Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Emulator and emulator development specific topics
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Ed in SoDak
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by Ed in SoDak »

Thanks for the suggestions. The emulators I've downloaded from this thread act like they require an Intel Mac. The icon bounces a couple times, if it gets that far, but won't launch. I can try them on my wife's Macbook Pro to see if that's the case.

I'm running a laptop and desktop G4 Macs with osX 10.4.11 on both. I'm not familiar with Wine or any variants. Is that another emulator or is it some process needed to "skin" a PC app?
Thanks!
-Ed
McKlaud
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by McKlaud »

BarryN wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:24 am You could also try my other package, SZ81 for Mac: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8RnV ... zdWemtkRm8
Nice, it works well under OS X 10.11.6 :)
Claudius
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mrtinb
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by mrtinb »

Ed in SoDak wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:00 am I'm running a laptop and desktop G4 Macs with osX 10.4.11 on both. I'm not familiar with Wine or any variants. Is that another emulator or is it some process needed to "skin" a PC app?
There are few good emulators for Mac. Unfortunately the best emulators are for Windows. Wine is a way to emulate the Windows API on Mac and Linux. This works fine with the Intel-based Macs. Wine will not work on PPC. Darwine is a software that emulates both the Intel CPU with QEMU and combine it with Wine. Try Darwine but there are no garanties it will work.
Martin
https://zx.rtin.be
ZX81, Lambda 8300, Commodore 64, Mac G4 Cube
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Ed in SoDak
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by Ed in SoDak »

It kinda goes back to my earlier observation. It's a bit amazing sometimes the hoops to jump through to emulate an older and far simpler computer, such as the ZX81 et al. Things such as emulating a PC in order to run the ZX81 emulator. And maybe using os9 Classic, which is in itself yet another layer of emulation.

So now I'm downloading and trying various flavors of PC/Windows emulators. Which to me is just another app to learn the ropes of both it and DOS/Windows. Oh, I can fuddle my way there, but there's always a stumbling block. I keep the folders around and give it another go some other day when I get the urge again.

Getting a flavor of Windows would be nice to have beyond my ZX81 emulator quest, since Classic 99, one of the better TI99/4A emulations is also Windows-based. But what I have to do to just play a game I wrote for the TS1000 makes double-emulation too much bother. So I stick with ZXSP, which is a bit dated and limited but works fine and scratches my ZX-itch. Till I want to play with extended memory, then it's found to be lacking and I go looking again... It's the same way with the TI99 and the old MacV9T9 emulator I use for that computer.

A lot of my issues are using a "vintage" PPC Mac to do all this. If I upgraded to intel Mac or just bought a cheapy WinPC laptop, all my emulator wants would be swiftly granted. It's selfish to expect continued support for a Mac that's now a decade old itself.

Funny thing, I don't do all that much emulation to start with! But when I do want to, I find myself limited in what I'm trying to accomplish. So, off I go on a renewed quest for a few days. :) Eventually I'll find a more point'n'click solution for whatever platform it ends up being. Take this more as the ramblings of an old dog trying to relearn his old tricks than a further plea for help. If I ever find my solution, I'll post it here for posterior reasons!

Thanks again for chiming in!
-Ed
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BarryN
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by BarryN »

All these emulator binaries require an Intel Mac. It may be possible to build SZ81 on a PPC machine from source. I don't have a PPC build environment I can access right now.
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Ed in SoDak
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by Ed in SoDak »

Well that's just it. I don't expect any developer like yourself to run out and build a system to support an old platform. I mentioned I was using PPC G4 in my first post to this thread, and wasn't waved off, so I just started downloading all the flavors to try them.

It might indeed require me to upgrade my own hardware to more easily support an up-to-date emulator of a 1980's computer. Don't take me wrong, that just strikes me as quite funny. But I guess if it t'were so easy to emulate a ZX, I could as easily create my own flavor. As if! I managed to program the originals using BASIC and never quite "got" ML, lol. But I had tons of fun trying.

My compliments and thanks for recreating these wonders of early computer technology for old geezers like myself to play around with!

I'm happy to report some progress despite all my grousing. I managed to get Virtual PC 5 to run and recognize a a Windows ME install taken from a VPC4 download. That's pretty much a first for me. From there I got a version of EightyOne that was an .exe to run, albeit very slowly. Also got at least one of my TI99 DOS emulations to run. Simple steps, but a pretty major one for me. For emulating a PC, all I had working prior to this was DOSbox which was pretty much hand-entered paths in DOS to do anything. I found the Virtual PC files on Macintosh Garden.

All that site lists for Mac ZX emulators is MacSpeccy (Mac Spectrum).
-Ed
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mrtinb
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by mrtinb »

The 1 Mac software I use natively is ZXSP as yourself. But I even use the JavaScript ZX81 quite a lot. It supports 56k RAM, UDG (user defined chars) and WRX (hires).

http://rullf2.xs4all.nl/jszeddy/jszeddy.html
Martin
https://zx.rtin.be
ZX81, Lambda 8300, Commodore 64, Mac G4 Cube
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marste
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by marste »

An old question but anyway for my short but pretty intense personal experience I would surely recommend as others ZesarUX as the emulator, but FASMG with EZ80 includes as assembler! :)

PS: I even posted time ago a quick start kit to develop "extreme programs" (why to use assembler if not? 8-) ) with source cross compatible with ZX80 and ZX81!...

Happy hacking!
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Ed in SoDak
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by Ed in SoDak »

Thanks!
jszeddy did run in my TenFourFox browser. It again seemed slow but I only tried it once. Using Virtual PC 5, I can load Windows versions. I even got the TI99/4A emulator Classic99 to run for the first time for me. It was the slowest yet, although at least I got to finally sample these programs.

I was able to sample ZesarUX on my wife's Intel Macbook. It has a ton of features! This laptop has weak USB ports and it ended up scrambling the thumb drive I was using. It looks like we'll be buying her a newer laptop and I'll inherit her old one that needs some tinkering. With that done, I'll be set!
-Ed
McKlaud
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Re: Which emulator and assembler for the Mac?

Post by McKlaud »

Hi All,

I've been trying to download the bottled EO with no luck. The download fails after the Google's virus scanning. I would appreciate for a link where else I can find this software (macOS version).
Claudius
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