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If I were to write an emulator, what old system should I pick? I've never written one before and I don't know a lot about low level CPU stuff. Probably a video-

If I were to write an emulator, what old system should I pick? I've never written one before and I don't know a lot about low level CPU stuff. Probably a video-game system would the most rewarding rather than some generic system/cpu like a PDP or the 8086... you could actually play a game with it in the end.

userbinator 4y ago
A GameBoy is the obvious answer here, but the IBM PC (the 5150, the original one) is another good choice if you want to have a lot of software to try it with.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Is a gameboy pretty basic? This tooling seems pretty cool.
  - karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    I've been slowly working on my GB emulator for a couple of months now. There's a lot of resources around, which is good. Unfortunately there are also parts that are ambiguous and somewhat poorly documented, which has caused a lot of misery. I had to resort to looking up other people's implementations, and it's not a very satisfying way to develop. My one advice would be not to skip any parts in the implementation ("I just skip the cpu timing so I can have something on the screen quickly"), as many things are interconnected and changing things becomes very difficult later on. All in all it's a really fun project and at least I learned a ton. My original motivation was to learn Rust, but it turns out that was the easiest part.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Chip-8 is a great start, it was a virtual machine used for Atari 2600 style games: https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator/ https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator/ Basic but still a good first step.
- azinman2 4y ago
  Thanks!
- veganjay 4y ago
  Chip-8 is a great place to start. It is easier to program than the Atari 2600, and is also monochrome. And the guide mentioned is an excellent resource.
stevekemp 4y ago
Most people will recommend the CHIP-8 system, because it is simple to handle - very simple graphics, very simple CPU, and a decent range of games to play with. If you're thinking "old school" then your choices are NES, Gameboy, and 8080. Personally I wrote an 8086 emulator, to play space-invaders. 8080 is a reasonably simple system, without horribly complicated graphics or MMU addons. Interrupts were hard to debug, but otherwise it's a very well documented system with lots of directions you can go in afterwards - emulate DOS, and Hercules? Emulate CP/M? Emulate other games? Or start looking into running Windows even!

userbinator 4y ago

A GameBoy is the obvious answer here, but the IBM PC (the 5150, the original one) is another good choice if you want to have a lot of software to try it with.

azinman2 4y ago
Is a gameboy pretty basic? This tooling seems pretty cool.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  I've been slowly working on my GB emulator for a couple of months now. There's a lot of resources around, which is good. Unfortunately there are also parts that are ambiguous and somewhat poorly documented, which has caused a lot of misery. I had to resort to looking up other people's implementations, and it's not a very satisfying way to develop. My one advice would be not to skip any parts in the implementation ("I just skip the cpu timing so I can have something on the screen quickly"), as many things are interconnected and changing things becomes very difficult later on. All in all it's a really fun project and at least I learned a ton. My original motivation was to learn Rust, but it turns out that was the easiest part.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Chip-8 is a great start, it was a virtual machine used for Atari 2600 style games: https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator/ https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator/ Basic but still a good first step.

azinman2 4y ago
Thanks!
veganjay 4y ago
Chip-8 is a great place to start. It is easier to program than the Atari 2600, and is also monochrome. And the guide mentioned is an excellent resource.

stevekemp 4y ago

Most people will recommend the CHIP-8 system, because it is simple to handle - very simple graphics, very simple CPU, and a decent range of games to play with. If you're thinking "old school" then your choices are NES, Gameboy, and 8080. Personally I wrote an 8086 emulator, to play space-invaders. 8080 is a reasonably simple system, without horribly complicated graphics or MMU addons. Interrupts were hard to debug, but otherwise it's a very well documented system with lots of directions you can go in afterwards - emulate DOS, and Hercules? Emulate CP/M? Emulate other games? Or start looking into running Windows even!