Miggy Emulator

I've been wondering where best to post this, but here seems like a good place.

I've been developing an open source Java Amiga emulator called Miggy. I'm blogging it's development for anyone that's interested and I'm hosting the code on Googlecode. It's still in early development but looking promising. The initial aim is to emulate an Amiga 500 entirely in Java.

I'm hoping I'll be able to pick some of the fine Amiga brains here when I run into the inevitable questions (although I couldn't decide where the appropriate place to post emulation questions would be ?).

The blog is HERE and the google code project is HERE.

Anyway, always grateful for feedback and comments on the project.

Edit: This should've been posted in News I think doh! - Can a mod move it please ?

[bLAZER]

Very interesting... I wish you good luck. It would be total awesomeness to look at demos/games in the webbrowser, like linked from bitfellas and HOL I've had my doubts about java being fast enough to emulate an amiga... but that will of course change as computers are getting faster.

[Paul_s]

It will also need a built-in 'work mode' so that one press of a secret key combination will flash up a work-related document in 0.00001ms.
Not that I mess about at work or anything

[Charlie]

Most interesting project you have there t0ne.

I look forward to your progress with much interest. I can imagine lots of uses you could put a Java-based emulator to...

Originally Posted by bLAZER

Very interesting... I wish you good luck. It would be total awesomeness to look at demos/games in the webbrowser, like linked from bitfellas and HOL I've had my doubts about java being fast enough to emulate an amiga... but that will of course change as computers are getting faster.

I've seen some cool stuff done in Java recently and finding my old Amiga Hardware Reference manuals in my parents loft a couple of months ago made me determined to have a go at this.

I've posted a bit on the blog about performance but in the last couple of days I have tried a speed test of my 68000 CPU emulation and was quite surprised with the results. It will run at around 64Mhz on a 2.4Ghz Quad core (not that the number of cores matter as the emulation is all in a single thread at the moment) running XP Pro SP3 and around 85Mhz on my 2.5Ghz MacBook Pro. Given that this is unoptimised code that I've tried to write in a reasonably elegant OO manner it goes to show how effective the Java VM has become.

I think using Java opens up quite a few possibilities, and it will be interesting to see where this ends up

[bLAZER]

Yeah I read a number of your posts... however you have no graphics and sound and things will surely slow down A BIT when you implement that

So, out of curiousity how long will it take until you can run a simple program and output something on screen? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year?

[andreas]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

It will also need a built-in 'work mode' so that one press of a secret key combination will flash up a work-related document in 0.00001ms.
Not that I mess about at work or anything

This is commonly called a "boss key", I think.

[tonyyeb]

Good start. I look forward to more news on this project in the future. Keep us updated in this thread.

Originally Posted by bLAZER

Yeah I read a number of your posts... however you have no graphics and sound and things will surely slow down A BIT when you implement that

So, out of curiousity how long will it take until you can run a simple program and output something on screen? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year?

Hehehe yea just a bit
The speed test was really just about finding out where I was in terms of being able to emulate the real thing. I had no idea what kind of speed I was going to get or whether there was going to be enough headroom to emulate the rest of the system. I still don't really know but I've got to think that it can be done, given the results so far.

I'm working on the DMA controller and figuring out how best to handle the custom registers at the moment. My first target is to try and get something of a display going as I'm itching to see some graphical output.

I would hope a simple program outputting something to the screen would come in the next couple of weeks or so.

It's very motivational knowing that there are like minded people interested in the project, asking questions and offering suggestions, so thanks for the best wishes and input so far

[TCD]

Best of luck with your emulator t0ne Have you can make it work at a decent speed Would be awesome to see the first running games in it