#emulators — Public Fediverse posts

@scalzi.com

Great. Now those gamers should get mad at open source emulator devs who make it hard to play old games without running code they gleefully sloppify.

@scalzi.com

Great. Now those gamers should get mad at open source emulator devs who make it hard to play old games without running code they gleefully sloppify.

Tiny #Emulators by @floooh

https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/

#Commodore
#C64
#ZXSpectrum
#Demoscene

Tiny #Emulators by @floooh

https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/

#Commodore
#C64
#ZXSpectrum
#Demoscene

My god.

There are $40 handheld consoles you can buy now pre-loaded with 20,000 games AND compatible with the best emulators.

This generation has no clue how lucky they are as gamers. I want one of these little doo dads.

#Gaming #VideoGames #Emulators #Technology

My god.

There are $40 handheld consoles you can buy now pre-loaded with 20,000 games AND compatible with the best emulators.

This generation has no clue how lucky they are as gamers. I want one of these little doo dads.

#Gaming #VideoGames #Emulators #Technology

Migration complete! :blobhaj_heartslove:

Now we're back in action on but on [email protected]. It won't surprise me if there are still a few std.mem.asBytes casts causing hidden problems. All uses will need a review. But it's working!

Quite happy with the migration. Nothing too complicated needed to be changed.

#Zig #PS1 #emulators #Dromaius

Migration complete! :blobhaj_heartslove:

Now we're back in action on but on [email protected]. It won't surprise me if there are still a few std.mem.asBytes casts causing hidden problems. All uses will need a review. But it's working!

Quite happy with the migration. Nothing too complicated needed to be changed.

#Zig #PS1 #emulators #Dromaius

Custom Macro Decoder in action!

The Italian Job (2001 PS1 Game) - Intro sequence. #PS1, #emulators

Custom Macro Decoder in action!

The Italian Job (2001 PS1 Game) - Intro sequence. #PS1, #emulators

Just spotted where the Macro Decoder (ala JPEG) was going wrong on my PS1 Emu.

I'm getting an image now which is fantastic. Awesome. Ok. Time to eat dinner and get to sleep.

#emulator #emulators #PS1

Just spotted where the Macro Decoder (ala JPEG) was going wrong on my PS1 Emu.

I'm getting an image now which is fantastic. Awesome. Ok. Time to eat dinner and get to sleep.

#emulator #emulators #PS1

While other studios might only use "modeled emulators" for their "plugins" - I've often preferred instead to use the real deal, whether tube, transformer or tape, whenever the coloration of these has been desired. While it's super rare that I do layback to tape, for this album of contemporary afrobeat I did last week, where the client name checked the likes of Fela Kuti, Antibalas, along with some albums I did for the likes of Budos Band, Sharon Jones, and St. Paul & The Broken Bones, as the vibe they were wanting for their digital mixes - recording their tracks first onto 1/4" 15ips 2-track analog reel via my Otari MX5050-B2 has been just the thing to bring out some sweet sounding grime, saturation & punch that works perfectly for their goals. Shout out to local South Austin tech Tim Allen for getting this machine purring recently. And for any out there looking for a similar funkification of their mixes, give me a holla.

While other studios might only use "modeled emulators" for their "plugins" - I've often preferred instead to use the real deal, whether tube, transformer or tape, whenever the coloration of these has been desired. While it's super rare that I do layback to tape, for this album of contemporary afrobeat I did last week, where the client name checked the likes of Fela Kuti, Antibalas, along with some albums I did for the likes of Budos Band, Sharon Jones, and St. Paul & The Broken Bones, as the vibe they were wanting for their digital mixes - recording their tracks first onto 1/4" 15ips 2-track analog reel via my Otari MX5050-B2 has been just the thing to bring out some sweet sounding grime, saturation & punch that works perfectly for their goals. Shout out to local South Austin tech Tim Allen for getting this machine purring recently. And for any out there looking for a similar funkification of their mixes, give me a holla.

OH
Ma
Gawd…

the rabbit hole….

it is enormous….
#emulators
#os #atari #weee

OH
Ma
Gawd…

the rabbit hole….

it is enormous….
#emulators
#os #atari #weee

Ars Technica: “Super ZSNES” is a stab at a modern SNES emulator from the original developers. “ZSNES developed rapidly (alongside the contemporary, competing Snes9x project) throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s. Updates slowed after the original creators left the project, and new releases ceased entirely around 2007. But a successor to ZSNES has arrived.”

Ars Technica: “Super ZSNES” is a stab at a modern SNES emulator from the original developers. “ZSNES developed rapidly (alongside the contemporary, competing Snes9x project) throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s. Updates slowed after the original creators left the project, and new releases ceased entirely around 2007. But a successor to ZSNES has arrived.”

