run me' on `lovelygame.x64.gz' instead of the first one.

Using the command-line option -autostart is equivalent; so the same result can be obtained with 

x64 -autostart "lovelygame.x64.gz:run me"

If you specify a raw CBM or P00 file, the emulator will setup the file system based drive emulation so that it is enabled and accesses the directory containing the file first. This is a very convenient way to start multi-file programs stored in file system directories and not requiring "true" drive emulation.

See section 5.5 Using disk and tape images. for more information about images and autostart.

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