GP32 Archimedes Emulator

[toxibunny]

Ok i was chatting to a couple of l33t coders on IRC tonight... the conversation went from 8-bit-computers to 16-bits to emulation etc...

anyway I suggested the topic of an acorn archimedes emulator for GP32... it was the first in the ARM family, running at 10-12 MHZ and with nothing much in the way of custom chips. plus Zarch is a classic retro game. (by the author of Elite (which became Virus on the 16-bit machines (and the speccy)))

anyway we were talking about an emulator, and it was suggested that seeing as it had basically the same but slower CPU, a proper emulator wouldn't be necessary, but rather a 'wrapper' for the opcodes, memory addresses, ins-and-outs to BIOS etc...

...and if someone did it, it would run most things, and basically it would run like shit off a stick (rather like the recent GBA emulator, but without all the custom chips to have to do in software)

this is not a request for an archimedes emulator (it had like what? 2 decent games?), rather a paraphrase from a conversation I had... i just wanted to know what proper GP32 coders thought of this...

 

[Squidge]

It's certainly possible to do, and could be really fast, but only if someone can be bothered to do it. I don't know anyone who'd want to create an Archimedes emulator. If someone just wanted to see one on the GP32, they'd probably just port, rather than going down the GPAdvance route, unless they wanted it as fast as possible (unlikely, because, as you say, there's only about 2 decent games for it).

 

[psj3809]

Apart from the hardcore Archimedes fans the vast majority of people really arent that bothered. This machine was never well known for retro gaming and theres not exactly many games available for it.

Bit like a Speccy fan asking for a Sinclair QL emulator

 

[Hwrd]

What happened to the Sinclair QL anyway?

Anyone here around back when it failed?

Soun ded like a decent PC to me at the time...

 

[thingley]

Unfortunately sir clive used his godawful microdrive cartridges as its main media - which made it a bit of a failiure.

It was basically a speeded up tape - and it was possibly the most unreliable format around (speed differences between different units meant that some of the staff in stores had to try about ten different copies of a cartridge before they could find one that would work to demo to the public)

That dongle thing didn't help much either - could you imagine nintendo or sony trying to launch a computer system with half of the chips hanging out the back in a plastic bag?

Anyway - back on topic the best games for archimedes were some released by the 4th dimension (e-type, chocks away, saloon cars etc.) and krisalis (some excellent amiga ports and mad professor moriarty) and a few more amiga ports by Gremlin graphics.

If you are a big amiga fan then an archie emu would open up some excellent versions of games you remember (they were better than the atari ST versions IMO) but theres just not enough of them to interest someone in coding any of these clever tricks - and there is only one open source archimedes emulator and its slow even on a decent PC.

Nice idea - just not likely.

 

[nigelibrown]

I think you may be missing the point looking for games! However there were hundreds of games written for the Archimedes. The most important thing written was BBC Basic.
We would also not have the GP32 without its existence as the ARM CPU would never have been developed.

http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=36764

http://www.riscworld.co.uk/ONLINE/GAMES/INDEX.HTM


Toyz 4 Boyz

 

[toxibunny]

It actually looks like there's a lot of Interesting software available. cheers for that, nigeli.

 

[Shirohagen]

If this project would be "almost native" as discussed, then it might be useful as myabe you could run RISCOS as a startup GUI. Would that handle reading and writing to the SMC etc? Then we'd have 2 proper OS's Linux & RISCOS.

...And yeah, BBC Basic with a chatboard! I can't remember, could the Archimedes run BBC software? Maybe we'd finally get our BBC Emulator that way...

®

 

[Gruntfuggly]

It would run stuff that was written completely in BBC basic, but I think anything that used things like FX codes, or OSCLI, etc. or memory access wouldn't work, as far as I remember...

I've got a feeling even Mode 7 was a problem for it... (I could be wrong, though)

 

[Mekon]

Hi guys, it's my first post here, be gentle with me!

I know a little about the Archimedes, having used them briefly at school. I'd love to see an emulator for the GP32. As for BBC Basic on the Arc, I believe the machine came with a software emulator to run some BBC micro 6502 code. I would imagine it would have trouble with mode7 - on the BBC micro there was a separate teletext chip to handle the character generation.

How would the screen fit on the GP32? I'm not clued up on Archimedes screen resolutions, but the BBC is 256 pixels high in most modes - that leaves two lines of text hanging off the bottom of the GP32 screen.

Just some random thoughts.

 

[e_b]

this computer had the best version of elite and by default is surely worth consideration...I only wish I had the skills and time

 

[Shadow of Chaos]

I remember this thing in school, about the only decent game on it was arkanoid

Come to think of it, i think i tried lemmings once too.. which was terrible then there was an arkanoid type clone, Fireball 2? or something.. dont remember it.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Thanks for that...