Speed Rating: ARM2
ARM250
ARM3
ARM610
ARM710
StrongARM
The Atari 2600 is a very old little console from years ago. It has rather poor graphics (by even late 80s standards) but has a myriad of games available for it. The 2600 only had 128 bytes of memory, and relied on plotting direct to a TV rather than to screen memory like most modern consoles.
One major bonus of the Atari2600, is that since the system is so old, and its capabilities were quite low, there are a vast number of very playable games, taking up practically no disk space, that can be downloaded from the web (often in large batches), to all extents and purposes, legally!
David McEwen has ported the multiplatform Atari 2600 emulator Stella (named after the graphics chip in the Atari 2600). Since there is no frontend, sound and a multitasking mode will hopefully follow soon. It runs on a StrongARM at over 60fps, which being written entirely in C++ is a startling achievement. The emulator is originally written by Bradford Mott in 100% C++ and versions have been made for Unix, Windows, DOS and Mac as well as finally the Acorn. It is widely recognised as one of the best emulators of this notoriously complex system.
One of the nice features is that VCS files are setup to configure each game so that you can tweak individual settings to be optimised for each game. The emulator has some very nice features, such as the ability to use the mouse to emulate the old paddles available for the VCS. David is working on updating it, and is officially a member of the Stella development team. If other platforms versions are anything to go by, this will soon overtake v2600 as the best Atari 2600 emulator on the Acorn.
Stella v1.0 (13/12/98)
Speed Rating: ARM2
ARM250
ARM3
ARM610
ARM710
StrongARM
Official
Stella Homepage
David McEwen's
Acorn Stella Page
Ian Molton has done a port of the multi-platform Atari 2600 emulator, Virtual2600 by Alex Hornby to the Acorn. Since the 2600 works is such unconventional ways, for example plotting direct to the screen, it's emulation is quite complex and often rather slow. Since the emulator is also written in pure C, rather than assembly (lucky, since otherwise a port would be impossible) it requires a StrongARM to run at full speed of about 50 FPS. Also the emulator will only run on a RISC PC, since it is coded to take advantage of a redefinable 256 colour palette and would slow down even more on anything else. Unfortunately the CPU core is not easily optimisable with ARM code, since it was not designed to be 'plug-in-able'. The emulator now has control, with keyboard and mouse, perfect palette, and sound, as well as a multi or single tasking option.
Speed Rating: ARM2
ARM250
ARM3
ARM610
ARM710
StrongARM
Acorn
Virtual 2600 homepage
Virtual2600
main project page
Technical Information
CPU - 6507 running at 1.19 MHz
Display- Television Interface Adapter (Stella) Graphics clock
3.58 MHz
Sound - Television Interface Adapter (Stella), channels?
RAM - 128 bytes
VRAM - None, the CPU writes direct to the TV as the screen
is drawn!
ROM - upto 6Kb
reference - document of unknown origin
Software:
Atari
2600 nostalgia page
Dave's
Classics 2600 ROMS
ROM
reviews