Complete #BIOS and #firmware packs for #RetroArch, #Batocera, #Recalbox, #Lakka, #RetroPie, #EmuDeck, #RetroBat, #RetroDECK, #RomM. Verified checksums, 6700+ files, 300+ #emulators profiled from source code.

🔗 https://abdess.github.io/retrobios/

#Emulacion #Retro #Emuladores #Videojuegos #Juegos #Retrogaming #RetroBios

Complete #BIOS and #firmware packs for #RetroArch, #Batocera, #Recalbox, #Lakka, #RetroPie, #EmuDeck, #RetroBat, #RetroDECK, #RomM. Verified checksums, 6700+ files, 300+ #emulators profiled from source code.

🔗 https://abdess.github.io/retrobios/

#Emulacion #Retro #Emuladores #Videojuegos #Juegos #Retrogaming #RetroBios

What Can You Run on a 1960s Univac? Anything You’re Willing To Wait For!

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/04/18/what-can-you-run-on-a-1960s-univac-anything-youre-willing-to-wait-for/

What Can You Run on a 1960s Univac? Anything You’re Willing To Wait For!

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/04/18/what-can-you-run-on-a-1960s-univac-anything-youre-willing-to-wait-for/

🙄 Oh, look! Yet another #wannabe #AWS emulator on #GitHub, because clearly, the world was lacking in half-baked #cloud #computing clones. This one's called 'Hiraeth'—because nothing says "I'm serious about emulating AWS" quite like a word that sounds like a sneeze. 🤧
https://github.com/SethPyle376/hiraeth #Hiraeth #emulators #tech #humor #HackerNews #ngated

🙄 Oh, look! Yet another #wannabe #AWS emulator on #GitHub, because clearly, the world was lacking in half-baked #cloud #computing clones. This one's called 'Hiraeth'—because nothing says "I'm serious about emulating AWS" quite like a word that sounds like a sneeze. 🤧
https://github.com/SethPyle376/hiraeth #Hiraeth #emulators #tech #humor #HackerNews #ngated

I wonder how typical it is to end up in an emulator inside an emulator situation.

For me that's weekly since SheepShaver utilises the internal Mac OS 68k emulator to run 68k code on PowerPC.

There are at least two emulator exclusives for DOS where other platforms don't have as good emulators for these platforms:

1. MyZ80 for CP/M
2. SIBO emulator for Psion's EPOC16 (Series 3, etc.)

#Emulation #Emulators #Emulator

I wonder how typical it is to end up in an emulator inside an emulator situation.

For me that's weekly since SheepShaver utilises the internal Mac OS 68k emulator to run 68k code on PowerPC.

There are at least two emulator exclusives for DOS where other platforms don't have as good emulators for these platforms:

1. MyZ80 for CP/M
2. SIBO emulator for Psion's EPOC16 (Series 3, etc.)

#Emulation #Emulators #Emulator

PS3 emulator RPCS3 announces SPU breakthrough https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/04/the-ps3-emulator-rpcs3-announces-a-huge-new-spu-breakthrough-set-to-benefit-all-games

#emulation #PS3 #Playstation3 #RPCS3 #gaming #emulators

PS3 emulator RPCS3 announces SPU breakthrough https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/04/the-ps3-emulator-rpcs3-announces-a-huge-new-spu-breakthrough-set-to-benefit-all-games

#emulation #PS3 #Playstation3 #RPCS3 #gaming #emulators

While I haven't had much time to work on my PS1 Emulator recently, thanks to University.

I did make a little bit more progress on MDec video decoder and 24-bit display.

Below is the output of 24-bit fake fill image, which depends on 4 DMAs to fire in the right order (CD-ROM out, MDec in/out, GPU in) and process the correct number of bytes at a time.

In theory I should be able to implement the actual block decoder (semi-done) and remove the test rainbow fill for the decoded video frame.

We'll see.

#emulator #emulators #PS1 #Playstation1

While I haven't had much time to work on my PS1 Emulator recently, thanks to University.

I did make a little bit more progress on MDec video decoder and 24-bit display.

Below is the output of 24-bit fake fill image, which depends on 4 DMAs to fire in the right order (CD-ROM out, MDec in/out, GPU in) and process the correct number of bytes at a time.

In theory I should be able to implement the actual block decoder (semi-done) and remove the test rainbow fill for the decoded video frame.

We'll see.

#emulator #emulators #PS1 #Playstation1

I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.

If anyone is bored enough to be curious!

31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.

2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.

19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.

Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.

9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.

BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.

It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.

MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.

(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P

#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism

I am happy with this DECSystem-10 MUD system for now; it's been a 35-year task.

