Apple Ii Emulator?

[Newsdee]

Would somebody be interested in porting an Apple II emulator for the Caanoo?

Just the older systems (//e and //c) would be enough, altough there are sources for GS as well (e.g. an SDL version of KEGS available here: KEGS SDL)

There is an emu for the DS (pomDS) which has a really nice interface (see screenshot below) but has a number of bugs (eg joystick doen't work right), is not open source, and the auhor seems to have lost interest in it. Still, it could be a good inspiration for an interface on the Caanoo.

Note that pomDS is based on DApple, which is open source, but incomplete (e.g. doesn't have sound).

There is also LinApple, which is an SDL port of AppleWin to Linux. I suppose this version may be easier to port to the Caanoo?

 

[Newsdee]

It was finally done... but on the Pandora:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/59229-apple-emulator-for-pandora/

Looks like using Linapple as base is the way to go. From what I read, they recompiled it on the machine itself to get it to run?

 

[badmonkeyfinger]

but apple products suck

 

[Samurai_Shippo]

but apple products suck

You are very correct. However, the Apple II was the best they ever built. Developed by the Woz himself, it was their best product. Then that prick jobs went all "Fuck you Apple II, Mac wins".

 

[Newsdee]

Is it possible to compile the source on the Caanoo? It's probably easier to build on a PC, but you would need to have all the right dependency libraries. I would imagine those might already be in the machine itself?

 

[Newsdee]

Ok so I bit the bullet and gave it a shot myself. After a bit of tweaking wih the original source and the Pandora port, I managed to get a gpe file linked. Quite an encouraging start but obviously it doesn't work - half black screen afer loading. Well, at least it did somehing

What I did is take the framework of the example on the SDK, and invoke the linapple main() from it. It may not be necessary but it looks like there is some gp2x code (is the #define on for the Caanoo?) to do a cleaner shutdown.I also got lucky when I realized that some files were not linking because a header file was missing from the original AppleWin code!
Anyway... No idea if I will get it anywhere but its a start.

Now I need to find a way to debug it from the Caanoo or perhaps to compile on a PC (for which I need POSIX).
After that, i guess there will be some work needed to create a virtual keyboard and some interface to load disks..

 

[kayuz]

so, Newsdee, are you working for this emulator? :rolleyes:

 

[Newsdee]

No, but I really want to play AppleII games on the go. It turned out recompiling this was much easier than I expected. But it's far from being usable - I'll celebrate when something boots in it.

 

[kayuz]

No, but I really want to play AppleII games on the go. It turned out recompiling this was much easier than I expected. But it's far from being usable - I'll celebrate when something boots in it.

Ah ok, good luck!

 

[Newsdee]

So my plan is to get a Windows build running well enough so I can develop a Caanoo GUI more easily.
The Pandora port did a bit of UI, but since it has a proper keyboard it doesn't need too many changes.

The Caanoo will need at least a virtual keyboard and maybe some menus to load a new disk and set up some config changes.

After a bit of trial and error I managed to get an .exe which fired up and showed me the menu of the Pandora version.
It looks like I broke he emulation on Windows, but at least it was obvious that I hadn't done enough to resize the screen to Fi the Caanoo.

I did a bit more changes to have a Windows build set to 320x240.
On the Caanoo though, it just shows a black screen. That's better than before, but still quite bad.

Are there any known limitations in respet of the images that SDL can display on the Caanoo?
Tried both png and bmp but neiher worked, although the PC version shows both fine...