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Java Platform

JS / Wasm / Web Platform

LibRetro (API for emulators)

Desktop

Alternative OS

Mobile

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:

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:

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:

• Just CPC4ATX CPC clone made from NOS chips
• CPC 464/6128 replica PCBs To be used as a direct replacement to the original PCBs
• 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
• ESP32 TinyCPC Port from CPC-em emulator to TTGO VGA32 v1.x board with ESP32
• MCLZ8 Z80 emulator which runs on a Teensy 4.1 ARM board and can be used as a 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
• Multi-CRTC Board Host and select between multiple CRTC chip types in one CPC
• 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 [132]
• 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
• Pauline FPGA-based floppy-drive dumper and emulator
• DDI-3 USB floppy-drive emulator with an integrated FDC chip for CPC464
• TZXduino Arduino-based tape deck emulator. Supports many formats of tape-images including CDT and TZX
• PlayUEF Web-browser based tape deck emulator, supporting CDT and TZX tape-images
• Amstrad CPC Printer Emulator 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
• 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
• C4CPC Cartridge replacement for the Amstrad Plus range and the GX4000
• Flash+ cartridge Amstrad CPC+ GX4000 reflashable cartridge

Emulator support is as follows:

• 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, Caprice Forever, MAME, WinAPE, WinCPC, Arnold, Virtual CPC
• Albireo is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever
• M4 Board is emulated by CPCemu
• Vortex Winchester Drive, USIfAC / ULIfAC and Symbiface3 / RSF3 are not supported by emulators

Emulator support is as follows:

• SSA-1 speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME
• Dk'Tronics speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME
• Techni-Musique speech synthesizer is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever
• Amdrum is emulated by ACE, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE
• Digiblaster is emulated by ACE, Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, MAME, WinAPE, CPCEC, CPCEPower, WinCPC, Virtual CPC
• PlayCity is fully emulated by ACE, MAME, Arnold, SugarBox. It is partially emulated by Caprice Forever, JavaCPC, CPCEC
• Play2CPC is emulated by ACE
• Willy OPL3 is emulated by ACE
• Willy MIDI is emulated by ACE (software synth emulation on Haiku, full MIDI support on MorphOS)
• Music Machine, Speak&SID, LambdaSpeak, Amsdap (SE-One, Moonsound, etc...) are not supported by emulators

Support for CPC printers is abysmal in all emulators. The only emulators that at least do some print rendering emulation are JavaCPC and Caprice Forever.

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

Only the RetroArch CPC emulator has a proper rewind feature: Demonstration of rewind in RetroArch. To reverse the game, the user press and hold the rewind button. And at any point, releasing the button makes time goes forward again.

A very simple approach would be to make a SNA for each frame and limit the RAM snapshot to 128KB, which is ok for 99% of CPC software. For a 10-seconds long rewind functionality, only 64MB RAM is needed (128KB * 50 frames * 10 seconds).

A more efficient approach is to store only the values that are changed in RAM between two frames, so that RAM can be restored when rewinding. This allows for long rewinds, even of a CPC equipped with a 4MB RAM expansion. Proof of it is the GBA emulator SkyEmu demonstrating super long rewind while needing very few RAM.

For debugging, going back to the previous instruction is easily implemented. The emulator has 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.

Quick evaluation

• From Scratch demo with reference images (CRTC 1): Media:From Scratch logo.png Media:From Scratch tetris.png Media:From Scratch ovl.png
• DSC #4 demo with reference images (CRTC 1): Media:DSC4 reference1.png Media:DSC4 reference2.png
• Camembert 4 demo with reference images (CRTC 0/1/3/4): Media:Camembert-real.jpg Media:Camembert 4 Pixel Precise.jpg
• BSC7 Interlace demo with reference image (CRTC 0/2/3/4): Media:BSC7 reference.png

Z80 CPU

• 🔥Raxoft tests CPC port of z80test ZEX Z80 CPU instruction set exercisers
• Arkanoid (using Z80 Interrupt Mode 2) L'anneau de Zengara (using Z80 register R) Light Corridor (Z80 useless instruction prefixes) Dogsbody (accessing non-standard I/O ports)
• Z80 instruction set Z80 MEMPTR (aka WZ) internal register Even weirder Z80 behaviour To get to the bottom of it Z80 is always NMOS on CPC and Plus How the Z80 behaves
• Z80 T-state timings Other source about T-state timings Ultra accurate timing behaviour I/O port allocation RAM/ROM mapping Technical documentation

