Revision as of 14:55, 13 September 2023

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Software Platforms (Full OS independance)

Java Platform

JS / Wasm / Web Platform

LibRetro (API for emulators)

Current Operating Systems

Desktop

Alternative OS

Mobile

Discontinued Operating Systems

Home Consoles

You can use RetroArch for Amstrad CPC emulation on Apple TV, Android TV, Nvidia Shield, Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS2, 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 and OpenDingux. Or you can use these stand-alone CPC emulators:

Single-Board Computers / Raspberry Pi

LibRetro / RetroArch is used as the foundation of Lakka, Recalbox, Batocera and RetroPie alternative OSes for the Raspberry Pi and other SBC. But you can also use RetroArch for Amstrad CPC emulation on a stock Raspberry Pi OS. Or you can use these stand-alone CPC emulators:

Hardware

• CPC TREX CPC-ONE TurboCPC core running on a FPGA board
• CPC FPGA CPC emulation running on a custom made FPGA board
• FPGAmstrad CoreAmstrad CoreDocAmstrad CPC for MIST and MISTer Translation of JavaCPC from Java into VHDL on a MiST board
• CPC2 Project CPC emulation running on a Cyclone V FPGA board
• ESP32 TinyCPC Port from CPC-em emulator to TTGO VGA32 v1.x board with ESP32
• SDiskEmul Floppy-drive emulator released in 2007. Abandoned now. Supports DSK, EDSK disk-images
• HxC Floppy Emulator Commercial floppy-drive emulator. Supports HFE, DSK, EDSK, IPF disk-images
• FlashFloppy Open source floppy-drive emulator for the ubiquitous Gotek hardware. Supports HFE, DSK, EDSK disk-images

Mass-storage, RTC and network dilemma

Multiple mass-storage, RTC and network solutions already exist for the Amstrad CPC. We can put them in 3 categories:

• Historical: The Vortex Winchester Drive and the Dobbertin HD20 with Dobbertin Smart Watch were sold during the commercial lifetime of the CPC. But these solutions are clumsy today with their very small capacity, their CP/M filesystem and their non-standard hard-drives and interface.
• Historically-plausible: The Symbiface II or X-Mass with Nova NVRAM/RTC are using the IDE/PATA interface created in 1986 for mass-storage access. However, the IDE interface was introduced on the CPC way after its commercial lifetime, the Symbiface II being released in 2006. The whole IDE/PATA sector access and FAT filesystem dance the CPC has to perform here is not necessary with more modern solutions. On the positive side, this isolation of the filesystem guarantees that the CPC software and the CPC emulator cannot inadvertently do wrong on the host filesystem, as the operations are limited to modifying the contents of the virtual hard-drive file. A direct file view on the host side can also make trouble if the CPC assumes it is the sole owner of the filesystem and doesn't accept that we change files and folders behind his back. The Cyboard is a Symbiface II clone that adds Ethernet support at a TCP/UDP level. The Net4CPC is the Ethernet part of the Cyboard provided without the Symbiface II.
• Modern: Albireo, ULIfAC, Symbiface 3 and M4 Board as they give the CPC a direct file view of the mass-storage instead of a sectors view. These solutions are well suited to provide network too, as HTTP and FTP are file access protocols. The Symbiface 3 and the M4 Board provide a NetAPI to access the Internet unlike the Albireo and the ULIfAC. The Symbiface 3 also emulates other peripherals (Dobbertin HD20, SSA-1 speech synthesizer, Digiblaster and AmDrum soundcards) but it is going overboard with its embedded MP3 player.

Emulator support is as follows:

• Dobbertin HD20 with Dobbertin SmartWatch is emulated by MAME
• Symbiface II or X-Mass IDE/PATA is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever, MAME, WinAPE, WinCPC, Arnold, Virtual CPC
• Albireo is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever
• M4 Board is emulated by CPCemu
• Vortex, Net4CPC, ULIfAC and Symbiface 3 are not supported by emulators

CPC cartridge slot

Emulator support for a CPC cartridge slot is as follows:

• Dandanator brings a non-standard physical cartridge port and a very exotic non-standard memory mapper that spies on Z80 instructions. It is emulated by ACE, Retro Virtual Machine, CPCEC, ZEsarUX
• Plus2CPC and Play2CPC bring a standard physical Plus cartridge port to the CPC. They are not supported by emulators
• M4 Board simulates a standard Plus cartridge port on the CPC and handles standard CPR files. M4 Board is emulated by CPCemu

Why is the Dandanator winning over standard Plus cartridge solutions like the Plus2CPC? It's because some CPC games (The Sword of Ianna, Los Amores de Brunilda, ...) are released exclusively for it. So emulators are then forced to support it.

