Scripted Amiga Update & hosting at archive.org

I saw this awesome link over at archive.org’s software Library featuring the Amiga

Behind it all is the Scripted Amiga Emulator.  What is more interesting is that there has just been a MASSIVE update/rewrite to the project and it is now boasting far more features!

Looking at the features page, there has been quite a number of updates since the last version.  The big ones (to me) is that the CPU core has been rewritten, and now supports not only the 68000, but the 68010, 68020, and 68030 (only with fake MMU). OCS, ECS and now AGA as well!  Preset models include the 1000,500,2000,500+,600,3000 and 1200.  IDE disk files can even be mounted for the 600 & 1200!

In addition is support for the Amiga 1000 velvet prototype, and even now has the ability to have an AMAX (Macintosh emulation) cartridge port.

R-Type on SAE

R-Type on SAE

I’d highly recommend the internet archive link, you can jump right into some great Amiga action with nothing to download or install!

NeXTSTEP in your browser!

Well, kind of.

NeXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP

It’s a Docker containers running Previous, that you connect to with noVNC in your browser.  So it’s a legacy system thing on demand!  I had tried to do something like this ages ago with SIMH on demand, but I broke it all when I installed apache on OS/2 to make the bbs url self hosting.

The mouse control is insanely offtrack, but this does present an interesting possibility of bringing back an OS museum / zoo thing.

Also worth mentioning that they do offer MacOS!

Scripted Amiga updated to version 0.82

Captain Blood on the SAE

Captain Blood on the SAE

It’s really amazing to see this in action, and knowing it’s all in javascript of all things.  The Scripted Amiga Emulator now in version 0.83 fixes sound on Chrome, bringing back that Amiga experience with next to no pain.  By default it’ll boot up AROS and various demos or game demos, but you can substitute it with any 68000 compatible kickstart ROMs, and whatever diskettes you have lying about.

Even better the source code is up on github, and now under the GNU General Public License v2.0.

Click here, and give it a shot!  Any modern browser with good javascript support is all you need to get going!

Bringing back the WinZork demo via jsDOSBox

So with all the excitement with jsDOSBox it was about time I tried to get something from my old java dosbox stuff running again.

As a quick note, as of right now, you cannot boot into a disk image… Nor can you really run bat files, or any kind of drivers beforehand.  It’s basically either use a script that adds files one by one, or use an image file which gets mounted, and you run your exe/com file from that.

So here we go, back again is the old Fortran Dungeon (zork) compiled with QuickC for Windows, running on the working model version of Windows 3.0.

Dungeon via F2C

Dungeon via F2C

Click here, and enjoy!

For anyone interested my old post about this Fortran/Zork adventure is here.

 

JS-DOS

Well ever since Oracle managed to screw up Java into a mass of uselessness, it looks like javascript is going to save the day.

Yes that javascript.

That emscripten compiler now can build DOSBox.  Thats right, you can run DOSBox in your browser.  For more infomation check out EMDOSBox.

It works great with Chrome.

DOOM!

DOOM!

Check out this site, which has many games all configured.

I’ll have to convert out all my old stuff, which is just as well since java is effectively dead.

SIMH on demand!

Ok starting with my shellinabox post, I’ve expanded to include SIMH’s Altair emulator!

CP/M 2.2 in a box!

CP/M 2.2 in a box!

Executing this is really simple!  A small shell script will take care of the whole thing.

#!/bin/sh
set -m
PID=$$
mkdir /tmp/$PID
cd /tmp/$PID
cp /usr/local/altair/1.ini .
cp /usr/local/altair/cpm22.dsk .
/usr/local/altair/altair 1.ini
cd /tmp
rm -rf /tmp/$PID

Of course I’m assuming dead processes get reaped.  But check it out!

I’ve put BASIC-80 rev 5.21 and ZORK I in there!

Some advice on SIMH thought, you can execute a shell with the ! command (hitting Control-E will interrupt SIMH) so to prevent that alter the line in scp.c to make sure it’s a noop_cmd instead of spawn_cmd.  Not that anyone was doing anything sneaky as the nobody user, but to prevent it.

{ “!”, &noop_cmd, 0, HLP_SPAWN },

Also an ini file of:

attach dsk0 cpm22.dsk
set throttle 2%
go 177400
exit

Keeps SIMH pretty tame.

Additionally I guess I should do a 12 hour cronjob to kill displaced altairs.

CannonBall!

CannonBall!

CannonBall!

So while indulging my SEGA kick, I came across something super cool, a blog dedicated to reverse engineering and porting outrun to C++, Reassembler!

Now this is pretty awesome in that not only does it work (and boy does it!), his Outrun! project, CannonBall runs on OS X, Windows, Linux, and can you believe it, javascript. (you need an OutrunB ROM for this, as it loads all it’s sound, music, graphics and map resources from an Outrun rom set).   You can read about his javascript porting adventure here, the TL;DR version is that he used emscripten to  convert clang’s LLVM bytecode into javascript.  Boy does this seem to open up quite a few possibilities as javascript compilers seem to get better and better on the browser side.  I happily get 60fps on my MacBook Air with Chrome.

Even better he’s got another project, LayOut, which lets you build your own maps for CannonBall!

For fun, be sure to check out his Easter Eggs section, there is quite a bit of stuff hiding in these old ROMs.  Not to mention there is enough other gamestuff in them, that SEGA didn’t build each game for their boards in a vacuum.

All and all, I’d say it’s a good read!