Archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page from 1999 to 2024 about emulator, page 2 / 17





Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium v1.6 by Longshot (July 2023)

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Longshot has released version 1.6 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (July 2023) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

It is possible to check if an emulator is good with the SHAKER tests by Longshot. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.




ZEsarUX X, an Amstrad CPC and PCW emulator (other computers too)

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ZEsarUX X (10 years) is a multi platform emulator, Amstrad CPC and PCW (and many others). You can compile the unix sources directly or get a binary for :

  • linux 32/64 bits
  • Mac OS X
  • Windows
  • Raspberry pi (raspbian)





WIP Ace Hacked by Roudoudou, an Amstrad CPC emulator for Linux, MacOS and Windows

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L'émulateur Amstrad CPC ACE par Offset n'est disponible que pour MorphOS et Haiku. Il a une fonctionnalité fort intéressante par rapport à d'autres émulateurs Amstrad CPC : avoir un système de plugin pour rajouter le support pour des extensions matérielles.

Mais bientôt avec Ace Hacked par Roudoudou, il sera disponible pour Linux, MacOS et Windows !



Joyce v2.4.2 by John Elliott, an Amstrad PCW emulator (May 2023)

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The Amstrad PCW emulator Joyce v2.4.2 by John Elliott already available for unix, windows and MacOS.

There is also a development version 2.5.1 (February 2023)




Amspirit v0.845b, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78

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A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.




Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium v1.4 by Longshot

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Longshot has released version 1.4 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

It is possible to check if an emulator is good with the SHAKER tests by Longshot. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.



UniDOS v1.50 by Offset, and plugin updates for the ACE emulator

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These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

Unidos v1.50 is a major release with a lot of visible and invisible modifications. All DOS nodes were also updated. For the end user, the most notable update is the full time and date support as well as new RSX. For the developers, new BIOS and node API came up.

Also, since the release of the ACE Amstrad CPC emulator in v1.25, several plugins were upgraded : DK'Tronics speech synthesizer, Techni-Musique and SSA-1 speech, Willy, Nova, Amdrum, Mirage Image, MultiPlay and the PlayCity, Albireo.



CPCEC GTK by NoRecess, a linux Amstrad CPC(+) emulator

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CPCEC GTK by NoRecess is an Amstrad CPC(+) emulator under linux, a fork of CPCEC by CNGSoft. Its features are turned especially for people who develop Amstrad CPC software under linux.



Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium v1.3 by Longshot and the AMSpiriT emulator by Dmanu78

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Longshot has released version 1.3 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium (beware, the english version isn't definitive, only the french one is actually) which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

As seen on CPCRulez, the AMSpiriT emulator by Dmanu78 is respecting by a great margin the SHAKER tests by Longshot than other emulators. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.

So AMSpiriT is better especially if you like to see Amstrad CPC demos, and can't be bad either for games. I don't have the time to test extensively all Amstrad CPC games, but for sure I will take time during the Benediction Coding Party #2 to use it.



Amspirit v0.704b, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78

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A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Dmanu78 is available on the System.CFG forum for windows. There is a 32 and 64bit version. Reading all the thread is a good idea if you didnt read it already as it's a complete genesis of this emulator.

The thread on CPCWiki is here.



ZCN 1.4, CP/M for the Amstrad Notepad NC100, NC150 and NC200 by Russell Marks

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After having released a new version of his Amstrad Notepad NC100, NC150 and NC200 emulator, Russell Marks has just released a new version of his version of CP/M for these same machines : ZCN 1.4, the new features are :

  • NC150 support, with a custom zcn150.bin kernel. As with the NC200, this is not as complete as the NC100 support. Also, it has only been tested under emulation
  • Internal ramdisk support on NC200 and NC150, so you can use ZCN on them without a memory card (to some limited degree). This is really only intended to be used if you lack a memory card - you switch between memory card mode and ramdisk mode using the "ramd" command
  • Improved keyboard layout support via keyb, supporting Danish, French, German, Italian, Swedish, and US keyboard layouts, in addition to the old UK and Dvorak. All supported keyboard layouts can be used on any NC model
  • Preinstalled memory card images for NC100/NC150/NC200. These are intended for use with emulators like nc100em/MAME/RC2014, but they should also work on the real thing if you have the means to write them correctly. (Serial link installs are still supported, of course.)
  • Support for booting from floppy disk on the NC200 - this uses David Given's floppy-boot code from FUZIX, almost unchanged. ZCN itself does not support the floppy disk, so this just loads ZCN and a small ramdisk image then boots it
  • Support for displaying some non-ASCII characters, specifically some from the old DOS code pages 437 and 850 like in the ROM software, as well as the euro sign character from 858. Only a few dozen characters are supported (!) and you need to run keyb beforehand (i.e. since boot) for this to work
  • NC200 time-reading and time-setting support, meaning that e.g. time and timeset work
  • The man command now uses ZX0 compression - the data file is smaller, man.com is smaller, and man pages load faster
  • Certain .com files in the support directory, like QTERM, are now also provided in versions using ZX0 compression. So for example, the ZX0-using version of QTERM is 5k smaller. ZCN comes with a "zx0com.bin" file you can prepend to a .zx0 file to run it in this way (limited to .zx0 files of 16k or less)


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