Good Atari Lynx Emulators

[LiamPiper]

I have been recommended a game to play for the Atari Lynx but I am not sure what emulators are available that emulate the system well on Mac.

Any Recommendations?

[sage]

retroarch is the most up to date cross-platform

[hwrd]

Only partially related, but has anyone ever heard of a possible emulator shown on Youbue called "

Multiplayer support for Atari Lynx emulation"?

 

I wish there was some form of COMLYNX available in emulator form....

[sage]

there is. but is not really working.

[Flojomojo]

I have been recommended a game to play for the Atari Lynx but I am not sure what emulators are available that emulate the system well on Mac.

Any Recommendations?

You want HANDY for Lynx emulation. RetroArch uses it as the Lynx emulation core, too.

 

https://www.bannister.org/software/handy.htm

[butterburp]

I've always wondered, what makes emulating Comlynx support so difficult? Not trying to point fingers (I'm sure it IS insanely difficult), just curious about the details.

[+karri]

I've always wondered, what makes emulating Comlynx support so difficult? Not trying to point fingers (I'm sure it IS insanely difficult), just curious about the details.

 

1) Most computers do not support the ComLynx baud rates

2) It is hard to react to data coming in a byte at a time and still maintain low lag times.

 

The most successful approach could be to emulate RedLynx protocol that was in use for almost all old ComLynx games. In this protocol you can deal with messages instead of bytes. So you do not have to emulate the 65SC02 at all while running ComLynx. This would allow emulators to work over internet also.

[Swami]

You want HANDY for Lynx emulation. RetroArch uses it as the Lynx emulation core, too.

 

https://www.bannister.org/software/handy.htm

 

Why is the sound so jittery?

[Heaven/TQA]

me discovered that Mednaffen ist best for recording video. Handy I had display and bad sound jittery issues, too on Windows. so I have choosen Mednaffen to record proper video for youtube.

[sage]

problem is not the emulator core, which is mostly identical. but the old windows sound system just sux.

PS: I am still looking for a volunteer to update the windows handy version with a better sound driver...

[Tidus79001]

Why is the sound so jittery?

This question comes up a lot due to the updated version of Handy with the fix the audio bug never having been added on Sourceforge.

 

me discovered that Mednaffen ist best for recording video. Handy I had display and bad sound jittery issues, too on Windows. so I have choosen Mednaffen to record proper video for youtube.

The Sourceforge page for Handy is in desperate need of being updated so that this question as to why Handy has issues with the audio, or how to fix it stops getting asked over & over again. Most people are not aware that there is a later version of Handy that fixed this issue a long time ago. How do we go about getting Sourceforge updated with this latest version? Out of all the Lynx enulators I find Handy to be the easiest for Lynx emulation. I used Mednafen, but getting it setup is jumping through hoops, and a lot of people would not know how to do so.

 

Maybe for the time being we could pin this the following thread to the Lynx section of the forum as a FYI that there is a version of Handy that has the sound bug fixed.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/236539-handy-sound-fix-added-to-any-emulator-ports/

 

Has this sound fix been added to the Windows version? In Handy 0.95 on my 4.3ghz i5 I get sound stuttering all the time and no bicycle squeak in California Games under Handy. All works fine in Mednafen.

Yes, in this version:-

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wkn27s28t79xiye/Handy0.971.zip?dl=0

This version I updated also includes LX NETs fixes (3 or more fixes he came up with for graphics issues) and also a fix for Gates of Zendocon sample on intro which I fixed.

Gadget, Good work on fixing this irritating bug.I just found this thread on Handy 0.971 while looking for a fix for the sound issues in 0.95 (and lower). Sourceforge only has 0.95 from 10 years ago (someone really dropped the ball there by not keeping the project updated with the latest build). This really needs to be added to the Sourceforge Handy page so that others looking to use the Handy Emulator will not give up on using it when they hear the sound and consider the emulator broken. I know that personally I stopped using Handy for quite sometime as I found the sound issues to be unbearable as it totally ruins that game experience. There are other multi system emulator that support the Lynx, but Handy is still the best and easiest Lynx Emulator to use. Just saying that not everyone is going to stumble on this old thread and having 0.971 only hosted on a personal dropbox account will lead to it eventually getting lost as this isn't a best practice for archiving the update.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Tidus79001

[Swami]

This question comes up a lot due to the updated version of Handy with the fix the audio bug never having been added on Sourceforge.

 

The Sourceforge page for Handy is in desperate need of being updated so that this question as to why Handy has issues with the audio, or how to fix it stops getting asked over & over again. Most people are not aware that there is a later version of Handy that fixed this issue a long time ago. How do we go about getting Sourceforge updated with this latest version? Out of all the Lynx enulators I find Handy to be the easiest for Lynx emulation. I used Mednafen, but getting it setup is jumping through hoops, and a lot of people would not know how to do so.

 

Maybe for the time being we could pin this the following thread to the Lynx section of the forum as a FYI that there is a version of Handy that has the sound bug fixed.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/236539-handy-sound-fix-added-to-any-emulator-ports/

 

 

 

 

Thanks! This is much, much better. For the future, there does seem to be a larger than usual amount of controller lag when I was playing batman returns, first game I tried. It was most notable when trying to jump the bikes...maybe 300ms.

[sage]

The origial author lost interesst, thus if you want to improve it, fork it. Find my latest patches here. the discussion you find in the development forum.

 

https://github.com/bspruck/handy-fork

 

all changes have been ported to libretro. Because of the missing source repository for mednafen, i gave up patching there.

 

https://github.com/libretro/libretro-handy/

[UHATEIT]

Handy works great for me on my PSP. I know that's not the MAC situation the OP was asking for. But it's been really nice on the PSP in full color and nice looking screen. Saved me from having to get the McWill.

[ThomH]

On the Mac, I'm much more inclined to recommend OpenEmu, which now includes the Lynx, than anything by Richard Bannister.

 

OpenEmu is just yet another umbrella collection of other emulators under a common interface stuck in the miasma of "cores". So far, so generic. But since there's really only the one common ancestor of all current Lynx emulations, that's really just an observation that you'll get pretty much the same code whatever you download.

 

Unlike Bannister's efforts though, there's no upsell. No additional shareware 'Emulator Enhancer' to install if you want fullscreen and joystick support.