Apple IIGS emulator? (For Rapidus/VBXE/U1MB owners).

[leech]

I recently got an Apple IIGS because, well I wanted to play around with it, and for silly reasons I backed Nox Archaist on kickstarter, and figured I should have an original Apple II to play the game on!  And why not go best of breed?

But of course I started running into weird issues with stability, and trying to get some sound card working with music.

 

Then I started thinking, not only does the original Apple II use a 6502, which is slower than the Atari 8-bit one, but the IIGS uses a 2.8mhz 65c816 processor, which is the same one that (if I recall goes up to 20mhz?) is on the Rapidus!  With the extra video modes in the VBXE, we should be able to do full on translation of software from the Apple IIGS, right?

Has just the normal Apple II emulator, but with the VBXE, we should be able to do the 80 column mode, and high resolution as well.  Pretty sure the VBXE is capable of more than the IIGS. 

 

Plus there are other threads already about 2 button joysticks, and we could probably even have an adapter made to use original Apple joysticks (I managed to get the opposite, a Genesis/Atari and/or SNES adapter to the Apple joystick, but I haven't tried it yet).  Thoughts?  I think this would be an awesome use of the Rapidus/U1MB/VBXE upgrades!

[Rybags]

Likely the video hardware is different enough to make VBXE emulation not quite straightforward.

But I've used the blitter to translate the cell based mapping of C64/Plus 4 to Atari's linear type, so maybe similar could be done there.

 

Problem #2 is the extra CPU instructions though something like Rapidus could handle that.  But how many CPU accelerated VBXE machines are out there?  Maybe a few dozen.

 

Biggest problems - lack of IIgs games worth porting.  And OS calls.  Remember IIgs has it's GUI as the selling point and it's a fair bet that plenty of games took advantage of it.

[+gnusto]

8 hours ago, leech said:

I recently got an Apple IIGS because...

 

 

8 hours ago, leech said:

My 'Collection', in an attempted order of when I got them;

Atari 800XL, Atari Mega STe, Atari 800, Atari 600XL, Atari XEGS, Atari 130XE (VBXE,U1MB,SIDE2,Rapidus,Stereo Pokey), Atari TT030, Atari 1040ST, Amiga A4000D, MiST, Atari Falcon 030, Atari Mega STe, Atari 1040STe, Atari 130XE, Atari 5200.

 

One of these statements doesn't match the other!

[leech]

7 hours ago, Rybags said:

Likely the video hardware is different enough to make VBXE emulation not quite straightforward.

But I've used the blitter to translate the cell based mapping of C64/Plus 4 to Atari's linear type, so maybe similar could be done there.

 

Problem #2 is the extra CPU instructions though something like Rapidus could handle that.  But how many CPU accelerated VBXE machines are out there?  Maybe a few dozen.

 

Biggest problems - lack of IIgs games worth porting.  And OS calls.  Remember IIgs has it's GUI as the selling point and it's a fair bet that plenty of games took advantage of it.

Weirdly, I haven't ran into any games that used GS/OS.  I think it was mostly just for the applications.  Would be funny to get that working on an Atari though.

[leech]

4 hours ago, gnusto said:

 

 

One of these statements doesn't match the other!

Ha, I do need to update that... I have since added an A500+ with a Vampire V2, another A4000 in a tower (as opposed to an A4000T), and just yesterday a very corroded 7800 with a cracked case.  Pretty sure the poor packaging did that... newspaper is NOT appropriate packaging...

 

[Rybags]

I think the Sierra graphical adventures like Kings Quest use it.

 

Those games along with Leisure Suit Larry would be good to have but maybe the Apple 2 versions would be more suited.

[candle]

better port Scumm VM or subset that will allow this games to run and get rest from their PC versions

i'm sure it could be done with plain 6502 and fast storage, especially if you consider titles like maniac mansion that introduced SCUMM and were available back then for *sight* commodore

 

[leech]

There are native IIGS games that would be great, like Bard's Tale 1 and 2.

 

But I was thinking also just some Apple II originals, like the Ultimas, there was a remake of Ultima 1 for the IIGS, and the A8s never got Ultima 5.

Edit: also, this would give more reasons for people to upgrade to VBXE/Rapidus, the problem is always how much software would use the upgrades before people buy them, but why make software if no one has the upgrades...

Ha, ordered a physical copy of the 65c816 assembly book, hopefully I can find some time to teach myself how to code...

Edited January 16, 2020 by leech