[Coco] CoCo 3 emulator for OS x (tiger)

[Michael Furman]

On Jul 19, 2011, at 6:55 PM, Ed Orbea wrote:

> All
> 
> I've looked as XRoar (but it only handles CoCo 1 and CoCo 2 emulation)
> I'm having a learning curve with SDLMESS
> So, I'm looking to the list membership for other options for a CoCo 3
> emulator under OS X (G3 running Tiger 10.4.11)
> 
> Thanks
> Ed Orbea
> 

AFAIK: Other than SDLMESS there isn't a native Coco 3 emulator for the Mac.  I have used MESS and MAME for many years.  I usually build them from source, and think the ones that I built and used in 2007-2009 worked pretty well.  I know for a fact that coco emulation top of tree is very broken.

The fact that you have a G3 Mac limits your options.  The best options are available on Intel based Macs:  WINE can run VCC and VCC/JVC/DMK emulators can run inside a DOS/Windows virtual machine under VMware Fusion/ Parallels (Hardware Virtualization Extensions in modern x86 CPUS allow these to run with a only marginal performance penalty due to virtualization)

You can run JVC or DMK emulators under DOSBOX. A dosbox build is available in MacPorts.  This will be rather slow because dosbox will need to do binary translation.

I believe that you can run QEMU on a PowerPC Mac and run Windows and/or DOS virtual machines under binary translation... it will be quite slow.  This is probably not a good option for the likes of VCC/JVC/DMK Coco emulators.

I have used these tools and emulators in various combinations in the past under Linux and OSX to run VCC/JVC/DMK emulators with varying degrees of success.  I really think SDLMESS is the best thing we've got on the Mac since it doesn't need yet another emulation layer in order to run.

I hope this survey of your options is helpful.