Acorn Emulation Latest

Details of previous updates, can be downloaded in a ZIP file - recommended reading.

Sunday 15/3/98

Sorry its been so long since the last update, I'm afraid this sporadic update is likely to continue for the next month or two at least, since I am very busy with A levels. I will try and keep the page fairly up to date though (at least 1 update every fortnight) and will be posting regular messages to the Acorn Emulation Message board about developments.

New screenshots have been added of STem running SimCity, and Xenon.

I've been sent a copy of Woz an old Apple][ emulator by Beniot Gilon, see the Apple page for details. Beniot also wrote an emulator for the TRS80.

The SNES9x emulator which was very popular on the PC is having development restarted. This normally wouldn't mean a great deal to Acorn users, but with this new release, the full source code will also be made available. In this case, it should be possible for someone to port it to the Acorn, of course it would be StrongARM only, but it should still be possible. Watch this space.

Version 1.02 of STem, the Atari ST emulator was released on 8th March, new features include; full blitter chip emulation - speeds up many graphics operations, an accurate timer (MFP Timer C) - useful for benchmark programs, better detection of international TOS images, basic emulation of the STe microwire bus - allows a few more programs to run, and easily accessible debugging reports.

Joe Kelleher has managed to get his developing Spectrum 128 emulator working on pre-RISC PC machines as well as on the RISC PC. I've had test versions working on my A5000, and all looks well.

Following a message on the Acorn Emulation mailing list about Virtual 2600 (an Atari 2600 emulator) being seemingly easy to port, an attempt is being made by Ian Molton to port the emulator to the Acorn. Full information and source code can be found at the Virtual 2600 homepage, and Ian would like to hear from anyone with decent technical information or good knowledge of the Atari 2600.

There is a new official Work in progress page for MAME, run by the MAME team. It holds news of what's new for the next version of MAME, to prevent rumours that fly around. I've added a link on the arcade page.

Since I feel that at the moment, java capability is not really widespread enough on the acorn at present, and that because of the older version of Acorns java compatibility with many java applets is poor, all the emulators written in Java have been gathered together on Java emulator page. I have uncovered a few others as well, including an Apple][e emulator, and a PDP-8 emulator. Because at present my java capability on the Acorn is non-existant, I'd greatly appreciate reports of how these emulators perform.

The Acorn emulation archive is still being updated, I'm busy getting as many emulators up there as possible, though it will take me some time. The priority is to put the latest releases up ASAP, including recently MAME and STem. I am converting all archives to ZIP format, as this seems to withstand the uploading and downloading much better than .ARC formats from the acorn for many users (including myself).

Added a link to the source code for Mark Rison's CPC emulator on the Emulator Authoring page.

I've added a list of some of the more useful commands that you can use in the chat room on the chat page, this allows you to customise the page, and make it beep when people enter etc. Unfortunately I have yet to meet anyone in there, after my A levels I'll start visiting at set times daily to chat with people!

Although I reported that the new SMS emulator would be released sometime this week on the Message Board, it looks like it has been delayed while a few last bugs are fixed. Keep an eye on the Message Board for the latest news.

The ports of fMSX and ColEm by David McEwen have both been altered to allow them to be use on pre-RISC PC machines, although these versions have not yet been released yet, they should be out fairly soon. MSX is a little slow but perfectly usable on my A5000, while ColEm is a bit too slow really.

Previous update: Thursday 26/2/98 (ZIP file)