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EMULATORS (4)

Psion

This is yet another computer that I can't remember having heard of (me being born dumb it seems). What to say? It works, (DOS based) don't know the original machine, so what can I say? Looks well done to me!

Frederic kindly supplied some information about the PSION:

Psion is a UK-based company, with several offices around the 
world (I'm aware of Psion, Inc in the US and Psion France), 
known to have produced palmtop computers
(they've done other things such as portable computers, modems)
The Psion 3a is the most successful palmtop computer they've 
produced. It is still available, still having a consequent 
part of the palmtops market (along with Apple's Newton and HP 
machines).
* Dimensions: 165x85x22 mm. It opens to reveal a keyboard & an 
  LCD screen (not backlit).
* Powered by 2 AA batteries (that give a 2 months of daily use)
* Backed up by a lithium battery.
* Processor: 16 bit NECV30H at 7,68Mhz
* Ram: The s3a comes with either 256Kb, 512Kb, 1meg or 2megs of 
  internal ram
* There are two slots for external ram cartridges called SSD, 
  coming into 2 models: Ram & Flash. Ram allows reads & writes 
  as the internal ram, Flash does not free delete or modified 
  data, reformatting is required to regain space.
* There is a port for external communications. It can handle 
  serial - up to 19200 - (mainly for a PC/ Mac link, a modem, 
  or a GPS system) or parallel (mainly for connecting a printer).
  The hardware connected to that port makes it serial or parallel.
* The OS is proprietary to Psion. It does multitask nicely. 
  It has been designed to support further evolutions of the 
  hardware (see my emulator comments)
* There is a built-in speaker and microphone.
* Screen: the s3a comes with a 480x160 with 3 colors 
  (black, white, gray). The previous machine (s3) had 240x80 
  b&w screen. Psion has presented two new machines recently 
  (this quarter). Siena is a low-cost s3a (with a 240x160 screen). 
  s3c has the same screen specs as s3a (seems that the US version 
  of s3c has a backlit screen)
* There are several built-in application: Agenda, Database, 
  Spreadsheet, Word processor, World times, Calculator.
* There is a programming language (called OPL) included in 
  the machine. It is close to Pascal or advanced Basic.
* There are thousands of commercial/shareware/freeware 
  applications available. Act! from Symantec, Autoroute Express 
  from Microsoft.
* Web sites for shareware/freewares are http://www.nwt.com
  (New World Technolgies) and http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/slitchfield/
  (Steve Litchfield's page)
* Psion's UK homesite is http://www.psion.com
* Psion's Faq is maintained by Daniel Pfund http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/8130/faq.htm
* There is a Uk bimonthly paper magazine describing the Psion world. More info
  at http://members.aol.com/palmtop/
* Psion is licensing its OS for other platforms.
* Rumours are that a TCP/IP stack will be available 'soon'. 
  There are already some offline Web browsers available. There 
  are many VT100 comms software, Qwk packets readers, a CompuServe 
  clone of WinCIM (ReadCIS) and a CIX (Uk BBBS) offline reader 
  (ReadCIX).
* Rumours are that Psion has jumped from s3a to s3c to avoid 
  the 'b' like beta confusion.

The emulator exists in various languages (Psions have been 
localized in many countries, including France & Germany).
It emulates a s3a, and follows the OS rules. That means 
the screen size can be modified (thus adapted to older or 
newer machines). The only limitations to that emulator are 
that it does not emulate sounds (both playing and recording) 
and does not work under Windows (even in a Dos window). 
There are no bigs I'm aware of. The emulator has been written 
by Psion, basically for developpers, but they do not support it.
AFAIK, there is a s3 emulator, but I've never used it. 
Do not have it actually ;)

There are some pages (that I know of) related to it:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/%7Elwmdcg/Psion/emulator.html and http://www.psioninc.com/3aemul.htm.
You can get a version of the emulator there or try a link: http://www.psioninc.com/apps/emulator.zip.

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Z 88

Z88 emulator (Cambridge Computers). Author: jeroen@login.iaf.nl.
(I don't know much about that one either... (sorry))
A version (Windows) of that emulator can be found at ftp://altair.komkon.com/pub/emul8/Z88/ or try via link:
The 200 KB file is newer and shorter. It contains the same file (shorter *.exe) as the other archive. I think it very suspect, that it is so short, therefor I provide a link to the other one as well... .

Well there is at least one other version of that emulator (DOS). Have a look at it via link:

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TO7 & TO7-70

TO7

There are many computers where I never expected that an emulator would be written for, but this is (so far) the only emulator I know, where I hadn't even heard of the computer which is emulated. I think it is a french computer. The people writing this emulator are French, so is the documentation.

Two versions of this emulator are available, one for Linux, one for DOS. The Linux version includes the source code.
The readme says the following:
        EMULATEUR

     Par Sylvain HUET
  (huet@eis.enac.dgac.fr)
          1995
You can get the emulator at its page http://pauillac.inria.fr/~shuet/hacks, or try a download via link:
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~shuet/hacks/emuto7.zip (DOS)
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~shuet/hacks/emuto7.tar.gz (Linux)

TO7-70

By the same author as the above emulator is this one. It's the big brother of TO7. Well I certainly don't know it any better than the one above. I like these to emulators very well noetheless, since full source is included with them and I do some experimenting using the m6809 code. It's not all that much documented, but that's ok with me, since documentation would surely have been in French, which would have helped in any way! But the code is done nearly the way I thought I'd do it, so I find it very interesting and usefull! Thanks for it!
The homepage (who's surprised) is the same as above. Have a look there or try a download via link:
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~shuet/hacks/emuto770.zip (DOS)
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~shuet/hacks/Emuto770.tar.gz (Linux)
If you are interested in getting programs for it, look at the homepage. The author put a small bundle of software on it (~500K).

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Vectrex (DOS)

There is now a pretty grown up release version of a VECTREX emulator. This one was written (is in the process of being written) by Keith Wilkins.
He set up a page for his emulator:
There you can also get the newest version of the emulator, or try via link:
The page is mirrowed at:

Have a look at follwing sites for infos about Vectrex

There is a vectrex FAQ available, you can look for a ASCII version at or A HTML version is available at the following link:

There are actually several others under developement (see the emulation FAQ), Rumors.
There also is a newsgroup related to vectrex:
rec.games.vectrex

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Intelivision

There is none out yet, just some rumors floating arround the newsgroups... 

By: Carl Mueller
To: Rick Vazquez
Re: Re: Intelivistion
St:
From: simon17@ix.netcom.com (Carl Mueller)
vazquezr@physics.ucla.edu (Rick Vazquez) wrote:
>Sorry if I spelled this wrong, but anyone think of a intelivistion emulator??
>Rick
Mine is 95% done, and contains many features aimed at the potential developer.
Carl
A page to get some infos about the real machine...:


There is a FAQ available for the Intellivision system at: http://www.videogames.org/IntellivisionStuff/IntellivisionFAQ.
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Gameboy

There is a gameboy emulator available, written by Marat Fayzullin, it is available for several OS's (if you want to call all of them OS's). At Marat's homepage you can find a page which tells you all about the technical stuff related to gameboys, here is a link: http://www.freeflight.com/fms/GameBoy
Also at his place you may get a gameboy.faq.

Have a guess where you can download various versions of his gameboy emulator (right, at his place...)
For the DOS version see below. Or have a look at the apropriate place yourself, at http://www.freeflight.com/fms/VGB.
NOTE the author prefers downloads from one of the various mirrors, for example ftp://altair.komkon.com/pub/GameBoy/VGB/.

Another very intersting page is Jeff Frohwein's GameBoy Page.
Amongst other things you'll find some other emulators, these emulators are more developer kind of emulators, if you are only interested in playing games you'll be more interested in the one mentioned above.
You can find the emulators at Jeff's page or try a download via link:
http://hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/pcboy001.arj (perhaps you must SHIFT download it...)
http://hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/gbsim.zip.
http://hiwaay.net/~jfrohwei/gameboy/hb0374.zip (another windows-gameboy emulator).

Of PCBOY I found an other version at http://www.algonet.se/~alexand (an emulation page).
Try via link: http://www.algonet.se/~alexand/pcboy002.zip (note: the filename suggest version 0.2, but it contains v0.3).


There is yet another linux version available, it is based on Marats emulator, but it has some improvements over the original (sound support for one thing (yet to come, but on the way...)). Have a look at it at: or try (as usual a download via link) (BTW it is written by Joshua M. Thompson)

NEW
There is now a OS/2 version available, I didn't test it (haven't installed BIG BLUE'S OS). The advertising newsgroup message:
The first version of Virtual Gameboy for OS/2 is now available from:

	ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/incoming/vgb206b1.zip
	ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/games/vgb206b1.zip (proposed)

Attached is the README.OS2 file.  Please note that the official support
email address is vgb2@joyce.eng.yale.edu.  ALSO, I WILL NOT RESPOND
TO ANY EMAILS ASKING FOR GAMEBOY IMAGES; they will be instantly
shredded.
Joe LoCicero


Marcel has an own page for his port now, have a look at it:
Try the follwowing link for new DOS versions:
The source for the newest DOS version is available too:


And another
Fondle is another emulator derived from Marats VGB. A Dos version is available, though still beta. It works pretty well allready, has some nice online configuration options and will support a link cable via serial interface!
Have a look at it homepage:
Or try a download via link:

Perhaps you are interested in a Gameboy loader for DOS. Some are available now, here is a link to a homepage of one of them...
http://chat.carleton.ca/~sabson/vgbl.html

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Enterprise

I have to confess that I'd really forgotten that this computer existed. Now that I found it's WWW-page I seem to remember it (articles in mags anyway). I've never seen one in action though. I thought I might have a look at the emulator, since there are also a couple of intersting games and other software available for it. I tried compiling it (Linux). All I got was a bunch of errors (pitty). Well it wasn't that bad, after a little bit of snooping at the sourcecode I reconed all that was wrong was the inclusion routine of the apropriate ROMs, so I fixed that and it compiled without errors. But under Linux (Xwindows) the event-handling doesn't seem to work correctly. Well since I've not much experience programming X-envirements I stopped snooping at that point.
I contacted the author and he told me that the emulation is a one-man-project and that every help he could get was welcomed. I neither have the time nor the needed know how, but I might ask for help via this page. If anyone is interested, please contact the author.

