MiSTer FPGA Forum

A few emulators for the ZX Spectrum allow you to have smaller borders, allowing for a larger viewport on the screen. I wondered if anyone out there would consider looking at adding this as an option on the ZX Spectrum core?

Do you have an example game that uses this area in mind?

Hi Aberu,

It's anything in particular tbh, the Spectrum has massive borders when loading, making the viewport really small on smaller screens (e.g. the iPad screen)

An example video of someone using some kind of emulation will show the border size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtBoRp_cSxQ (volume down!!!)

As the spectrum doesn't really use the border for any kind of display it'd be nice to shrink them up to allow for bigger pixels!

I'll take a picture when a game is loading to show what I mean and reply shortly.

Here's an example - I'm thinking if the borders were half that size the part of the screen that is actually used would be a lot bigger...

Yes, it may look odd. But this is really how it looks on a real speccy as well.

Hopefully someone could add a cropped N-times scaling option.

fierman wrote: ↑Sat Apr 22, 2023 12:10 pm

Yes, it may look odd. But this is really how it looks on a real speccy as well.

Exactly this, but on a monitor you could always use width and height to stretch the borders off the screen.

Also, as the border isn't exactly much use on a spectrum bar a few demos and to confirm your tape is loading there isn't any real harm in sacrificing some of it.

Finally, looking at e.g. the Master System core, there is an option to switch the border off entirely.

So having a small border option would work great for us using smaller screens.

A number of cores have an option to decrease the size of the borders, even the VIC-20 has it, which is great.

The integer scaling option already cuts the borders a bit, maybe not enough though.

I had a look at this and have made a version with an OSD option to crop the borders and only show the 256x192 pixel active area, but while I was testing it I tried the crop 216 option and that seems pretty good. Is there really need for no borders?

Anyways, I'm attaching the .rbf if anyone wants to try it. I know next to nothing about the Spectrum, I just changed the blanking in the ULA to start as soon as the image ends and stop as it starts and adjusted the aspect ratio so that the image has the same AR as the active part of the image with borders did. Dunno if it'll break software using extended video modes or whatever. The new option is in the Audio & Video menu as "Hide Border". If there are no big problems and there's interest I could put it on github and make a pull request.

It seems to work pretty well - thanks, Yim. I've tried it briefly in a few games (on a 31Khz VGA CRT) and the scaling is actually 1:1, which is one thing I was worried about (had tried similar option on RPi before and it wasn't right.)

I grew up with Spectrum and don't mind the borders, but having an option to hide them is an interesting feature - I imagine also quite useful for those with small displays.

on resolution 1920x1080 (which most TVs use) and vertical crop 216 option enabled, you will get integer scaling with visible 216 lines, so ZX Spectrum paper part will occupy almost whole screen vertically. Border will use only useless parts of wide screen.
Border play different roles on different systems. On Sega Master it's mostly useless. On ZX Spectrum it's useful. You can check tape loading progress, some games use border for different purposes, like decompressing notification or even some info. Many demos use border. So taking border away completely is a wrong decision. It won't be a ZX anymore.

Yeah, I understand. I'm one of the iPad 4 screen people here (2048x1536) and was hopeful if I'm honest! Yim's core is a nice fullscreen for games where the border isn't necessary so I'll use that for my games for now and revert if any changes break it.

I appreciate the reponse!

Edit: Unrelated comment, since this is specifically about 4:3 screens

Sorgelig wrote: ↑Tue May 09, 2023 3:55 pm

So taking border away completely is a wrong decision. It won't be a ZX anymore.

There are 138 games which use border effects - that constitutes probably less than 1% of the entire library. The iconic loading stripes might be important for folks like you and me (hell, I often slow it all down and put the sound on too) but I guess for most newcomers to this platform they won't matter that much, especially those who have a small screen and would like to trade the border off for a bigger playfield.

All in all, it's just an option, which might be really useful for some people.

It already is an option though, right? In video settings select vertical crop and the picture will fill the screen nicely.

Guys, I'm on a 4:3 iPad screen. All I asked for were for the borders to be a bit smaller. Vertical crop isn't available for my screen/resolution (2048x1536).
For those with 1920x1080/1200 that's great!

Using ZXSpin as an example, I think the top right would be the best of the three. Top left represents pretty much how we currently see it.

I will see. I will implement a smaller border.
But it will work only on HDMI output. VGA output cannot be changed, border can be smaller but screen won't be bigger on VGA output as size depends on video timings.

That works perfect for me, thanks Sorgelig!

i've added option of narrow border. You can test it in unstable builds

Thank you Sorgelig, this is perfect!

From todays changelog

ZX Spectrum:

• Added option for narrow border.

Thank you Sorgelig

Is there any chance the NEXT Core could implement such an option too? Who would need to do this?

You probably don't want to do it for the Next core as on the Next you can render to the whole screen, including the border area. I don't recall if I've seen anything do so yet, but you certainly can.

Yes, the next can render on the full screen, but rarely does.. So the option would still be great (toggle in menu)

On a Benq BL912 (1280x1024) the screen is really tiny (Aspect Ratio Original, Scale normal). Vertical crop is greyed out. Can only use Scandoubler FX CRT 25% to fill the screen but scaling is irregular.

I think when there would be an option to reduce the borders in steps it would fill the screen without irregular scaling.

Is there a display setting to prevent this irregular scaling on my Benq?