Diagnostics

• Amstest Amstrad Diagnostics STS SysInfo Tests CRTC type [133] Identifying CRTC visually Basic Program Status Window Version du Firmware Basic
• RAM Expansion Test MemTest RAM Test CRTC4 Test RAM de McLeod Ideafix RAM Check Testprogram For All ERAM Test RAM Basic Xenon 2 Take On Me Trololo Experiments Still The One Post Scriptum Onescreen Colonies #2 256K Chany 512K cracks Anti-Multiface Expanded RAM software list RAM exercisers
• FutureOS CP/M Plus Behaviour of RAM mode &C3 More on the issue RAM expansion hardware bug on CPC464/664
• 🔥Kevin Thacker's "Acid tests" suite Older version Forum thread Tests results in ACE Collection of tests which are used to verify emulators operation against real CPC, Plus and expansions
• 🔥Richard Wilson's Plus Test suite [134] CPC and CPC+ Emulator test suite (including Instruction and Interrupt timing tests)

Amstrad Plus

• Official Plus diagnostics cartridge 4096 Colors Preview 4096K tester File:Roudoudou CPR tests.zip [135] No Exit Plus testing tools
• 6128 Plus DMA Fairy Soundtracker DMA To test DMA sound
• Delirium Tremens Delirium Tremens running on real hardware Bulles Funerapolis X-mas 2008 USS Cygnus 192 To test hardware sprites
• Arnoldemu T&J Sylvestre Offset [136] Plus Vectored Interrupt Bug Plus hardware bugs documented
• Plus Games Plus Demos Search filters to verify the entire Plus software library

Colorimetry

• Raster Les split-rasters Mir'Color Test Interlace Color Mode 1 Tramage et Choix des Couleurs Colour calibration
• Minor difference in colorimetry between CPC and Plus On CPC (not Plus!), green half-intensity is significantly higher than red and blue half-intensities
• Major difference in colorimetry between the real Amstrad CTM display and emulators display:

• 

  Border 8 on real CPC

• 

  Border 8 on real Plus

• 

  Border 8 on emulators

• 

  Palette on real CPC

• 

  Palette on real Plus

• 

  Palette on emulators

• 

  Colorimetry on real CPC

• 

  Colorimetry on emulators

Graphics

• 🔥Shakerland Ultra accurate CRTC documentation and its associated CPC testing tool
• Equalizor Revolog Technical explanation Unpredictable behaviour of the real CRTC type 1 chip. We can classify these behaviours as CRTC types 1a and 1b
• HSYNC test Split-Rasters Test CRTC1 CRTC Programmierung Côté Gamers Out-Screen II CRTC editor CRTC software CRTC testing tools
• Pixel 1 Horizontal Hard Scroll for all CRTCs Vertical Hard Scroll 100% Smooth CRTC Register 3 scrolling test Skate Wars Jinks Out of this World Killer Cobra Edge Grinder Relentless Warhawk Mission Genocide Axys Red Sunset Ghosts'n Goblins Legend of Kage Profanation Super Cauldron Smooth CRTC R3/R5 hardware scrolling
• BSC 91 Voyage 1993 OVL '96 Byte 98 Ze Meeting 2003 Divine Paradise Power System Prodatron Longshot Amazing KKB First Chany Dream End Welcom-X 2 S&Koh Other World 3 Overflow Previews Big'O Full'O Dem'O Not Dead Plasma Wobbler Mad Rast Odyssey Croco Chanel Tire Au Flan Early demos, so they were developed without CPC emulator bias
• Still Rising Still the Bests Still Scrolling River Scroll Scroll Factory Battro Arôme Tomate PhX Bloc Us Wake Up Stand Up Wunderbar Foursome Yet Another Plasma Checkmate Octopus Pocus Isometrikum Logon's Run Onescreen Colonies Debris DTC Points Barres Synergy 2 The One DemoIzArt Sugarlumps Ghost Nop CRTC effects
• Les Mondes Parallèles Paranoia Molecularr 2 Megablasters Quadraster Groops Sudoku Master Overkoban Prince Dastan Sokoban Within Deva Drifter Hexavirus v0 A tribute to the sisters True overscan games
• Mode 3 Test "Mode 5" Viewer Fugitif Final Exams Flush Wishes You a Happy New Year Pixel Free Interlace viewer Climax Flipraster Perfect Pix Paint Tetris Imperial Mahjong Special graphics modes
• Mire Climax-G Fatal Beauties 4 Sins Twinblast MCS 6 Schadel Wavy Thunder Blade Turrican Bonanza Bros To test the VDU

