Revision as of 00:36, 12 December 2024

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Emulator evaluation tools Software list for evaluating CPC emulator accuracy

Emulator tooling UI screenshots of tooling in CPC emulators

Software Platforms (Full OS independance)

Java Platform

Note: Java applets have been discontinued and removed in all major web browsers. So JEMU and WebCPC could belong to the "Discontinued OS" part of this article.

JS / Wasm / Web Platform

LibRetro (API for emulators)

Several distributions also exist based on RetroArch or Ludo: RetroBat, Lakka, RetroPie, Batocera, Recalbox, RGB-Pi OS, LudOS

Operating Systems

Desktop

Legend: ❗= No Raspberry Pi / ARM build ; 🛠️ = Build it yourself ; ⚠️ = Incomplete tooling

Mobile

Discontinued OS

Other Platforms

Home Consoles

You can use RetroArch for Amstrad CPC emulation on Apple TV, Android TV, Nvidia Shield, Steam Link, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS2, PS Vita TV, GameCube, Wii, Wii U and Switch. Or you can use these stand-alone CPC emulators:

Handheld Consoles

Note: Android-based handheld consoles (Razer Edge, Ayn Odin Pro, Retroid Pocket Flip, GPD XP, ...) will work with stand-alone Android CPC emulators or with RetroArch, same as an Android phone.

You can use RetroArch for Amstrad CPC emulation on PSP, PS Vita, DS, 3DS, Switch, Steam Deck, RetroFW, Miyoo, OpenDingux and ArkOS. Or you can use these stand-alone CPC emulators:

FPGA

• CPC TREX CPC-One TurboCPC core by TobiFlex running on different FPGA boards
• CPC FPGA CPC emulation by Ranulf (Ralferoo) Doswell, running on a custom made FPGA board
• FPGAmstrad CoreAmstrad CoreDocAmstrad Translation by Renaud (Freemac) Hélias of JavaCPC from Java into VHDL for MiST board
• CPC for MiST and MiSTer Started by Alexey (Sorgelig) Melnikov as a port of CoreAmstrad, but every module has been either rewritten or replaced
• CPC2 Project CPC emulation running on a Cyclone V FPGA board
• AmstradCPC core Based on McLeod's core and running on a ZXTres FPGA board

Hardware Replacements

• Just CPC4ATX CPC-ITX triple CRTC CPC clones made from NOS chips
• CPC Modular Modular Amstrad CPC compatible computer
• Amstrad CPC464 mini CPC464-2mini Miniaturised CPCs
• Amstrad CPC Portable World's first battery-powered portable Amstrad CPC
• CPC 464/6128 replica PCBs To be used as a direct replacement to the original PCBs
• CPCESP ESP32 TinyCPC CPC emulators for ESP32 SoC board
• SymbOSVM SymbOS for modern 32/64bit hardware

Chips

• MCLZ8 z80-open-silicon Z80 emulators to be used as drop-in replacement
• Nuked-MD-FPGA A-Z80 Verilog Z80 implementations reverse engineered from decapped chip Baltazar Ken Shirriff Instruction decode PLA table Technical documentation
• Visual Z80 Remix Z80 Explorer Netlist-level ultra accurate Z80 simulators
• Forum thread Reverse engineered Gate Array by Gerald from decapped chips Ash Evans Gyorgy Szombathelyi AMSGateArray Subsequent Verilog/VHDL implementations Signals analysis by Bread80
• ASIC and Pre-ASIC Gate Array Z80 CPU HD6845SP CRTC AY-3-8912 PSG NEC D765 FDC Die shots of decapped CPC chips. How to: Optically decode the ROM of a decapped chip Automate ROM decoding Decap, image and reverse engineer the C128 PLA chip Reverse engineered Oric ULA chip
• AY_FPGA AY-3-8912 FPGA replacement with few extra features
• Multi-CRTC Board Host and select between multiple CRTC chip types in one CPC

