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Bizmuth 0.9.4-beta4 is available

July 23, 2026Bizmuth

Bizmuth 0.9.4-beta4 is available to download.

What’s new

Added

  • Save State / Load State — the File menu now saves the full machine state to a file and restores it later (the --savestate/--loadstate capability, now available interactively).
  • Re-runnable setup — Help ▸ Run Setup… (re-)downloads or locates the ROMs and Next SD card at any time, not just on first launch.

Changed

  • The executable is now named bizmuth (was azimuth), matching the app name — so the Linux command and the application-menu title read “Bizmuth” consistently.
  • The Z80/Z80N CPU core now ships as a separate, replaceable library installed alongside Bizmuth (z80_ffi.dll on Windows, libz80_ffi.so on Linux, libz80_ffi.dylib on macOS) instead of being compiled in — so the open-source (LGPL) CPU core can be swapped for your own build. If that library is missing from the install, Bizmuth will not start.
  • Faster interrupt-heavy programs — the IM2 daisy-chain interrupt controller no longer re-evaluates every peripheral on every bus cycle, giving roughly a 20% speed-up on interrupt-driven programs such as NXModPlayer and TX-1696 (output is byte-identical).
  • Calmer idle screen — the no-machine screen is now a softer “No Input” backdrop with a bottom-left caption (was a bright “No ROMs!” test pattern), shown from launch until a machine boots so the window is never a plain black rectangle.

Fixed

  • No more silent black screen when a Next can’t boot — a Next needs a bootable SD card in slot 0; if it’s missing or misconfigured (or ROMs are absent), Bizmuth now shows a clear dialog with Download / Preferences… / Quit and boots in place once you fix it, instead of a blank or near-blank screen. Config paths (ROM folder, SD images) are now stored and resolved as absolute, so launching from Finder or a different folder no longer fails to find them. A missing or unreadable boot ROM surfaces an error rather than a black screen.
  • Menu tick marks stay correct — the Disk Write-Protect, Sprite RAM, Capture Mouse and SD Read-Only menu items now keep their check marks in sync with the actual state (previously only some menus reconciled, so these could show the wrong state after a change made outside the menu).
  • Save-state restore fidelity — restoring a state while a program was running no longer leaves the machine slow or flickery: the CPU-speed, memory-wait and IM2-daisy settings, and any in-flight DMA→DAC audio stream, are now carried across the load. (The save-state format is now v2; states written by earlier builds can no longer be loaded.)
  • Audio on high-rate USB DACs — the audio buffer is now sized by time rather than a fixed sample count, so it no longer under-runs (crackle/dropouts under load) on output devices running at high sample rates (96/192/384 kHz).
  • Windows: no longer opens a console window on launch (runs as a GUI app); logs still print when started from a terminal.

ROMs/SD images are user-supplied (not included).

Get it from the Downloads page.