Bbc Micro Emulator

[DoubleDash]

First off, HI everyone! I have been following the forums now for about 3 years and have read so many posts that I feel like I almost know some of you guys. Digested a lot of knowledge in that time, learnt loads. Got my pandy 2nd Feb, surreal experience after waiting for so long, as many of you will know! My first computer was a sinclair ZX80, I was not even a teen then! Anyway, to out myself from this lengthy period of lurking (no better place than the original gp32x forum eh?) I would like to know why there appears to be no BBC micro emulator for the pandora. I don´t remember reading any posts about one, and did not find anything when searching, have I missed it in the emulators download section? Please can someone correct me if I am wrong and point me in the right direction. It was that excellent implementation of Chuckie Egg that I downloaded last week that got me wondering.

Thanks guys

[posted from pandora]

 

[Prometheus]

I'd love to know this, too. Although to my knowledge, there isn't one yet - unless I've missed it. :lol:

 

[DoubleDash]

I'd love to know this, too. Although to my knowledge, there isn't one yet - unless I've missed it. :lol:

Hi Prometheus (one of the hardcore forum posters for sure...read many of your informative posts).

It's certainly weird that such a popular system, and one based on a meagre 6502 1mhz chip (albeit with some supporting chips for graphics and music) is not emulated yet except on PC platform. Maybe another trip to the PC emulator site is required, perhaps it's not open source or something?

 

[Prometheus]

I'm pretty sure there is at least one open source one (didn't the GP2X have a port? I forget - I missed quite a bit of the GP2X's lifespan due to having to sell mine). BeebEm is the one I'm thinking of - it's open source under the GNU GPL (2.0).

It might be worth dropping a thread about it in the "Cool ideas and other wishes" section, as I notice that it doesn't seem to have been mentioned there, and it isn't mentioned on the Port Requests wiki page, either.

If it gets ported, that of course means that playing Granny's Garden would become quite risky - if the witch can send you home at once, then your Pandora's going to end up being left somewhere.

(Also, haha, thankyou. I'm glad my posts have proven informative. )

EDIT: Oops, the GP2X had a port of B-EM, not BeebEm, and B-EM *is* on the Port Requests wiki page.

 

[snurty]

There is an excellent emulator on the GP2X - beebem ported by Fru.T.Bunn.

It does work through GINGE but the sound isnt perfect.

I am sure in a post many moons ago fru said he would port when he had received his pandora. But that was a long time ago.

Obviously the version through GINGE doesnt recognise the keyboard so none of those text adventures.

 

[TitanUranus]

Unless I'm mistaken, there was even a BBC micro emulator available on the Gameboy Advance. I'm sure I once tried Elite using my flashcart, but I hardly ever used my GBA (which I bought at a bootsale for £5 about 7/8 years ago) cause it wasn't backlit which was a PITA. I still have the cart somewhere, and may even have a copy if someone wished to try it (though running an emulator through an emulator is not ideal). I think there was a prog that came with the emulator to bind it and game roms to a *.gba file. I'll plug in my ancient HDD and do a search, see if I have the bind utility if you'd want to try it out.

Now I think on it, I'm sure I have it somewhere, cause I did once try running it on the Wiz GBA emu, which didn't work. I'll get back to you if I find it.

EDIT: Just found the link for it, though the original site no longer exists, I just checked and you can download the file using waybackmachine, here you go if you fancy trying it:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090829051935/http://geocities.com/quirky_2k1/emulation/

 

[DoubleDash]

Unless I'm mistaken, there was even a BBC micro emulator available on the Gameboy Advance. I'm sure I once tried Elite using my flashcart, but I hardly ever used my GBA (which I bought at a bootsale for £5 about 7/8 years ago) cause it wasn't backlit which was a PITA. I still have the cart somewhere, and may even have a copy if someone wished to try it (though running an emulator through an emulator is not ideal). I think there was a prog that came with the emulator to bind it and game roms to a *.gba file. I'll plug in my ancient HDD and do a search, see if I have the bind utility if you'd want to try it out.

Now I think on it, I'm sure I have it somewhere, cause I did once try running it on the Wiz GBA emu, which didn't work. I'll get back to you if I find it.

EDIT: Just found the link for it, though the original site no longer exists, I just checked and you can download the file using waybackmachine, here you go if you fancy trying it:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090829051935/http://geocities.com/quirky_2k1/emulation/

Thanks TitanUranus for taking the time to dig this up.

Looks like this might need some work at least on optimisation, as the site mentions that the speed isn't 100%, and I'm assuming that was the PC version. Didn't look at build libraries either, and it does not look like things are being maintained from dates posted on site.

 

[TitanUranus]

Thanks TitanUranus for taking the time to dig this up.

No problem. It might run fullspeed on the Pandora, if you can get it to work. As far as I'm aware, it was only ever released on the GBA (and the cpu on that was very low spec), and when I tried it on that I don't remember it seeming slow - but that was a long time ago and I never played with it much. As long as it runs through an emulator (virtualboy advance maybe?) it would most likely be fullspeed. Perhaps someone may even be able to port it to the Pandora, since I noticed the sourcecode is available through archive.org as well.

Hope you manage to get a good BBC emulator - it's annoying when you know something is technically possible but not available. I only ever used the BBC at school, and remember getting into trouble on last day of term one time when a teacher overheard me say "shit" during a game of Defender... if she could only hear me now, she'd have a heart attack!

 

[DoubleDash]

Thanks TitanUranus for taking the time to dig this up.

No problem. It might run fullspeed on the Pandora, if you can get it to work. As far as I'm aware, it was only ever released on the GBA (and the cpu on that was very low spec), and when I tried it on that I don't remember it seeming slow - but that was a long time ago and I never played with it much. As long as it runs through an emulator (virtualboy advance maybe?) it would most likely be fullspeed. Perhaps someone may even be able to port it to the Pandora, since I noticed the sourcecode is available through archive.org as well.

Hope you manage to get a good BBC emulator - it's annoying when you know something is technically possible but not available. I only ever used the BBC at school, and remember getting into trouble on last day of term one time when a teacher overheard me say "shit" during a game of Defender... if she could only hear me now, she'd have a heart attack!

It will happen eventually. Hopefully the port does not present too many issues.

I think your old teacher would spontaneously combust if she saw your avatar

 

[cosam]

I just tried compiling BeebEm to test out a new tool chain installation and it builds OK. No idea if it works yet and it'll certainly need some Pandorafication, but it's a start.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Good stuff - keep us posted!

 

[DoubleDash]

+1

 

[Stainy]

Whats the status here ? would love to know

 

[sswam]

Panora BeebEm is working nice now, sorry for the long delay!
 
http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=beebem-15428