• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

If a 286 can emulate a z80 or C64 why no console love?

R

rmay635703

Veteran Member
Joined
May 29, 2003
Messages
627
Location
Wisconsin
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/warajevo/Features.html

Something I’ve often wondered ever since I was a teen and I played an emulated NES game on an old 386sx in 1995 is why were there no antique console emulators made for equally antique 16 bit PCs?

The GameBoy was emulated in 1990 on the Amiga with its 8080 like processor
But the superior z80 Spectrum Pc is emulated on a lowly 286,

Anyone ever work on a 16 bit dos Atari 2600 emulator for example?

This has always perplexed me.

Thanks
 
Gameboy had an 8080 like processor?

I get the impression you think of most machines working the way things like PC, XT, AT/clones prior to modern graphics cards, or like the PET or Apple ][, where the CPU does all the work. So, emulation on a faster processor isn't so difficult.

But in a lot of other machines, Atari VCS or say Commodore 64 or Amiga, there is a lot more going on in those machines than what just the CPU does.

Were you really playing a game in an emulator, or was the game ported? That is a huge difference.
 
Nes on a 386sx, I can do that right now if I dust off my trusty compaq

My first computer was a Tandy 1000 RLX , 286xt class at 10mhz, I could emulate a c64 from what I remember is a funny cable and some such, I don’t have all the parts or a working hd for it anymore but would like to restore it.

GameBoy is indeed an 8080 behind the scenes with a couple z80 instructions which seems would make it easier to emulate than say a c64 or XX but what do I know.
 
I have never seen reasonable C64 emulation on a machine like that. My A2000 with a 68060 @50Mhz can't emulate a C64 at full speed, if memory serves.

In any case, the Atari VCS should be rather difficult to emulate, I expect.
 
Last edited:
The C64 is notoriously difficult to emulate thanks to the semi-analog synth chip (SID) and the way its video modes are tied up in extremely tight raster timing. VICE has a currently maintained DOS port but my P233MMX struggles hard with it. CCS64's old DOS version works better but isn't very accurate. You could probably emulate a *6502* on a 386 reasonably well but that's still a long way off from an actual C64.

I have had good luck emulating simpler systems like the Game Gear / Master System on a 5x86/100. A Z80 emulator that runs CP/M should be no sweat on a 286+ (and probably already exists??) but the horsepower needs ramp up like crazy when there are custom chipsets & sophisticated sound/graphics hardware to deal with.
 
Indeed, there is MYZ80 for DOS, which runs CP/M on an emulated Z80 on any x86 PC. Much easier to emulate a CPU than a console's special hardware, and most software you would want to run doesn't mind if the Z80 emulation is slow.

CPUs were emulated on much older machines. For instance, the version of BASIC that Microsoft wrote for the Altair was done on an emulation of the Intel 8080 on one of Harvard's big systems, in the mid 70's.
 
rmay635703 said:
Nes on a 386sx, I can do that right now if I dust off my trusty compaq
Click to expand...

No, I think your memories are incorrect. No 386sx can emulate an NES system at full speed, there's too much going on behind the scenes. You were likely playing a game ported from the NES on your 386. (Or, your 386sx was really a 486dx, which did indeed have just enough power to emulate an NES.)

Emulating a system is more than just the CPU; you have to emulate the sound hardware and graphics hardware, for starters. That can take up just as much CPU time, if not more.

My first computer was a Tandy 1000 RLX , 286xt class at 10mhz, I could emulate a c64 from what I remember is a funny cable and some such,
Click to expand...

Are you sure you're not confusing emulation with "I could read and write C64 disks using a parallel-port cable" (which was a real thing)?
 
Trixter said:
No, I think your memories are incorrect. No 386sx can emulate an NES system at full speed, there's too much going on behind the scenes. You were likely playing a game ported from the NES on your 386. (Or, your 386sx was really a 486dx, which did indeed have just enough power to emulate an NES.)
Click to expand...

Nesticle supposedly could :)
 
I have a lot of emulator loaded on my dos pc's:

Nesticle is the first (complete) nes emulator and the fastest programed in C i belive. Running in pure dos you can get a minimal playable framerate on a 486dx4 100. Considering that this emulator cut a lot of corners to do this.

NO$GMB its the fastest and most optimized gameboy emulator there its written in pure assembler by a very talented programed during years. Have optimized binary versions for 8086 80286 80386 etc and you only get an acceptable framerate on 386dx having all the (cut corners) options enabled.

ZX spectrum emulators will crawl on anything less than 286 16mhz try running a game on something less you will get 5 fps.
 
I had an Atari 8-bit computer series (400/800/XL/XE) emulator for the Atari ST (68000 @ 8 MHz). It seemed to work fine, although I didn't test it thoroughly to check if it was emulating at full speed.

