yay! now if i only had a 68k calc.

I suggest trying it out on VTI just to see it. It really is quite awesome.

Emulator on emulator! (Then run that on Bochs, in BasiliskII.) Z80->68k->i386->68k->i386

>first person to implement a Nintendo Gameboy emulator
Actually the second. TIGB was first, but wasn't publicised much. It's also very slow.

That's interesting. I would have thought that some Game Boy ROMs would be too large to fit in RAM or Flash ROM. I didn't even think something like this would be feasible.

If the Game Boy's CPU is being emulated, and the CPU is similar to a Z80, then would it also be possible to emulate ASM programs for Z80 calcs? Or would things like ROM call emulation make it difficult?

I think that the program to convert the roms also compresses them.

Nope

Darn I read it wrong...it's the save files that are compressed...

I feel stupid...

The gamebody's processor is a highly simplified Z80, but doing emulation of a 83+ would not only require a much more advanced emulator core, but you'd also have to emulate the entire 83+ OS as well.

Not really. It should be easy enough to interpret the ROM calls - most are left unused, thankfully. Rather than "emulate the TI-83 Plus", "emulate Ion with a few ROM calls" seems a much better idea.

True. Perhaps I should dig into TIGCC

There's a good 83 Ion emulator for the 86 called Ion86...

The 83 and 86 both use the same CPU, though. I figured emulating other CPUs would be harder, because all of the opcodes would have to be emulated.

True...at least writing a Z80 emulator for the gameboy's processor would be a lot easier than writing an emulator for whatever processor the gameboy has that would run on a Z80.

<<I figured emulating other CPUs would be harder, because all of the opcodes would have to be emulated.>>
Well, this is what GB68k does.

And 68k-based calcs have also ROM Calls, which may be very similar to 83+'s ones. Mapping the ROM Calls to the native ones should not be so difficult (although I do not know anything of Z80-based calcs' OS).

But the calling sematics for the ROM calls are probably different -- I know that the 68k series wants them to be pushed onto the stack in reverse order (right-to-left, following the C documentation) and the stack is word-aligned. I don't know whether the z80 requires word-aligned stack, seeing that it is an 8-bit processor.

Well, yeah, and the API calls themselves are probably completely different too, but a "fake" gameboy API could be set up that would call the 83+'s API when needed.

Sorry, I got a few things backwards; replace "83+" with [target system] and "gameboy" with [system to be emulated].

The full Z80 core would not take up too much more code. I have written one before. Since it uses a jump table (I presume), it would not even be any slower, except maybe for the flags, but I have heard of some great success in that area by others. Anyway, I thought I heard the ZX Spectrum used a normal Z80. I made a PC-based TI-81 emulator, so if anyone is interested, I might try to port it to the TI-89/92+. All I would have to do is change the memory lookup code to support the TI-85 & TI-86.

Will we ever see PocketNES-style scaling for this? PocketNES (on the GBA, emulating the NES, see URL) draws a flickering pattern of 6/8ths of all the scanlines, so it looks nice for a blurry LCD screen.

Don't really know where to post this but I guess this is a good place.

I was playing Link's Awakening and I had the Tail Key and was going to the Tial Cave when it crashed...

The last thing I saw was some vertical lines. Also I think it was when I was at the edge of a screen.

Also I think there may be an issue with key recognizing. In Link's Awakening when you use your sword rapidly it doesn't finish a swing before going on to the next one. I didn't remember that when playing on a Gameboy. Also I think the piece of power and guardian acorn last forever but that is probably the clock issue.

I was really getting into the game too... I wish it didn't crash.

Hope I've been some help!

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to test most games in depth. There's probly problems with most games if you play for long enough. I've found at least one crash bug with the current version...I'll release an update as soon as I figure out how to fix it.

>Also I think there may be an issue with key recognizing. In Link's Awakening when you use your sword rapidly it doesn't finish a swing before going on to the next one. I didn't remember that when playing on a Gameboy
I'm guessing that you're just noticing it more on the emu because it's running so much slower. If there really is a problem somewhere, it's probly a cpu bug. I'll look at it.

>Also I think the piece of power and guardian acorn last forever but that is probably the clock issue.
Yeah, they probly use the timer for this. I need to figure out a way to put in the timer (without slowing things down). I may just hack it on (without worrying about the exact timings).

I am willing to test games extensively for you. In fact I intended to fully complete Link's Awakening. My email is gimpynerd@gmail.com if you are interested.

I tried loading links awakening on my calc and I had to keep archiving as it transfered the 10 files. Then when I went to play it it said out of memory. Did I do something wrong?

never mind. I got it to work after I reset my ram. I don't know where it pulled the extra memory from but it worked.

all stored RAM variables are cleared, like entries and Y variables

I think v0.3.1 has fixed this, as I've finished the first level, and in Gopongo Swamp with BowWow right now. No problems at all right now, excellent app :-)