If anyone is bored enough to be curious!

31 January 1991: Essex University's DECSystem-10 closes, meaning that MIST and ROCK, and the dodgy version of MUD we had on there, had to close. I had a mostly working VMS system that would run it with some extra programming, but I'd already sent out AberMUD to Vijay, and he'd sent it out to the world, and TinyMUDs were becoming common. MIST was losing its captive audience, and it needed that level of addiction and co-dependence to run, so I decided to let it die in its prime, rather than become a sad old relic that nobody played.

2003 and the next 20 years: I decided to build a TOPS-10 system on a VMS machine and install MIST/MUD and ROCK. Got quite a long way, and then discovered there was no BCPL compiler existing anywhere in the known world. A few years later, Richard Bartle told me that Paul Allen (I think) had found one. So this became possible, and Quentin (dot-co-dot-uk) took a great stab at it with some really old code, and Viktor Toth had BL running, so I figured that was enough. Sometime in this period, Bletchley Park got something that looked like a PDP-10, and they suggested that I go and put MUD onto it for the museum. It wasn't a PDP-10, but I did look into putting it onto a VAX for a while, but the management of Bletchley, as it turned into The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), was getting more corporate and boring, so I gave up bothering.

19th Feb to 22nd Feb, 2026: I decided to build a PRIMOS machine on a Simh emulator for no apparent reason. It went fairly smoothly, so I wondered again about a DEC-10. I was missing TOPS-10 anyway, so why not? Proof of concept, setting up some test systems, seeing where TOPS-10 emulators were at these days and seeing how far Quentin had really got and how much extra work was needed. Realised I am going to have to start from scratch, mostly, using a prebuilt Steuben distro of TOPS-10 7.03 as the base.

Took a couple of weeks off to ponder whether the rest was worth it, but decided my $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription may as well pay for itself with background research, so I decided to go ahead.

9th March 9 to 18th March, 2026: A long sprint, and I mostly got it all working. 92 hours of concentrated swearing and about 15 hours of destroying the planet with GPT Deep Research mode later (*), after at least 2 false starts and complete wipes. I got a system I am relatively happy with. Somewhere in there is about 4 hours of relearning TECO and fighting with getting ROCK working on code it was never meant to work on. There's still more to do, but that's just maintenance now.

BUT I FOUND ROCK! I thought it was lost forever. Somehow, that's my major victory in all this. Building the setup was hard, tedious, and very frustrating work. It probably did need somebody who knew a lot about both DEC and Unix systems management, and the MUD engine, to guide it, but it was still mostly a matter of putting together things that already existed and forcing them to work together. ROCK, though, I genuinely thought was 100% lost.

It's taken a hundred plus concentrated hours, two new dedicated hosts, a small town's water supply, and probably a few megawatts of power in the background. But this is the final re-creation of the systems I closed at the start of the 1990s.

MIST (and MUD and ROCK) will still probably end up as relics that nobody properly plays, but this project is not pretending to be anything other than an interesting throwback and museum piece now, which, 35 years after I closed it down, seems a fitting end. It also means I can resurrect Duncan Rogerson's arch-wizard, and that seems right, somehow. I will leave it up and running now.

(*) Since someone whined about my use of GPT - I could not have mentioned it, but I did because, for some tasks like this one, it saved me hundreds of hours and a lot of Googling. If I have to pick (which I do!) I'd rather use GPT than Google still. One of the useful things you can do with Deep Research is to give it a topic you want to aggregate information on (like ACCESS.USR usage) and send it away to make a summary PDF of the key points of what's useful, but triple-checked and sourced. I have read the Original TOPS-10 manuals that are wonderfully hosted on @bitsavers many times, I could knock up a perfect ACCESS.USR in a drunken stupor, whilst half asleep once, but these days I barely remember the 3-part octal protections, so I am happy to have a reference I don't need to read 10 parts of 3 different manuals to make. That's why I use AI, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. Since I work in AI Ethics and actually put into practice what I preach, I am comfortable with my use of AI, and I always disclose it :P

#history #digital #retrogaming #retrocomputing #games #mud #muds #mist #rock #computers #emulation #emulators #vms #tops10 #museum #history #bletchleypark #simh #essex #uk #computinghistory #36bit #engineering #Linux #Security #TNMOC #blog #ADHD #Autism

The podium sequence always brings a small smile to my face. :blobcat_enjoy:

Crash Team Racing on my PS1 emulator.

#emulator #emulators #PS1 #CTR

The podium sequence always brings a small smile to my face. :blobcat_enjoy:

Crash Team Racing on my PS1 emulator.

#emulator #emulators #PS1 #CTR