Acorn Atom - Emulation

[sut]

Looking at researching and studying (just for my own enjoyment) the Acorn Atom. Only emulators I can find is a old DOS based emulator (which I cannot run on Vista) & MESS. MESS seems ok but all the sofware images I've found won't run on MESS ?

 

Does anyone know if MESS compatible Atom images are available anywhere or there is a Atom emulator that works on Windows ?

[mimo]

Did you try electrEM? That is suposed to work in windows

you might find more info over at stairwaytohell a BBC micro and acorn forum

[JamesD]

Did you try electrEM? That is suposed to work in windows

you might find more info over at stairwaytohell a BBC micro and acorn forum

Isn't that just an Electron emulator, not an Atom emulator?

[R.Cade]

Check the different TRS-80 Color Computer emulators. Isn't the ATOM a real close cousin of that machine? I think same CPU and video, just different memory addressing.

[JamesD]

Check the different TRS-80 Color Computer emulators. Isn't the ATOM a real close cousin of that machine? I think same CPU and video, just different memory addressing.

It uses the same video chip (6847) but the ATOM uses the 6502 where the CoCo uses the 6809. They are very different beasts.

The CoCo also supports more graphics modes than the ATOM including some that are only available with the 6847+SAM chip.

There are several other machines that use the 6847 but only the ATOM uses the 6502.

 

The MESS code should probably be enhanced or someone should write a converter for the image files.

[sut]

Was the electron backwards compatible with the atom then ?

[oracle_jedi]

Was the electron backwards compatible with the atom then ?

 

No, the Electron was a stripped down BBC Model B.

 

The Electron was largely compatible with the BBC, although some features were not implemented, such as the Prestel display mode. It was also much slower, due to the use of ULAs in place of many discrete components, and I believe it used four 64K memory devices to provide the 32K of 8-bit RAM, using a double-fetch mechanism. When RAM was expensive this was pretty clever, but slow.

 

The Atom was a quite different beast, with a different dialect of BASIC. The standard machine was 2K of RAM and monochrome in the UK, due to the fact that Acorn used a U.S. spec display chip which only provided colour in NTSC, not PAL. Expanded machines offered 12K of RAM and a colour option was also available.

 

Acorn later offered a BASIC replacement for the Atom to provide BBC BASIC, but it only gave BASIC compatibility, machine language software would not run.

[Vicman]

Looking at researching and studying (just for my own enjoyment) the Acorn Atom. Only emulators I can find is a old DOS based emulator (which I cannot run on Vista)

The Dos-Emulator, you've found works nice in Dosbox. :!: (Think you mean the "Arcon Atom Emulator v1.33)

 

I run Dosbox with WinXP....but don't know, if Dosbox also runs in Vista.

 

I'm working on an "Imagepack & Datfile" for the Frontend eCC (EmuControlCenter), and simultan on the "Acorn Atom Gamebase" (for the GameBase-Frontend)

 

With this two Frontends, you can simply start the Acorn Atom Programs, that are stored on the *.Tap-Images (found on StairwayToHell)

 

When i have finished this two Projects, you can DL it from Gamebase/eCC

 

 

Cheers,

Vicman

[sut]

Ahh good old gamebase, can't wait vicman. Soon there will be a gamebase for every system imaginable ( which is a very good thing ).

[Vicman]

AnnaWu from the MESS Forum run´s the Emulator in WinXP....

But for me it only works with Dosbox...

 

btw.

Hope to finish the Gamebase in May/June

[Vicman]

Hi all,

 

i have finished the GameBase Acorn Atom

 

Look at the GameBase Forum