Emulators for Other 8-Bits

[Guest]

what (if any) emulation software exists that runs on the Atari 8 platform to emulate other 8-bit machines?

 

there's some Apple/C64 titles I'd like to try on a real Atari if possible?

does anything exist?

[+David_P]

There is an Apple II emulator somewhere here on AA. If I was not on my phone I would Google it for you.

[fujidude]

There is an Apple II emulator somewhere here on AA. If I was not on my phone I would Google it for you.

 

Subtle hint.

[+HatNJ]

what (if any) emulation software exists that runs on the Atari 8 platform to emulate other 8-bit machines?

 

there's some Apple/C64 titles I'd like to try on a real Atari if possible?

does anything exist?

Are u asking for an emulator for the C64 or Apple II that runs on the Atari 8-Bit?

 

If so I doubt it there are emulators to run Apple Commodore and alot of others to run on PC/Mac to allow you to use titles for those machines

 

Vice for commodore computers AppleWin for Apple 2 there are more but I use those when not on real hardware

[Guest]

yep. i was referring to real atari hardware.

and i was aware of this thread

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/131940-apple-ii-emulator/page-3

point being that...page three has several references to it failing on similar hardware to mine...

 

which is why i'm looking for another

 

also - not just c64 & Apple II...but also any other 8-bit platforms

[+HatNJ]

Ok I missed that thread

 

I guess emulating apple on Atari is possible a c64 on Atari 8bit might be more difficult but if someone has done it like to see that

[+CharlieChaplin]

There are a few emulators for other platforms on the A8 available, alas some of them are quite slow (maybe they are better/faster with Rapidus and other 65816 hardware)...

 

http://www.atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=utils&sub=B.%20Emulatory&PHPSESSID=26d2d095ca77d31584d742cceb48a0ef

[Bikerbob]

Thats my thought.. even if you could write something that would work.. it would be slow.. your writing a VM inside a computer that has only an 8bit path for an 8bit VM and a clock of 1.79mhz

 

Cant think even what you might get to work would work well.

 

Heck I remember some of the first emulators for the 286 pcs.. and they were hard pressed to run missle cmd at speed.

 

James

Edited April 13, 2016 by Bikerbob

[gozar]

The Asteroids emulator is pretty amazing. Just think, Atari could have released Asteroids for the A8s as the real thing. (Which would not have made sense financially...)

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Grevle]

Would be nice to have a Atari 2600 emulator running on A8 hardware. Maybe a stock A8 have the power to pull it off ? Or even a Odyssey2/Videopac emulator.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Grevle

[Brentarian]

I was also thinking about the 2600 the other day. I doubt the A8 could do it stock, but add a Rapidus and VBXE in the mix and it becomes interesting. You could add a few more cart slots on an XEGS for 2600/7800 and 5200 games, or a hybrid slot that accepts everything. The 5200 might not be worth it with most games already fixed for A8, but a realtime memory map / joystick translation would be neat to see.

 

These days though, an FPGA running all the Atari systems would probably be more practical.

[Rybags]

Pretty sure there's PET and ZX81.

 

2600 you would think to be easy but it isn't.

First up it can do object replication which means even though it has the paltry sum of 2 players, 2 single pixel missiles and a ball, it can replicate the players & missiles 3 times each which the computer can't do.

Next big hurdle is object positioning. 2600 does it by hitting registers at specific time in the scanline which makes emulation of that really hard.

 

Sound stuff - would be fairly easy. There's only 32 frequencies of several noise types although the poly noise on A8 is done differently in most cases. I was thinking of doing a 2600 sound engine in software, most of the lower/mid frequencies are such that you could emulate it using forced volume and timers, the higher frequencies could just use translation tables, generally the different poly workings matter much less for higher notes.

[José Pereira]

Dragon/Tandy could be as it seems the hi-res is black & white and 2:1 in 4colours so translation to ours GR.8 and GR.15 bitmap modes would be possible although I don't know about their 6309 or 6809 or wich is?

And their first TRS-80 isn't only black & white?

Maybe isn't really worth because of their games...

 

BBC and Electron also for their games that work in 2bpp 4colours and hi-res 2colours again using ours GR.15 and GR.8 bitmap modes though some maybe a problem when they use overscan 256scanlines.

[Rybags]

TRS-80 CoCo graphics are somewhat primitive in the early model but the 6809 is somewhat more powerful than the 6502.

 

Acorn/BBC - as we know a few games already ported. Most of their 6502 machines run @ full 2 MHz without graphics access slowdown, I think it's the Electron where they used the 4-bit Ram which means the machine slows to half speed for most operations.

The ease with their machines is the graphics don't have sprites but they can do more bpp at a given resolution.

 

TRS-80 original, it sort of fits into a similar category as ZX-81. Slow Z80 which would make porting a bit less painful but there's not a great number of games that you'd want to bother with.

I do remember though they had a pretty good Defender clone, albeit runing in their chunky 128x48 bitmap mode.

[AtariGeezer]

A Kim-1 should be easy to emulate, what about a COSMAC ELF?