Every retro computing aficionado will tell you that there is no better experience than running your favourite program or game in the real machine. 6-channel Mockingboard sound card emulation, including the ability to record and play back music, and write your own with a built-in six. But microM8 is also a solid Apple II emulator with all the common features you would expect, such as: Full-screen and windowed modes rendered in high-definition using OpenGL in LED, raster and 3D voxel styles.
Apple Ii Emulator No Rom Full 68000 SpeedsFor those who like to spend the time programming retro games or applications, the fun is to code for the machine, but not in the machine. Run classic Apple Macintosh, Atari ST, and Atari 8-bit software When released in September 1992 at the Glendale Atari Fair in California, 'Gemulator' was the worlds first Atari ST emulator for the PC.Written in almost nothing but 486 machine code, Gemulator 1.0 was capable of running Atari ST software at full 68000 speeds on Intel 486. This game was Gemulator 9 Updated Novemby Darek Mihocka.You can grab these files right here, in the Apple II download section.Now, with the ROM files in place, you will have Virtual ][ acting exactly like an Apple II. If you had it already running with with the message mentioned earlier, just click the Boot button at the top right.The nice thing when you reboot it, is that you will also hear the sound of the disk drive trying to read a disk (which we don’t have yet). You are going to need three files: APPLE2.ROM, APPLEP.ROM and APPLE2E.ROM, and they need to be place in the Virtual ][.app is. For the unregistered version, you will always see the “Evaluation Version” message at the bottom right of the screen.Virtual ][ Initial ScreenThe good thing is that the screen message is self-explanatory, pointing you to the right direction.Since you are reading this, we also will make your life easier. You won’t be able to do much because it doesn’t ship with Apple’s ROM files, probably to avoid legal problems with the mothership. Realistic sound effects, including Mockingboard emulationYou can download Virtual ][ in the Applications and then drag the image contents to that folder.When you first start Virtual ][, you will see a message telling you that there is no ROM file available. Epson FX-80 and Imagewriter II emulationMost of the program functions work, but the program pauses every few minutes. Evaluation mode this is what you get when you first download the program and run it. After the boot, I pressed the Reset button, and the emulator showed the BASIC prompt, exactly like the Apple II!By default, Virtual ][ tries really hard to give you the “real machine” experience, including an option where you will see the scanlines like an actual CRT monitor.Before we continue, it is worth it to understand the differences between the evaluation version and both commercial licenses available.The program runs in one of three license modes: And if in the future you need more, you only need to pay the difference to get the full license.Another characteristic of the evaluation version is that every 10 minutes, the emulation will pause for 1 minute, showing the following nag screen:Screen asking you to register the softwareAlthough it breaks a little the flow of your experience, the nag screen won’t prevent you to evaluate the software properly. Full license mode: this lifts all restrictions and unlocks the full power of the program.The following table is extracted directly from the software documentation:Full use of matrix printer emulation (no “Evaluation Version” watermark)Use Unix named pipes for serial I/O (experimental)You’re entitled to all future improvements of the programIntelligent power management (as described in Setting the speed)Can resume a machine from a previous sessionA license gives you the right to run Virtual ][ on one computer at a time (you can install it on multiple computers though).The $19 limited license is pretty much what one wanting to play games and do BASIC program will need. This license is mainly intended for users who want to play the old Apple ][ games. Ie for mac sierraFollowing that, I opened the emulator again, and selected File -> Open Recent, and selected the state file I had saved before. As expected, the plotting continued from where it had stopped before. This is really handy when you are playing a very hard game, for example.To test that I executed my BASIC rainbow again, and while it was plotting the lines, I closed the emulator, saving its state. Running the same BASIC program again with different speeds shows that, unlikely back in the 80’s, now you don’t have to go get a coffee while your Apple II performs complex calculations.Another great feature of the emulator is the capability to save the entire machine state, so you can save it at any time and when you restore it, it will continue from that point as if it never stopped. Really neat!A feature that is common on most emulators is the ability to speed up the CPU, which can be done turning the knob Speed in the toolbar. That means that I can use a modern text editor to create the BASIC program, and to see it running, just copy and paste it. I was gladly surprised that Virtual ][ has full integration with Mac OSX, including the capability to paste a text typed in the host text editor into the emulator itself. Another proof that Virtual II is very committed to give the real hardware experience is that, when the unit is being accessed the LED goes on and the perfect sound effect of a floppy drive is played.As mentioned before, to eject the disk from a specific unit, you must click over it – you will see the lid getting opened and another sound effect is played. After the disk is inserted into the select unit, that unit will animate closing the drive lid, and emitting a nice sound effect.
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