The latest version of the openMSX Catapult manual can be found on the openMSX home page:
http://openmsx.org/catapult-manual/
The latest version of the openMSX manual can also be found there:
You can also use these URLs to get up-to-date versions of the hyper links if you printed out this manual.
This manual is about Catapult, the (optional) GUI for openMSX. You can find more information about openMSX on the openMSX home page. You can also download Catapult and the emulator itself from there.
openMSX is in alpha state, which means that some things work but not all features are implemented yet. Many emulation features are implemented, but in terms of user interface it is rather bare bones. However, since the emulation is already pretty good, it would be nice if non-insiders would be able to play with it, too. To allow people to use openMSX without having to find all options the hard way, Catapult was created. Like openMSX, Catapult is still in development and doesn't support all features we would like it to, but still it has become a great addition to openMSX. This manual assumes that openMSX has already been set up. For further details how to setup and use openMSX please refer to the openMSX manuals .
Although Catapult was designed to be self explanatory, we still decided to create a comprehensive manual to familiarise people with the various pages and controls.
Disclaimer: We do not claim this guide is complete or even correct. What you do with the information in it is entirely at your own risk. We just hope it helps you enjoy Catapult (and with that openMSX) more.
The following people contributed to this document in one way or another:
Thanks to all of them!
This section gives an overview of the changes that were made to this document. It doesn't contain every single modification (use the CVS log for that), only the big picture.
On a Unix-like system, if you use a recent KDE or GNOME, you can find Catapult in the menu, under Emulators or under Games. If this does not work for you, you can start Catapult from the command line by simply typing:
Windows users can simply double-click on the Catapult icon in the start menu if they have chosen to create it during setup. If not, simply find the executable and start it anyway you like.
When you start Catapult for the first time it will ask where it can find openMSX. To make it as easy as possible, Catapult first checks the default locations for openMSX to see if the executable is there. If it is, you only need to press the OK button. If it is not on the default location, you will need to locate it yourself.
At the bottom you can uncheck the check box if you don't want to run the hardware configuration test. We recommend to leave this on though: it will check which MSX systems will work with openMSX and which will not. The ones that are not working are probably missing some system ROMs. See the openMSX Setup Guide on how to deal with that. By default, the list of extensions and MSX machines that can be emulated, will only show hardware that is found to be working. You can change that in the View menu. After having installed more ROMs, you can always run the test again via the "File - Test MSX Hardware" menu option.
After you press the OK button, Catapult's main screen appears, as shown in the picture below.
The main screen of Catapult consists of 6 pages to separate different kinds of functionality. This creates a much clearer interface than trying to put everything on one page. This Section introduces the different pages and how they can be used. It also tells about the global section of Catapult.
The next chapters discuss Catapult's functionality in detail. You will find links in this chapter to those detailed explanations.
This page lets you select which MSX machine you want to use, what extra functionality that machine should have an