[Coco] CoCo Emulators

[Bill Pierce]

Being an avid VCC user (and developer), I would normally suggest VCC. But being that you are dealing with PMODEs and artifact colors, I would suggest XRoar. XRoar has about the best emulation of a Coco 2 and the artifact colors are better.


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Goedeken <Richard at fascinationsoftware.com>
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Sent: Thu, Mar 18, 2021 12:23 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo Emulators

There is the venerable VCC but it emulates a Coco 3. If that will suit your 
purposes then I would recommend using that one. Otherwise, if it must be a 
Coco 2 then I would suggest XRoar. Both of these are quite user friendly (at 
least I think they are, compared to the also excellent but difficult to 
configure MAME).

Typically, no matter which emulator you choose, you need to provide the ROM 
files. The COCO has multiple ROMS: BASIC, EXTENDED BASIC, SUPER EXTENDED BASIC 
(Coco 3 only) and DISK BASIC. The ROMs are still under copyright protection 
and so they cannot be distributed with the emulators. The legally correct way 
to obtain them is to dump them from a ROM chip that you own with an EPROM 
burner, but you can also get these files from friends or the grey areas of the 
internet. I think the coco 3 romset is delivered as a single 32k image, but 
the others are 8k each.

Hope this helps,
Richard

On 3/17/21 5:25 PM, Steve Ostrom wrote:
> I’ve been almost exclusively a user of a real CoCo, so now that I want to try a Windows 10 CoCo emulator, I’m a bit behind everyone else here.
> 
> I wrote a CoCo program I want to try out on an emulator.  It uses the PMODE 4 graphics screen, and uses polar coordinates to simulate a very basic spinning reel.  It uses some Extended Color BASIC commands.  So the emulator should emulate an Extended BASIC CoCo 2.  I will eventually write this same program in assembly to see how much speed boost I will get for smoother spinning graphics.
> 
> Which emulator should I use?  Is there documentation for that emulator so I shouldn’t need to keep coming back to the group for questions, such as how to run the emulator, how to SAVE the program, etc?  Does the emulator contain the CoCo BASIC, Extended BASIC and Disk BASIC ROMs, or is that a separate step?
> 
> Thanks for your help to get started.
> 
> --- Steve ---
> 
> 
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
> 
> 

-- 
Coco mailing list
Coco at maltedmedia.com
https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco