MSX - Amstrad - Enterprise emulating a Zeddy?
Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:17 pm
As a heavily addicted emulator geek, I have to say that I admire any attempt of the programmers to adapt a system within another system! Of course nowadays the emulators of retro computers in any flavor and related utilities have evolved to high levels of functionality and accuracy, developed for PCs, Macs, Mobiles and other modern and powerful devices.
But IMHO, the most exciting moments in emulation history is when we see an emulator running on an old machine, such as the 8bit range of the past... The excellent Zeddy emulators (there are two of them) written by dr beep for the Spectrum belong to these magic moments. Of course we're not talking exactly about emulation here, as the CPUs between these two machines are the same, and only parts of the hardware need to be emulated. So the heaviest task for the processor to imitate another processor is spared in that case... The Spectrum is the genuine and direct descendant of the ZX81and really deserved to be able to successfully emulate its glorious ancestor! And it does it well, even though it's not the strongest among its Z80 competitors...
One thing I have noticed during all these years, there are Z80-based machines, like the Amstrad CPC family, the MSX 1/2 range and the mighty Enterprise 64/128, MUCH more advanced hardware-wise than a 48k Spectrum, also the Camputers Lynx 48/96/128, even the Grundy Newbrain and there has never been an attempt to emulate ZX81(and/or ZX80) on any of them...
I believe that this would be possible (and I assume relatively easy, even though I am not a programmer myself), it's just that no programmer had the interest of trying it so far...
There are already good software emulators for Spectrum running on Enterprise and MSX2 (and even Amstrad emulators for these machines), but no one has considered writing a Zeddy emulator for one or more of these platforms...
Nowadays, thanks to... emulators for the PCs etc., any programmer or just simple user can have the experience of using all the machines mentioned above, even though some of them are really obscure and difficult to find as real hardware. Also manuals and documentation for all of them can be found online, and there are sources of already finished emulators for the Zeddy on other platforms. So, more or less, (almost) everything needed by a bold programmer is available out there, to start developing ZX81 and ZX80 emulators for Z80-based machines who can handle the very limited features of these simple, minimalistic but yet genius home computing pioneers.
What is mostly needed to start is time (global lockdown circumstances help) and inspiration, and the latter is my purpose of opening this thread...
But IMHO, the most exciting moments in emulation history is when we see an emulator running on an old machine, such as the 8bit range of the past... The excellent Zeddy emulators (there are two of them) written by dr beep for the Spectrum belong to these magic moments. Of course we're not talking exactly about emulation here, as the CPUs between these two machines are the same, and only parts of the hardware need to be emulated. So the heaviest task for the processor to imitate another processor is spared in that case... The Spectrum is the genuine and direct descendant of the ZX81and really deserved to be able to successfully emulate its glorious ancestor! And it does it well, even though it's not the strongest among its Z80 competitors...
One thing I have noticed during all these years, there are Z80-based machines, like the Amstrad CPC family, the MSX 1/2 range and the mighty Enterprise 64/128, MUCH more advanced hardware-wise than a 48k Spectrum, also the Camputers Lynx 48/96/128, even the Grundy Newbrain and there has never been an attempt to emulate ZX81(and/or ZX80) on any of them...
I believe that this would be possible (and I assume relatively easy, even though I am not a programmer myself), it's just that no programmer had the interest of trying it so far...
There are already good software emulators for Spectrum running on Enterprise and MSX2 (and even Amstrad emulators for these machines), but no one has considered writing a Zeddy emulator for one or more of these platforms...
Nowadays, thanks to... emulators for the PCs etc., any programmer or just simple user can have the experience of using all the machines mentioned above, even though some of them are really obscure and difficult to find as real hardware. Also manuals and documentation for all of them can be found online, and there are sources of already finished emulators for the Zeddy on other platforms. So, more or less, (almost) everything needed by a bold programmer is available out there, to start developing ZX81 and ZX80 emulators for Z80-based machines who can handle the very limited features of these simple, minimalistic but yet genius home computing pioneers.
What is mostly needed to start is time (global lockdown circumstances help) and inspiration, and the latter is my purpose of opening this thread...