Acorn Gaming: Emulation

EMULATION

BBC Micro

Three emulators are available:
6502Em --- BeebIt --- 65Host

Name	6502Em
Author	Michael and Anne Borcherds (sold by Warm Silence Software)
Port of	None - original code
Available	Direct by mail order from Warm Silence Software; costs £15 + VAT
Supports	99.99% of games. Only major omissions are Skirmish, Firetrack, Boffin and Plan B
Speed	Risc PC: full; A5000: most at full speed
Version	3.01

If you want to emulate a BBC Micro then the best emulator by far is Warm Silence Software's !6502Em emulator. As well as pretending to be a Model B it can also be a Master, Electron and Master Compact - so long as you can get hold of suitable OS ROM images from those computers, anyway. Unlike Acorn's 65Host it will run virtually all BBC games, including Exile, Elite, Revs and many, many more. It even allows !Speech to work, which is particularly impressive! At £15 + VAT it's not too expensive.

Note that there's also a list of some compatible games at Acorn Gaming, too, although this applies to the earlier 2.10 version, not the current (improved) version 3.

Verson 3 offers full handling of split screen modes and palette changes, so games like Exile now look the way they were always meant to. Other improvements include smoother scrolling and a complete rewrite of the interrupts and timing code.

Name	BeebIt
Author	Michael Foot (mikef@voyager.co.nz
Port of	Original code
Available	The author's web site or Acorn Gaming
Supports	Lots of games, including Exile
Speed	ARM710: medium; StrongARM: full
Version	0.25 - 5/11/2000 (as of 9/11/00)

This emulator is the first freely available BBC emulator which will actually run the vast majority of BBC games. Unlike most emulators it's under continuous development, and I'm sure the author would love to receive feedback on it - the latest version includes even more assembly language optimisation.

On my Risc PC 700 it's not quite as fast as the real thing, but it's getting faster with each new version and if you have a StrongARM everything's fine. To run the emulator you also need to obtain the OS ROM images yourself (for copyright reasons). There are some disc utilities on the author's site.

Name	65Host
Author	Acorn Computers (www.acorn.com)
Port of	None - original code
Available	Acorn's FTP site or Acorn Gaming
Supports	Non technically-demanding games
Speed	Full on A5000s and above; variable on slower machines
Version	1.61 (1992)

The first emulator for Acorn machines was Acorn's own !65Host, which was supplied with all Acorn computers up until the early 1990s. It converted your brand new machine into a copy of an original BBC Model B Microcomputer. It wouldn't run all software - particularly technically clever games - but it did a fair enough job and managed to run most educational software which, afterall, was its raison d'être.