The homepage is at http://www.camme.ac.be/~cammejpm/enterprise.html.
There is the emulator, information and software for it available.
If you want to have a look at it, please go to the above page and download it from there.

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Super Nintendo (Famicom)

There is a WWW site called ANTHROX where you can get public domain ware for the SNES.
Super PasoFami
A Japanese working (not 100% finished) version of an emulator exists. This emulator was last published as Version 1.2e. (100% english version by the author)
This emulator is not to be publically distributed an longer. Dedicated 'SURFERS' might get lucky getting still it somewhere...
Well, there is a new veriosn 1.4a but several people demolished there windows directories with it. So, if you get it be carefull!

VSMC
There is another one brewing (in fact, this is brewing for a long time now). It is not as 'useable' as the one mentioned above, but perhaps you want a look at it anyway (no carts are working yet). It is called VSMC (Virtual Magicom). The official VSMC support site is at http://iceonline.com/home/thebrain/vsmc/vsmc.htm there is an email adress of the author thebrain@iceonline.com. The latest version can be downloaded at the above place. I won't provide a link for the author prides himself to release a new version a couple of times in a week (allways with a different name).
I don't know why , I just don't really like that emulator, perhaps my attitude will change one day, there are people who give this one better chances to do genuine emulation of the true thing. I just don't share their opinion. The author certainly puts some effort to it, but it looks to me like one of those would be hackers is doing a new demo, which never will win a contest. It's been around for years, it hasn't achieved all that much appart from a colorfull outfit and some stupid help function (which is quite annoying). The video output doesn't seem to have any synchronisation yet as it flickers like hell. Just moving the mouse over the screen gives you a clue that the update procedure isn't in any state that can be called efficient. I just wonder when he will start playing a tune while selecting a rom image... (which in turn won't work, for some obscure stuff isn't implemented yet...). I don't say I know much about emulator-programming, but I did program an own DOS window management system and I know it doesn't have to look like what he did. I'm not really a great programmer, so what I can achieve nearly everybody can achieve. Though I might appear blown up or stuffed or something (doesn't matter it's my page, isn't it?) but I could/can (did) do better than that... .

Well, as I might have guessed, the author didn't like what I wrote about his emulator. (I wouldn't like it either) Some things have changed since my writings above, but the overall consense still holds true. I haven't got anything against him personally. But recently he wants people to register? I still haven't found any game that works (if you don't call seeing some part of the title screen working). (And I probably have looked at the latest demo!) I haven't really read far enough to know what registering involves, I don't think he really wants any money, probably just curious how many people look at that programm. He is actually planing to add NES emulation to his emulator. Good thing, but wouldn't it be easier to do one thing at a time?
...
As time goes by... now the registration is removed again. I saw the title screen of Super Mario Brothers... perhaps there is hope yet?

SNES 96
(And another!)
The one I will write about now, doesn't work yet either. But first appearences may be decieving. Inspite of being a Windows (95) program I still like it better than the above mentioned. It utilizes Direct X (Version 2), so it is what one might call a 'modern' program. It comes with a few short demos (which didn't work for me!). Everyone interested might try it out. It can be found at its homepage:
It is supposed to run some games allready, I haven't gotten anything to run with it yet though perhaps someone has...
  • http://www.euronet.nl/users/jkoot/index.htm

    • I'm not providing a link as yet, since the program name is again bound to change with each version number...

    SNES Professional
    (And yet another!)
    There were allready 3 releases as I write this. This is now version v0.3b. It doesn't really accomplish all that much yet (like some others). Perhaps that will come in time. Check out the homepage for it:
    You can try a download via link:

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    Amstrad CPC

    I never had one. The sister of my former girlfriend used to have one though, so at least I've seen one live and in action. She only had a green monitor, so I allways associated something ancient with this computer. At Jess's Classic Donkey Kong Page (    http://http.earlham.edu/www/students/stanlje/dk/index.htm) he says that the best computer Donkey Kong version is (in his opinion) the CPC version. Well, being curious I downloaded that version and had a look at it (using some emulator, WITH color...), I must admitt that I was quite impressed. That Donkey Kong version really is good. I never thought that an Amstrad would be suited to run such a fine programm.

    There are four emulators that I know of:
    (Though Bernd mentions at least one other for PC computers, but I didn't locate it yet)
    There is a Amstrad FAQ available at ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/amstrad/.

    Software can be found at:

    Some other interesting pages you might want to check:

    Newsgroup:

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    Last Updated: 20. September 1996 Malban