Floppy drives

• SDiskEmul Floppy-drive emulator released in 2007. Abandoned now. Supports DSK, EDSK disk-images
• HxC Floppy Emulator Commercial floppy-drive emulator. Supports directly DSK, EDSK, HFE disk-images. IPF, CTRAW, SCP disk-images supported through conversion to HFE disk-image [128]
• FlashFloppy Open source floppy-drive emulator for the ubiquitous Gotek hardware. Supports DSK, EDSK, HFE disk-images
• GreaseWeazle Open source USB floppy adapter Flux reader/writer
• SuperCard Pro Claims to be the most advanced flux level copier/imager/converter system
• KryoFlux Proprietary floppy adapter Flux reader/writer
• Pauline FPGA-based floppy-drive dumper and emulator
• DDI-3 USB floppy-drive emulator with an integrated FDC chip, floppy data separator and AMSDOS ROM for CPC464. Current evolution DDI-6 has also integrated a RAM/ROM box
• DriveRDY Emulates the Ready signal necessary for floppy drives on Amstrad machines
• M4 Board Supports DSK, EDSK images in a limited fashion. Protected disks are not supported
• USIFAC ULIfAC Supports DSK, EDSK images in a limited fashion. Protected disks are not supported

Tapes

• TZXduino MAXduino Abatape Arduino-based tape deck emulator. Supports many formats of tape-images including CDT and TZX
• SVI-CAS Digital Tape Drive for Playback & Recording. Supports many formats of tape-images including CDT and TZX
• tapDancer [129] Chrome and Android app that plays back many formats of tape-images including CDT and TZX
• PlayUEF Web-browser based tape deck emulator, supporting CDT and TZX tape-images

Cartridges

• CPC-plus-cartridge Different PCB designs and code to make a CPC-plus cartridge
• Amstrad Multicart 16-in-1 cartridge for the GX4000 or Amstrad Plus computer
• GX4000 Homebrew Player CPC+ 32-in-one multigames by Retroelectronik
• C4CPC Cartridge replacement for the Amstrad Plus range and the GX4000
• Flash+ cartridge Amstrad CPC+ GX4000 reflashable cartridge
• BackBit Pro Tutorial Universal instant loading cartridge
• M4 Board Supports CPR cartridges, among many other features

Printers

• Amstrad CPC Printer Emulator [130] Arduino-based CPC printer emulator that can output text, markdown or HTML
• Retro-Printer Plugin module for the Raspberry Pi that makes it possible to connect retro computers to modern USB or network printers
• ESCParser Command-line utility, ESC/P printer emulator that can output PostScript, SVG or PDF

Other

• LensKey LensLok copy-protection decoder for Windows
• CPCPS2 Keyboard Firmware Emulates the keyboard matrix of Amstrad CPC using modern hardware
• Sinden Lightgun LCD-compatible lightgun
• vga4cpc VGA output for Amstrad CPC based on Raspberry Pi Pico

Peripherals supported in emulators

Mass storage devices

• Dobbertin Harddisc is emulated by MAME
• uIDE is emulated by Arnold
• Symbiface II IDE/PATA interface or compatible (X-Mass, Cyboard) is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, MAME, WinAPE, WinCPC, Arnold, Virtual CPC
• Albireo is partially emulated (no direct sector) by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever
• M4 Board is emulated by CPCemu
• Vortex Winchester Drive, IDE8255, USIfAC / ULIfAC, Symbiface3 / RSF3, Gotek direct access mode are not supported

Network devices

There is a plethora of serial communication devices (using RS232, USB, SPI, Modem, Teletext, Virtual Net 96, etc...) on Amstrad CPC:

• Amstrad/Pace RS232 Serial Port is emulated by MAME
• Other devices are not supported

Higher-level Ethernet or TCP/IP network devices are much less common:

• M4 Board Wifi or compatible (Symbiface 3) is emulated by CPCemu
• CPC-ENet, Net4CPC, Fujinet are not supported

Audio devices

• SSA-1 speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME
• Dk'Tronics speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME
• Techni-Musique speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever
• Amdrum is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE
• Digiblaster is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE, WinCPC, CPCEC, CPCEPower, Virtual CPC
• PlayCity is fully emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, MAME, Arnold, SugarBox. It is partially emulated (no CTC) by Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, CPCEC
• Play2CPC is partially emulated (no FM and no digidrums) by ACE, ACE-DL
• Willy OPL3 is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL
• Willy MIDI is emulated by ACE (software synth emulation on Haiku, MIDI OUT support on MorphOS)
• Music Machine (Sampling/Playback/MIDI ports), EMR MIDI Interface, Ultimate MIDI Board, Speak&SID, LambdaSpeak, Amsdap MoonSound, Amsdap MP3 Player, Amsdap SE-One (MP3/Radio), CPC Radio, Romba, CPC Booster are not supported

Note: all RS232 serial port devices (USIFAC, Amstrad Serial Interface, etc...) and USB port devices with direct control (Albireo, etc...) can also be used as MIDI ports.

