The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'emulation'
2009/9/17
This is pretty awesome: a browser-based SNES NES emulator written entirely in JavaScript. Let me repeat that: someone wrote code in JavaScript (not in Flash or Java or anything faster) for emulating a Super Nintendo almost in its entirety*, from the 6502 CPU to the graphics and I/O hardware, and got away with it (it gets a respectable 33 frames per second in Chromium, though crawls along painfully in Firefox). The source code is all there in the page, unobfuscated, and the author has released the code (which is fairly elegantly laid out and comprehensible) under the GPL. Which means that it's probably only a matter of time until someone uses it to build a DHTML-based Commodore 64 or something.
* there's no sound, as one might expect.
2007/4/11
Someone has written a JavaScript-based 6502 assembler and emulator. The system compiles 6502 assembly language into JavaScript, includes a (low-resolution) emulated video display, and is powerful enough to play simple games like Pong (included in the examples).
In other 6502-related news, here is a commented disassembly and detailed analysis of Rob Hubbard's music playing code, as seen in numerous Commodore 64 games of the 1980s (and later ripped off by crackers and demo scenesters). If there was a museum of feats of 8-bit computing, this routine would be sitting in a prominently placed glass case in one of its wings.
2005/5/17
There are now Nintendo Entertainment System and SNES emulators for the PlayStation Portable. Of course, they will only run on Japanese PSPs with the old 1.0 firmware, which doesn't restrict the running of code from the Memory Stick, and that's only until someone runs a game which automatically patches the firmware on the unit.
Let's hope that they figure out a way of getting homebrew code to run on a PSP, as that looks like a pretty nifty platform to run things on.
(via bOING bOING, gizmodo) ¶ 0
2004/7/29
There are now quite a few emulators running on PalmOS devices; from an expensive commercial Atari 2600 emulator to a lot of Sinclair Spectra to the Frodo C64 emulator. This actually runs quite well on my Tungsten T3 (with the slight exception of Paradroid going into pause mode every time one pushes the joystick down). I remember real Commodore 64s, and, some time after that, the hard-won satisfaction of seeing PCs (486s or low-end Pentiums, I think) finally get fast enough to emulate C64s well enough for games at full speed (possibly without sound, though); to think that now you can run a nigh-perfect C64 emulation on a pocket organiser is, well, strange.
Elsewhere, there was a project to port MAME to PalmOS, and someone collecting donations for it. The donations page seems to have disappeared, though, and the MAME site has no links to it. Hopefully someone will pull it off sometime soon. (There is Xcade, a commercial arcade emulator, though this only supports a handful of ROMs.)
2004/5/18
From a Slashdot interview with Jeremy White of the WINE Windows API emulator project and/or Crossover:
We also go to all kinds of interesting lengths to avoid problems with viruses and worms. For example, we have a hack in our flavor of Wine, in the CreateProcess call (the code to start an executable) that basically checks to see if the parent process is outlook.exe, and if it is, we crash and burn, preventing many of the worms and such from running.
Meanwhile, someone's porting WINE to MacOS X. It doesn't actually emulate an Intel CPU, so it won't run your Windows binaries, but you can recompile Windows programs from source code and get them to run, and look authentically Windowslike, on your Mac. Though you'll need to use X11 as well, as it doesn't speak directly to Quartz/Cocoa/Carbon (and there don't appear to be any plans to make it do so).
2003/10/6
Commodore 64 emulation for Nokia futurephones. It appears to use the Frodo emulator for Symbian or EPOC or whatever it calls itself. I've run a version of this on a Psion I picked up a while back, and it wasn't very usable, though that's because of the monochrome screen. (via bOING bOING)
2003/7/16
More on the Tulip/Commodore 64 thing: they're pretty much ruling out taking down non-profit sites, threatening open-source emulators or doing anything else to piss off the fan community (and quite wisely). Oh, and they're the mob who tried to sell a 486 Windows PC with a C64 emulator as the "new Commodore 64" a few years ago. (Which sounds like a daft idea, but is it any more so than marketing a new designer luxury car as a "VW Beetle" or "Cooper Mini"?)