Audio

• Trantor 3D Starfighter Treasure Island Dizzy Ghost Hunters Super Robin Hood Advanced Pinball Simulator Jet Bike Simulator Grand Prix Simulator Darts 180 Killapede Jail Break Robocop Chase HQ Shinobi Fly Spy 4-Bit Digi Try Software English vocal digits
• El Enigma de Aceps Le Manoir de Mortvielle Hold-Up Forteresse Canadair L'île Jaws Holocauste Afteroids Fire & Forget Xyphoes Fantasy Space Race Josh Yao demo Face Hugger Ultimate Smallest Scroll AC/DC DragonBreed Musik100 Other software sound effects Audio-tape included software list
• Now that's what I call Chip Tunes Amstream music-disk We Are All Old AYC Sound Shap Audio Amstrad CPC Mix YM!Rulez (real hardware recordings) Ams'Orgue Sintetizador de Sonidos Mega Sound To test the PSG emulation

Peripherals

• SSA-1 software list Dk'Tronics software list TMPI software list To test speech synthesizers emulation
• Digital Orgasm Digitracker File:DigiTracker Amdrum.zip [137] Amdrum To test Digiblaster and Amdrum soundcards emulation
• VGMplay OPL3 VGM pack BluePillCPC To test Willy OPL3 and MIDI emulation
• Magnum Light Phaser SkeetShoot The Enforcer Dk'Tronics Light Pen Light Pen Mark II Dart Light Pen To test lightguns and lightpens connected to expansion port
• West Phaser Gunstick Trojan LP-1 To test lightguns and lightpens connected to joystick port
• AMX Art SymbOS Advanced OCP Art Studio To test AMX and Kempston mouse emulation
• Tasword Tasprint ProText ProType ProPrint Miraprint Qualitas Plus BrunWord MicroDesign Page Printer AMX Pagemaker Speedtrans screen dump Kdump Impr'Image Scrypte Impression RSX Imprimante Machine à écrire DemoImp To test printer emulation

• HDCPM SymbOS UniDOS UniLoad LiliCPC M4FE To test RTC and mass-storage emulation
• RulezCharge Amsteam CPChessNet Ewen SymbOS UniDOS To test the network emulation
• X-MEM FW CatRun CowSay iMPsuite GOS+ Nirvana Utopia CP/M Plus on ROM SymbOS UniDOS To test ROMboard emulation
• Alcon 2020 Hyperdrive Puzzle Bobble Revenge of Trasmoz Crazy Piri Chronicle Converted GX4000 Software SymbOS UniDOS To test CPC cartridge slot expansion
• Multiface Protector Anti-Multiface II software list RX 220 War in Middle Earth Zap't'Balls advanced The Insider MF2RR Technical documentation To test Multiface II emulation
• Dart Scanner Vidi Digitizer LensLok Dandanator MultiPlay KDS 8-Bit Printer Port Exotic pieces of hardware