Graphics devices

CPC graphics display expansions (CRTC Type 5, Amsdap GFX9000) are not supported.

CPC graphics acquisition devices (Dart Scanner, VIDI digitizer, Digitaliseur Ara) are not supported.

CPC printers are poorly supported. The only emulators that at least do some print rendering emulation are JavaCPC and Caprice Forever.

Input devices

Some lightguns / lightpens are emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, CPCEC, CPCEPower, Virtual CPC, PC-CPC, Wiituka.

CPC mouse support is as follows:

• AMX mouse (1-bit axis, 3 buttons (CPC) / 2 buttons (CPC+)) or compatible (Imperium Solo, Dk'Tronics Genius adapter, DIY GEOS adapter, Atari-ST mouse adapter, PS2Mouse, Marconi Trackerball) is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, WinAPE, Arnold, Virtual CPC, CPCemu, Retro Virtual Machine
• Kempston mouse (8-bit axis, 2 buttons) is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Arnold
• Reisware mouse (8-bit axis, 2 buttons) is emulated by CPCemu
• Symbiface II PS/2 mouse (6-bit axis, 5 buttons, scroll wheel) is emulated by ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, MAME, WinAPE, Arnold, CPCemu
• MultiPlay mouse (4-bit axis, 3 buttons) or compatible (Symbiface3 / RSF3 mouse) is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, Arnold, Retro Virtual Machine
• Albireo mouse (8-bit axis, 3 buttons), Imperium Solo custom mode (6-bit axis, 3 buttons) are not supported

Note: AMX and MultiPlay are the most widely supported mice in CPC programs.

Hacking devices

• Multiface II is emulated by ACE, ACE-DL, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE, Arnold
• HackIt is emulated by ACE-DL, Arnold
• Mirage Imager is emulated by ACE
• Transtape is emulated by MAME
• Programmers Development System is emulated by MAME
• Demon Development Cartridge, Action Replay AMX, Disc Wizard are not supported

Rewind feature

The RetroArch CPC emulator has the most convenient rewind feature: Demonstration. To reverse the game, the user press and hold the rewind button. And at any point, releasing the button makes time goes forward again.

ACE-DL also has a rewind feature, but it is not as good as it could be: Demonstration.

One 128KB snapshot per frame allows 10 seconds of rewind with 64MB (128KB * 50 frames * 10 seconds) of memory for the rewind feature. A more efficient method saves only the previous RAM values that are changed between 2 frames, allowing much longer rewinds (even if the CPC is equipped with 4MB RAM expansion) while using less memory, as shown by the GBA emulator SkyEmu.

For step-back debugging, the emulator just needs to store the time when the previous instruction was executed so that he can go back to that instruction. In the same way, emulators can provide access to the previous HBL, IRQ, VBL, etc.

File format specifications

• DSK / EDSK HFE IPF CTRAW SCP File formats of disk-image
• CDT / TZX PZX CSW FLAC WAV MP3 File formats of tape-image
• CPR cartridge SNA snapshot Other file formats used in CPC emulators
• Official SNR session spec Discussion about SNR format Archive of SNR sessions
• YM AYC MYM VGM Soundchip logging file formats
• CSL Cpc Scripting Language, a macro/scripting system to automate emulators
• KCR Game launching configuration