2003/7/14
Dutch PC manufacturer buys the Commodore 64 trademark, makes ominous noises about "not allowing unauthorised use of the brand" and releasing an emulator, the only licensed official one. Does this mean takedown notices for VICE, the C-One and the funet.fi CBM archive, or just that they'll go after the people selling Commodore 64 T-shirts at Camden Market? (via Slashdot)
2003/7/4
Someone is writing an Apple IIe emulator for PalmOS -- and it's about as fast as a real Apple. (via bOING bOING)
2002/3/28
CodeWeavers, who wrote the CrossOver web browser plug-in for Linux (which allows Windows plug-ins to run under Linux) have now released a system for running MS Office on Linux. Which is technically a fairly impressive feat; equally impressively, all the code has been contributed back to WINE, the LGPLed Windows emulation system for Linux; which means that, after all these years, WINE may be becoming more than a technical curiosity. (It's certainly better than things like Lindows, as (a) it isn't based on a customised, dumbed-down Linux distribution, and (b) the code is going back to the community.) (via Slashdot)
2001/11/7
And while I'm stealing links from Slashdot, the CrossOver plug-in for Linux is out now. This is a plug-in allowing you to use Windows web browser plug-ins (QuickTime, Shockwave, &c) in Linux browsers (i.e., Mozilla, Konqueror and so on). There's a downloadable demo version too. (Currently, if I need to look at Shockwave content, I use IE under Win98 under VMWare, though this looks interesting.)
2001/11/5
Retro gaming action: the Java Arcade Emulator, with which you can play a selection of old arcade games using only a Java-enabled web browser (and a fast machine; it's perhaps a bit scary to think how many CPU cycles on a modern high-end PC it uses to emulate one Z80 CPU cycle in interpreted Java).
And then someone's written a Linux/X11 interpreter for SCUMM, the old LucasArts graphic adventure game system. I recall those games (Day of the Tentacle and such) looking pretty nifty
back in the days before live-animated 3D or whatever the kids are playing today.
(I'm showing my age, aren't I?)
(via Wil Wheaton and Slashdot, respectively)
2001/3/12
mame.dk is dead. It wasn't killed by arcade-machine company copyright lawyers, but screwed out of banner ad revenue by an outfit named eFront. And according to ICQ logs posted by a disgruntled employee (now mostly taken down), eFront have been doing other nasty things, such as harassing sites out of existence and even threatening a webmaster with rape. Lovely folks... (the Slashdot thread)
2000/10/26
Good news on the emulation front; Plex86, which aims to become a free VMWare-like virtual-PC program for Linux, now boots Linux normally. Granted, Linux on Linux is not particularly impressive from a practical point of view, but it's a step to running Windows on Linux, not sacrificing having a real OS on the machine. Meanwhile, Windows emulator WINE allegedly runs Word/Excel 2000 on Linux. No Internet Exploiter though.
2000/10/23
Interesting software du jour: Mac-on-Linux, which allows you to run MacOS in a window on top of Linux/PPC (a bit like SheepShaver, only this one is GPLed). I should probably have a look at it at some stage (if I decide to play with Linux/PPC once I get more disk space on my Mac); though I probably wouldn't end up using it much (I suspect Cubase VST probably wouldn't run on it as efficiently as on MacOS alone).
2000/10/15
The BBC has an article about the 8-bit emulator phenomenon. It's saddening to see that companies are siccing their lawyers onto those who copy old games for long-obsolete computers. Though there is some hope, with the likes of Amstrad giving carte blanche to emulate their old machines. (Didn't the Amstrad and Spectrum's ROMs contain Microsoft BASIC? Wouldn't Darth Bill's army of lawyers have something to say about this?)
1999/10/27
Insanely cool, or perhaps vice versa: Now you can play classic arcade games on a Kodak digital camera. (via Slashdot)