The situation would be different if those games were converted to standard CPR format by the community.

Audio devices

Emulator support is as follows:

• SSA-1 speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, JavaCPC, MAME
• Dk'Tronics speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, JavaCPC, MAME
• TMPI speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever
• AmDrum is emulated by ACE, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE
• Digiblaster is emulated by ACE, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE, Caprice Forever, CPCEC, WinCPC, Virtual CPC
• PlayCity is fully emulated by ACE, MAME, Arnold, SugarBox. The audio part of PlayCity is emulated by JavaCPC, Caprice Forever, CPCEC
• Play2CPC is an amputated PlayCity, with no CTC chip and only one soundchip instead of two, but otherwise compatible with the PlayCity
• OPL3 (Willy) is emulated by ACE
• Speak&SID, LambdaSpeak 3, General MIDI (Willy), SE-One (Amsdap) and Moonsound (Amsdap) are not supported by emulators

Emulator accuracy checking tools

Quick evaluation

• From Scratch demo with reference images: Media:Fromscratch1.png Media:Fromscratch2.png
• Camembert 4 demo with reference images: Media:Hsyncartefacts camembert4.png Media:Camembert 4 Pixel Precise.jpg

Z80 CPU

• ZEXALL and ZEXDOC Z80 CPU instruction set exercisers
• Z80 Full Test Z80 Doc Test Z80 Flags Test Z80 Doc Flags Test Z80 MEMPTR Test Z80 CCF Test
• Arkanoid Light Corridor Z80 IM2 usage, Z80 useless instruction prefixes
• Z80 instruction set Z80 MEMPTR (aka WZ) internal register Even weirder Z80 behaviour To get to the bottom of it How the Z80 behaves
• Z80 T-state timings Other source about T-state timings Ultra accurate timing behaviour

Diagnostics

• Official Amstrad CPC hardware diagnostics Non-official Amstrad Diagnostics v1.3a
• RAM Expansion Test MemTest RAM Test CRTC4 Testprogram For All ERAM Xenon 2 Take On Me RAM testers
• "Acid" test suite [150] Tests results in ACE PPI tests Chips tests by arnoldemu
• Plus Test [151] CPC and CPC+ Emulator test suite (including Instruction and Interrupt timing tests)

Amstrad Plus

• Plus diagnostics cartridge Official Amstrad diagnostics
• File:Roudoudou CPR tests.zip Amstrad Plus tests by Roudoudou
• 4096k Tester No Exit Amstrad Plus palette, Floating bus problem
• 6128 Plus Dma Fairy Soundtracker DMA To test DMA and to compare the PSG output with the output from a real Amstrad Plus
• Black Sabbath X-Mas 2008 Funerapolis Sappy To test hardware sprites emulation

Graphics

• Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium with Shaker tool Shakerland Portal Ultra accurate CRTC documentation and its associated CPC testing tool
• Equalizor Revolog Technical explanation Unpredictable behaviour of the real Amstrad CPC chips (ie. outside the realm of emulation)
• Test CRTC type v3.0 CRTC editor CRTC software CRTC tools
• Smooth CRTC Register 3 scrolling test Edge Grinder CRTC Register 3 horizontal scrolling trick Mission Genocide CRTC hardware vertical scrolling
• HSYNC test HSYNC-based demo effects Handling invalid CRTC HSYNC Backtro Other World 3 CRTC effects
• "Mode 5" Viewer Split-Rasters Test CRTC1 Les split-rasters Odyssey Onescreen Colonies Imperial Mahjong Mode 3 Test Split-rasters, multi-mode effects
• Mire Test interlace color Perfect Pix Paint Climax-G 4 Sins Twinblast MCS 6 Thunder Blade Turrican To test the VDU