Emulation Tools

• CPCDiskXP DiskUtil SugarConvDsk DSK iDSK dsktools edsktool ManageDSK WriteDSK SAMdisk Disk Image Manager sector-cpc HxCFloppyEmulator software Disk Utilities dsk-lua upd765pro Amstrad DSK Explorer OmniFlop RIDE Set of tools about disk-images
• CPCTapeXP TapeUtil SugarConvTape CDTMaster 2CDT/Samp2CDT CSW2CDT CDT2WAV wav2tzx PZXtools Online Tape to CDT Set of tools about tape-images
• CPRTools cpr-tools cpr2bin No$cart UniDOS Cartridge Creator Set of tools about CPR cartridge-images
• WinImage, DiskExplorer, Ultimate Imager CP/M Image File Explorer Access and edit hard-drive images
• CPC Analyser ImHex CPCRomHacks RunEmu Other tools
• WinAPE WinCPC JavaCPC Caprice Reloaded Caprice Forever Emulators with an integrated Z80 Assembler

Cross-Platform Development

• Java Z80Assembler Glass Pasmo UZ80 Rasm BASM ABASM zasm vasm SjASMPlus cpctools cpclib bndbuild Disark MDL ASM Code Lens KC IDE Tools for CPC cross-development in Z80 Assembler
• SDCC SDCC vs PhrozenC SDCC vs z88dk z88dk can be used with SDCC and provides a huge library ccz80 Phactory cpc-dev-tool-chain CPCtelera WinCPCtelera Cross-platform CPC development in C
• Quiche Turbo Rascal Syntax Error CPC demo made with TRSE TRSE CPC tutorial CPC cross-development in Pascal
• Millfork Wiz Cowgol Java Grinder CPC cross-development with other programming languages
• Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer The most user-friendly Windows tool for creating CPC games
• PunyInform for developing text adventure games
• SymbOS C Compiler Quigs IDE SymbOS application development
• CPC Basic cross-compiler Online CPCBasic Amstrad Basic Helper SDKCPC IDE 8BP CpcAlive ugBASIC ugBASIC IDE Cross-platform CPC development in BASIC
• ZX0 Salvador ZX0 decompressor in BASIC Comparative study Compression tools

Cross-Platform Art

• ConvImgCPC ImgToCpc img2cpc cpclib-img2cpc Magick2CPC gfx2crtc DaDither Online Dithertron Martine Splitraster+ ConvGeneric UniPixelViewer UniPixelViewer tutorial Image converters from PC to CPC
• Multipaint RePAINT! GrafX2 CPCPaint Amstrad CPC Tools Kit Retro Game Asset Studio AkuSprite Editor Z80Editor Online Sprite Creator Aseprite LibreSprite Maped Cross-platform CPC pixel art editors
• vgm-conv YMtoVGM YMcruncher Ym2Mym wav2ay WaoN (wav2midi) YMtoMIDI Music converters
• CHIPNSFX Vortex Tracker II WYZTracker Arkos Tracker Furnace Cross-platform CPC music creation suites

Emulator Detection

If you want to promote usage of real CPC computers, you can detect CPC emulators by:

• Checking if the memory is initialised with zeroes, as RAM in real machines is not initialised during boot. Source
• Configuring the CRTC to stop refreshing part of the RAM. This behaviour has never been emulated. Source

The way to cause the RAM refresh to fail in both a Plus or normal CPC is simply to stop a few bits of the CRTC address changing (ie. never refresh the selected area).
Generally, only the Row address needs to be cycled, so stopping MA0 through MA7 from changing, and stopping the CPU from reading those rows, will cause data to be lost, quite quickly (generally around 4ms).

• Playing with the "floating" bus. Using Z80 read I/O commands to write to chip registers. Accessing ghost registers. Using undocumented I/O ports. Writing to multiple chips simultaneously. Changing PPI and PSG ports direction.
• Focusing on the minute details in Z80, CRTC, PPI and PAL chips. They are most often wrong in emulators.
• Examining the FDC chip. It is only replicated more or less superficially in all emulators because the internals of the chip are still unknown. Many emulators don't even support the FDC SCAN or FORMAT TRACK commands.

Combining these methods will definitely get you a 100% success rate in detecting emulators, even the toughest ones.

• 

  Emulator undetected in Open Tower Defense

• 

  Emulator detected in Open Tower Defense

Additionally, an Emulator IDs system is available for easier detection of CPC emulators.

On ZX Spectrum, gamedevs are challenging emulators real hard with titles like MEMPTR Snake, Super HALT Invaders Test and Chromatrons Attack.

Emulators running on the Amstrad CPC