The wish of writing ZX Emulator dates back to 1990, when, trying to make an old Spectrum "portable" (ie connecting it to the 12 volt battery of my car) I sent it to the computers' heaven instead. I was shocked and decided that writing Spectrum emulators would have been my aim in life.
Thus in 1995 ZX Emulator (Amiga) was born. I am still looking for its sources, I hope I did not erase them by accident in order to overwrite them with some porno JPGs. Satisfied, yet not at peace with myself, I put the Amiga on the shelf and I bought my first PC.
Although there were a lot of Spectrum emulators around already, something did not work (in me)... so in the summer of 2000 (I think, but it's a nice number and I put it here) ZX Emulator (PC) was born, working under MS-DOS in real mode.
In 2002, 20 years after the release of Sinclair's jewel, ZX Emulator (PC) needs DOS no more to work, so, having got rid of this shame, it can be finally brought to light.

Technical specifications
- Completely written in assembler
- Loads on boot and takes total control of the PC
- Emulation is synchronized 15625 times a second
- Spectrum loudspeaker is emulated through PC internal speaker
- EAR and MIC Spectrum ports not yet emulated (ie: 25% of Spectrum hardware not yet emulated)
- Rubber keyboard not emulated!
- In practice it is useless!

Installation
Download the binary file here.
Two kinds of installation are possible:
1. With a floppy (the only one possible for Windows users too):
Insert a formatted floppy (beware, all data present on it will be lost)
If you are using Unix type: cp ZXEmulator /dev/fd0
If you are using Windows:
Download the program rawritewin and, through the simple GUI, write the file ZXEmulator on the floppy. If you insert the floppy in the drive at next boot, ZXEmulator should start instead of the OS! (If the computer does not attempt to boot from the floppy, change your BIOS settings).

2. On the HDD. (It is advisable to keep a recovery disk handy, should something go awry!)

Execute:
cp ZXEmulator /boot/
then, if you are using lilo for booting (for grub or other components do as if you were installing a new kernel image), add to the file /etc/lilo.conf the following two lines:
image=/boot/ZXEmulator
label=ZX_Emulator
and then give the command:
lilo
Now on the next reboot ZX_Emulator should appear among the available operative systems!Should the choice menu not appear, press and keep pressed the Shift (or Maiusc) key on reboot.

Use
What is an emulator for, that can neither save nor load programs?
Press some keys at random, won't you?
Just remember:
Esc reboots the computer, F10 restarts the emulator.
Left shift=Caps shift, Right shift=Symbol shift

Sources
I was almost forgetting: If you want the sources, you may download them here.
To assemble them you will need Microsoft QBasic, but this bug will soon be resolved.
You should start the program creaistr.bas, then run assembla.sh.

Thanks to the Freak Media Lab for having let me use a little of their limited space!