reinette II plus

reinette goes graphical !

After reinette (Apple 1 emulator) and reinette II (the text only Apple II emulator), I am proud to release reinette II plus, a french* Apple II plus emulator using SDL2.

* reinette has two meanings in french : it's a little frog but also a delicious kind of apple

download windows binaries

Featuring :

• all video modes in color
• mono sound with mute/unmute
• 48KB (no language card support)
• paddles/joystick with trim adjustment
• paste text from clipboard
• disk ][ adapter with two drives (.nib files only)
• drag and drop .nib files to inset a floppy
• save floppy changes back to host
• screen scaling by integer increments

It uses the same MOS 6502 CPU emulator as her sisters (now christened puce6502).
You only need SDL2 to compile it. (I'm not using SDL_Mixer, but only the native SDL2 audio functions)

This emulator is not accurate in many ways and does not compete with AppleWin, Epple or LinApple. Better use one of them if you want a good Apple ][ emulation experience.

I wrote it with the goal to better understand the Apple ][ internals, and I'm publishing the sources in the hope they will be of any help.

It's compact, less than 1000 SLOC, with two source files only, one for the CPU emulation, the other for the computer itself.

I did my best to comment the code, and if you have an idea of how an Apple ][ works, it should be easy for you to understand the code, modify and enhance it for your needs (see TODO section).

Startup

You can specify a .nib file on the command line to start the emulator with a floppy engaged in drive 1. Otherwise, the emulator will start with no floppy (and thus wait one until you press the reset key or drag and drop a .nib file)

Usage

Drag and drop a disk image file (.nib format only) to insert it into drive 1
Drop the file while pressing the ALT key to insert it into drive 2

Use the functions keys to control the emulator itself

* F1    : writes the changes of the floppy in drive 0 back to host
* F2    : writes the changes of the floppy in drive 1 back to host
* F3    : pause / un-pause the emulator
* F4    : paste text from clipboard
* F5    : zoom out down to 1:1 pixels
* F6    : zoom in, no magnification limit
* F7/F8 : adjust joystick trim
* F9    : mute / un-mute sound
* F10   : monochrome / color display (only in HGR mode)
* F11   : reset
* CTRL-F11 : break
* F12   : quit the emulator

Paddles / Joystic :

* numpad 1 : left
* numpad 3 : right
* numpad 2 : down
* numpad 3 : up
* CTRL     : button 0
* ALT      : button 1

Limitations

• high pitch noise at high volume on windows (Linux Ubuntu tested OK)
• sound cracks when playing for long period (intro music for example)
• CPU is not 100% cycle accurate - see source file for more details
• colors are approximate (taken from a scan of an old Beagle bros. poster)
• HGR video is inaccurate, and does not implement color fringing
• disk ][ access is artificially accelerated
• only support .nib floppy images. (you can use CiderPress to convert your images to this format)
• only has 48KB of RAM (can't run software requiring the language card)
• and many others ...

To do

• give a warning if the application exits with unsaved floppy changes
• give the user the option to start with the original Apple II rom
• colors where taken from an old Beagle Bros poster, find more accurate RGB values.
• implement color fringe effect in HGR
• optimize sound generation
• optimize disk access (speed is actually a bit artificial)
• re-implement Paddles and Joystick support for analog simulation
• implement the language card and extend the RAM of reinette II plus to 64K to support more software.
• for 6502 coders :
  • add the ability to insert a binary file at a specified address
  • dump regs, soft switches and specified memory pages to console

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simplicity is the ultimate sophistication