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z80trace

A simple (Z80) trace tool analyzer.

z80trace takes a trace of the value of a processor's program counter at successive instructions and produces a graphical representation of the execution.

As the name suggests, it was initially developed for the Z80 and particularly the ZX Spectrum, but there's nothing actually Spectrum or Z80 specific about it at the moment.

Usage

$ ./z80trace.py file.trace > file.dot

This takes the trace in file.trace and outputs a Graphviz file containing the execution graph. You can then use Graphviz to convert that into a graphical format (e.g. via dot -Tpng file.dot > file.png).

There's a (compressed) example trace file boot.trace which contains the trace of a Spectrum booting to the "(c) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd" message should you wish to try this out. Be warned that the Graphviz rendering can take a while.

Trace file format

The trace file should consist of the list of PC values from the processor, one per line, with three additions:

  • Interrupt when an interrupt is accepted.
  • CALL on the line after a CALL instruction is actually taken (as opposed to when something like a CALL NZ, nnnn is not taken because A was zero).
  • RET on the line after a RET instruction is actually taken.

There's a patch for Fuse in fuse-with-trace.patch which will enable Fuse to create an appropriate trace file.

Any questions?

Mail philip-z80trace@shadowmagic.org.uk.