Peripherals

• Magnum Light Phaser SkeetShoot for Trojan Phazer Dk'Tronics Light Pen Light Pen Mark II To test lightguns and lightpens connected to expansion port
• West Phaser Gunstick Trojan LP-1 To test lightguns and lightpens connected to joystick port
• Amstrad SSA-1 Dk'Tronics TMPI To test speech synthesizers emulation
• AmDrum Digitracker To test AmDrum and Digiblaster soundcards emulation
• Advanced OCP Art Studio To test AMX and Kempston mouse emulation
• UniDOS SymbOS HDCPM To test the M4 Board emulation
• The Sword of Ianna Los Amores de Brunilda MojonTwins romset To test the Dandanator emulation

Copy-protection

• FDC test suite Disk drive tests CDT/TZX test suite for emulators Set of tests by arnoldemu
• DskTest Dlfrsilver Dump Tool Test Suite ParaDOS Discology Discology plus Hercule II Midline Process To test FDC emulation
• FatMag The HFE trackload version is designed as a very rigorous test of the FDC emulation Open Tower Defense Emulator detection through a FDC test
• Le Nécromancien E.X.I.T Basun Tensions Pacific Wild Streets Skyx Some copy-protected disk-images
• Protection schemes documented Copy-protection in EDSK images Implementation in SugarBox emulator FDC blog articles (in french) Technical explanations

File format specifications

• DSK / EDSK HFE File formats of disk-image
• WAV PCM CSW CDT / TZX File formats of tape-image
• CPR cartridge SNA snapshot SNR session Other file formats used in CPC emulators
• Archive of SNR sessions
• IMG VHD File formats of flat hard-drive image

Emulation Tools

• CPCDiskXP DSK iDSK Dsktools ManageDSK WriteDSK SAMdisk SugarConvDsk DiskUtil HxCFloppyEmulator software Disk Image Manager sector-cpc Set of tools about disk-images
• CPCTapeXP CDTMaster 2CDT CSW2CDT CDT2WAV SugarConvTape TapeUtil tzxtools Set of tools about tape-images
• CPRTools Edit Amstrad Plus CPR cartridge-images
• WinImage, DiskExplorer, Mtools Ultimate Imager CP/M Image File Explorer Access and edit IMG hard-drive images. No need of tools for VHD images with FAT filesystem, they are supported directly in Windows Explorer: it works the same way as ISO files
• CPCGamesCD-CPCLoader CDROM containing a navigable database with all the games of the Amstrad CPC
• CPC Analyser Help reverse engineer Amstrad CPC games
• Emulator tooling UI screenshots of tooling in CPC emulators
• WinAPE WinCPC JavaCPC Caprice Reloaded Caprice Forever Emulators with an integrated Z80 Assembler
• Java Z80Assembler Pasmo UZ80 Rasm BASM SjASMPlus cpctools Disark Tools for CPC cross-development in Z80 Assembler
• ccz80 SDCC SDCC vs PhrozenC SDCC vs z88dk Phactory cpc-dev-tool-chain CPCtelera Cross-platform CPC development in C
• Turbo Rascal Syntax Error CPC demo made with TRSE TRSE CPC tutorial A complete suite (IDE, compiler, resource editor) for developing CPC games/demos in Pascal
• CPC Basic CPCBasic Unchained CpcAlive ugBASIC Cross-platform CPC development in BASIC
• 8BP CPC games made with 8BP Laser Basic Laser BASIC Compiler CPC game made with Laser Basic Sprites Alive CPC game made with Sprites Alive B-ASIC CPC+ game made with B-ASIC Useful CPC tools to beef up the BASIC language
• ConvImgCPC DaDither Martine Splitraster+ UniPixelViewer UniPixelViewer tutorial Image converters from PC to CPC
• GrafX2 Multipaint Retro Game Asset Studio Cross-platform CPC pixel art editors
• CHIPNSFX Arkos Tracker 2 WYZTracker 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 initialized with zeroes, as real machines have random memory values at boot
• Focusing on the minute details in emulated Z80, CRTC, and PPI 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

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

• 

  Emulator undetected

• 

  Emulator detected

There is also this initiative for emulators who willingly want to be detected: Emulator IDs

Emulators running on the Amstrad CPC