Copy-protection

• FDC test suite Disk drive tests CDT/TZX test suite Set of tests by arnoldemu
• Azimut Locator Tape Speed Checker Catalogueur de Cassettes Ultra Son Soft-Lok Bonzo Super Meddler SpeedTrans Transformateur Deconnect NoAMSDOS software list Computer Hits Marmelade Mickey Mouse Split Personalities Frank Bruno's Boxing Baudload software list Keytone software list To test Tape emulation
• Musical Loader FatMag 2 Backtro Unique The Demo CPC 30th Anniversary Midline Process Can Robots Take Control Phortem Batman Forever Pinball Dreams R-Type 128K Nheredia Doomsday Lost Echoes Orion Prime JavaCPC Overscan Musical loader, Multi-drives, 3.5 inch (dual-head and 80 tracks) floppy drives support
• RPM DskTest Discover Crazy Dlfrsilver Dump Tool Test Suite Format II ParaDOS Xexor Discology Hercule II UltraDisc Disc+Ultra Disc'o'Magic Multi Mark To test FDC emulation
• FatMag (HFE version) Open Tower Defense Rigorous FDC tests by Roudoudou Disk Swapping Autodetect software list Superpix Disk swapping detection Unique Diskmaker Generate discs in noiseload format Demonstration of KBI protection Protector
• Weak Sectors Custom Gaps Custom Gap2 Sector SizeX Sector Size8 Sector Size7 Sector Size6 Sector Erased 64 Sectors Custom Rémi Herbulot Brice Rive Rubi MBC Logiciel 44 Protected software lists
• Prehistorik Profession Détective Emlyn Hugues Arcade Quiz Other copy-protection schemes Dark Sceptre Krypton Factor Works only on older floppy drives
• 1001 BC Scott Winder Reporter Holocauste Speedlock AAAA Destructive copy-protection Sir Lancelot Secret Defense M'enfin Turbo Cup Erebus Le Passager du Temps Anti-copy bug software list Exotic copy-protection
• Protection schemes documented Gaps Latis Copy-protection in EDSK images Implementation in SugarBox emulator FDC blog articles Autoboot Amsdos disk format Disk structure DiscSys Speedlock K7 Technical explanations

Other

• The Eternal Light Paulina's Potions Druid & Droid Claudia BMP Converter Software that only run on flawed emulators but not on real machines
• Octoplex (crtc1) Dynamic Duo (crtc1) 007 The Living Daylights (crtc1) Madness (crtc0) FMR (crtc1) Not Dead (crtc2) Some known CRTC problems on real hardware
• The Untouchables Batman The Movie Turrican Technical explanation CPC keyboard clash
• Raytracing in BASIC Julia Fractal 5KB 3 (Cray II emulator part) To benchmark emulators using their fullspeed mode

• 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 VGM Soundchip logging file formats
• CSL Cpc Scripting Language, a macro/scripting system to automate emulators

• CPCDiskXP DiskUtil SugarConvDsk DSK iDSK Dsktools ManageDSK WriteDSK SAMdisk Disk Image Manager sector-cpc HxCFloppyEmulator software Disk Utilities dsk-lua Amstrad DSK Explorer Set of tools about disk-images
• CPCTapeXP TapeUtil SugarConvTape CDTMaster 2CDT CSW2CDT CDT2WAV tzxtools Set of tools about tape-images
• CPRTools UniDOS Cartridge Creator Edit Amstrad Plus CPR cartridge-images
• WinImage, DiskExplorer, Mtools Ultimate Imager CP/M Image File Explorer Access and edit hard-drive images
• CPC Analyser ImHex Other tools
• Emulator tooling UI screenshots of tooling in CPC emulators
• WinAPE WinCPC JavaCPC Caprice Reloaded Caprice Forever Emulators with an integrated Z80 Assembler
• Java Z80Assembler Glass Pasmo UZ80 Rasm BASM zasm vasm SjASMPlus cpctools cpclib 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 Phactory cpc-dev-tool-chain CPCtelera WinCPCtelera Cross-platform CPC development in C
• Millfork ccz80 Java Grinder CPC cross-development with C-like or Java-like programming languages
• 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
• Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer The most user-friendly Windows tool for creating CPC games
• Quigs IDE Suite of PC-based tools and editors for SymbOS application development
• CPC Basic cross-compiler CPCBasic Unchained Amstrad Basic Helper CpcAlive ugBASIC Cross-platform CPC development in BASIC
• ZX0 ZX0 decompressor in BASIC Comparative study Compression tools
• ConvImgCPC ImgToCpc img2cpc gfx2crtc DaDither Martine Splitraster+ UniPixelViewer UniPixelViewer tutorial Image converters from PC to CPC
• Multipaint GrafX2 CPCPaint Amstrad CPC Tools Kit Retro Game Asset Studio AkuSprite Editor Sprite Creator Aseprite Maped Cross-platform CPC pixel art editors
• CHIPNSFX Vortex Tracker II WYZTracker Arkos Tracker 2 Furnace Bintracker Cross-platform CPC music creation suites

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 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