And of course the Atari ST could emulate a Mac Plus, if you had a copy of the ROMs...
 
vwestlife said:
I had an Atari 8-bit computer series (400/800/XL/XE) emulator for the Atari ST (68000 @ 8 MHz). It seemed to work fine, although I didn't test it thoroughly to check if it was emulating at full speed.

And of course the Atari ST could emulate a Mac Plus, if you had a copy of the ROMs...
Click to expand...

STXF is nice emulator but si only good to run basic and not much more.

SpectreGCR is very cool and complete run even faster than the real 128k mac i have it on my Atari STE, but the magic is that is the same CPUon booth machines there very little to emulate you almost are running the os on the Atari ST
 
I used C64S when I had to use a DOS system regularly. It wasn't happy running on a 386, and I guarantee it would choke on a 286. And that was a highly optimized emulator that cut a lot of corners for speed.

CCS64, which was the gold standard for many years, wasn't useable on anything less than a Pentium, really.
 
I think there were some VERY early emulators that worked on 386 SX's - there's a lot of stuff that's been lost to the sands of the internet, like A26 (which evolved into Z26) which was the only 2600 emulator that worked decently on a 486. I seem to recall some pre-NESticle emulator that worked but I can't remember what that was. It was a very very long time ago.

That said Super Mario Bros. would run on almost ANY NES emulator because that's like, one of the games most people would get an emulator to play initially, even the partial emulators, which most of the early ones had no sound, no scaling, some no game port support (keyboard only, and you could not map the keys), and you had to load the game by typing "NESEMU.EXE SMB.NES /F:5 /K to actually get it to run on your ancient 1st gen 32-bit x86 PC.
 
vwestlife said:
And of course the Atari ST could emulate a Mac Plus, if you had a copy of the ROMs...
Click to expand...

Yes, but that was mostly emulation of the Mac environment, not complete architecture emulation. They used the same CPU.

Since the ST ran at 8 MHz, and the Mac at 7.16 MHz, I remember some reports of Mac software running slightly faster on the Atari ST.
 
The first wave of emulators would run on a 486, barely.

A26
Activision Atari Action Pack (for Windows) was an emulator, you could hack it and run other ROMs.
DASARCADE/SPARCADE (This was just sorcery in 1995).
Pre-MAME stuff, and maybe early MAME
C64S
Nesticle/Genecyst did run on 486, as I recall. It's possible it may have taken Socket 7 to do it.
I remember the Nintendo64 emulator ran 100% smooth on P150 with a Voodoo 1 card. :)

There were C64 emulators for stock Amiga, they didn't run great, but did run.
There was a great Apple II emulator for stock Amiga (Apple2000).

There were ST and Mac emulators for Amiga because you could cheat and run the real code and just use traps to translate the hardware bits. They were 1:1 with the real machines, or even better in some cases.
 
Last edited:
Trixter said:
Since the ST ran at 8 MHz, and the Mac at 7.16 MHz, I remember some reports of Mac software running slightly faster on the Atari ST.
Click to expand...

The classic Macs actually run at 7.8336 MHz (often rounded up to "8 MHz" or down to "7.8 MHz"). Thus the Atari ST, which runs at pretty much exactly 8 MHz (it varies between 8.01 and 8.05 MHz depending on model and NTSC vs. PAL) is only very slightly faster.

It's the 68000 Amigas which run at 7.16 MHz (NTSC; some sources incorrectly state 7.14 MHz) or 7.09 MHz (PAL).
 
rittwage said:
There was a great Apple II emulator for stock Amiga (Apple2000).
Click to expand...

There was an incomplete-but-still-functional Apple II for the PC called APL2EM by Randy Spurlock that, amazingly, had the minimum requirements of a 286 with CGA. It also came out during the Apple IIe's life; I remember seeing it first in 1990, although history shows it was worked on first in January 1988! A quick look at the source shows that it could easily be adapted to run on an 8086 system, although the speed would likely be 10x slower than a real Apple II.

vwestlife said:
The classic Macs actually run at 7.8336 MHz (often rounded up to "8 MHz" or down to "7.8 MHz"). Thus the Atari ST, which runs at pretty much exactly 8 MHz (it varies between 8.01 and 8.05 MHz depending on model and NTSC vs. PAL) is only very slightly faster. It's the 68000 Amigas which run at 7.16 MHz (NTSC; some sources incorrectly state 7.14 MHz) or 7.09 MHz (PAL).
Click to expand...

I stand corrected! It's possible I read reports from Atari ST fanboys (IIRC I read that info on Usenet in the early 90s).
 
Activision Atari Action Pack (for Windows) was an emulator, you could hack it and run other ROMs.
Click to expand...

So was their C64 pack. The emulator they included (I think Digital Eclipse wrote both the VCS and the C64 emulators) wasn't any great shakes; the real reason to buy it was the copy-protection-stripped .d64s they included so you could play them on something better, and completely legally to boot even if you didn't have the original games.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top