Emulators

Introduction

NOTE: There are no illegal ROM or disk images on this site. All images on this site are public domain and legal to copy.

  An emulator, as far as this page is concerned, is a programme that you run on a computer in order to run programmes written for a different (and incompatible) computer. This is quite a difficult task as the emulator has to look at each instruction in the programme and perform the operation that would occur on the computer being emulated, so you will need a much faster computer to run a programme at the same speed as a 'native' computer. Emulation is slowed down further by having to convert graphics and sound from the original format to a form that can be displayed/heard. All the emulators listed here are top notch, and are well worth a look if you own a fast(ish) PC.

Links

  If I haven't put a link in for a particular emulator, you can get to it via these sites, the links at Dave's Classics are at the left of the 'what's new' information on the first page. They are excellent sites and worth a visit:

Spectrum Computer Emulator

  There are quite a few Spectrum emulators for the PC, you don't need a very powerful PC to run most of them (a 486 should do) and emulation is generally very accurate. ZX80 has been about for ages, but I don't think it's that great, it needs a specific memory configuration on your PC which you shouldn't need to worry about nowadays. I haven't tried any of the Windows ones, but X128 is a great DOS em' that also works under '95. The version of X128 I used was V0.8 SAOM which allows you to use 128K games with the enhanced 128K sound.

Amiga Computer Emulators

  The best computer of it's day? I think so, sadly Commodore went bankrupt in 1993 and the Amiga really died then. The Amiga is still made by Amiga International but nowadays it just isn't the same. The Amiga 1000 was launched in 1985 but was out of reach for most people. In the UK, it was the A500 launched in 1987 that amazed everyone, here are some of its features:

  * 512K (half a Mb!) of memory
  * Four 8bit stereo sound channels (2 left, 2 right)
  * 32 colours on screen out of a palette of 4096 (though HAM and other tricks allowed more to be displayed)
  * Resolutions of 320*256, 320*512, 640*256 and 640*512 (PAL), these could be adjusted, overscanned and combined
  * 7Mhz 68000 processor, no cache (yes, seven mhz)
  * Custom hardware for scrolling, sprites, blitting and more

  There are two main emulators for the Amiga, the original one is UAE (Unix Amiga Emulator) which runs on many platforms. The PC versions are DOSUAE and WinUAE, these offer the most accurate emulation but are very slow, you'll definitely need at least a Pentium2. The other is Fellow which sacrifices some accuracy for a big speed boost, and that will run most things full speed on my AMD K6/200Mhz in MSDOS. Compatibility is 'fairly' good.

  To use UAE or Fellow you need a file called 'kick.rom' which you will need to get from a real Amiga (it's a copy of the KickStart ROM data that the Amiga OS is stored on) details are in the emulator docs. The other things you need are ADFs, Amiga Disk Files, these are exactly the same format as Amiga DSDD diskettes and so are 880K. These are needed because the PC's disk drive can't read Amiga disks directly, so you need to either transfer them from your Amiga via a serial cable or PC formatted DSDD disk, or get them from sites on the web. Utilities are available to manage these files on your PC. An Amiga hard drive can also be emulated!

  I recommend Fellow (currently V032a) with these settings:

800*600*16bit screen (65000 colours)
Y scaling (VGA line doubling) ON
Limit to 50Hz, Frameskip 1/1
Disk DMA on FAST
Joy0 as Mouse, Joy1 as Cursor/ctrl
Power/floppy LEDs on screen, show performance on screen

  Hint: If you select 'Start' from the options and just get a black screen, but can get back to the options by pressing F12, try decreasing the sound to 22050Hz 8bit mono, or check your soundcard settings.
  I made some Amiga stuff AGES ago, why not take a look (ADF downloads available)? Otherwise, here are some freely distributable ADF files (zipped):

Interference demo - Sanity (655K) A non-interactive 'demo' this occurred a lot on the Amiga...
No Second Prize demo + Sensible Soccer demo (765K) Playable demos of a motorbike racer (mouse control) and a footy game
System 4 - Double Density (172K) Simplistic, but groovy game. NOTE: Your emulator MUST be set to 512K CHIP (graphics) memory or it won't work. You can hear the title music to this game on my Music page.

PC Engine Console Emulators

  A very popular 'far east' console that was never released here in the UK. I'm mainly mentioning this for the superb version of Salamander available for it. By far the best emulator is Magic Engine but you have to register that. HU6280 is looking OK, and developing well but isn't up to the standard of Magic Engine yet, but it is free...

Arcade Machine Emulators

  Just a quick word about a few arcade emulators. Definitely worth looking at:

System16 - for Alien Syndrome, Golden Axe
Sparcade - for Nemesis, Salamander, Vulcan Venture, Slapfite
Mame - too many to mention (alright, GunSmoke, StarWars)...
Raine - for Rainbow Islands
Rage - for R-Type

I'm also going to mention SHMUPS simply because it's a damn good site.

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