ArcEm - Archimedes Emulator

Project Links:

Developer Page
CVS Web Interface

Other Emulators:

Red Squirrel
Archie

ArcEm is an emulator for the Acorn Archimedes A400 series machines. It is not as well known as its two rivals, Red Squirrel and Archie. This page hopes to rectify that. Unlike them, ArcEm is open source, and runs on platforms besides Windows. Contrary to belief, ArcEm is not new. It has been around since at least 1998, and possibly a fair bit longer than that.

ArcEm can successfully run both Acorn's RISC OS 3.1 (and earlier) and ARM Linux. A ROM and disk image for the latter is provided.

ArmEm is distributed under the GPL.

Before asking any questions or wondering what has gone wrong, please read the entirety of this document and the manual. There's a good chance your question is already answered in there.

About the versions on different platforms

The development history below is historical. Newer versions are maintained by a team of developers.

X-Windows:

This was the original platform for the emulator, developed by Dr. Dave Gilbert. The emulator runs under Unix (including x86 Linux, ARM Linux and Mac OS X) using the facilities of X-Windows.

RISC OS:

ArcEm can run on later RISC OS machines such as StrongARM RiscPCs. This support was written by Alex Macfarlane Smith, with help by Ian Jeffray and Peter Naulls. Unsurprisingly, it is very slow. Perhaps in future, the emulator will be able to use the native processor. The emulator only runs full-screen at present.

Windows:

In a seperate effort, ArcEm support for Win32 was developed by eQRD. This has now been integrated back into this version by Peter Naulls. The Windows GUI for ArcEm is primitive and would benefit from an experienced Windows programmer.

Mac OS X:

More recently, Michael Dales has produced a port for MacOS X. Information specific to the MacOS version is not contained on these pages. Instead, refer to the ArcEm for MacOS X page.

GP2X:

Work has begun on a port to the Gamepark Holdings GP2X hand held console. To date, the emulator builds and can boot RISC OS. It's terribly slow (around 3x slower than on a RiscPC) - no clues why yet. We use the GP2X RGB hardware scaler which is functional but ugly -- a better bet would be to try using the overlay surface, or use the ARM940 2nd processor to be a video scaler. The mouse cursor is emulated via the GP2X hardware cursor, and the joystick operates as mouse input. Keyboard input is via the few buttons available, and simplistically via the serial port. Latest version here

Obtaining ArcEm

ArcEm may be retrieved via CVS from SourceForge. The module name is 'arcem'. The tag "version_100" references the current release version.

Binary versions are available for x86 Linux, RISC OS, and Windows.

Using ArcEm

Full usage information and ChangeLog are available in the manual.

As distributed, ArcEm is set up to boot an ARM Linux ROM with a disc image. It can also boot RISC OS 3.1 ROMs. Do NOT ask me for a ROM image. I am not able to supply you with it. Anyone doing so will be burnt at the stake.

Issues with ArcEm

The Windows ArcEm GUI has many deficiencies. Someone may have the enthusiasm to improve this.

Building ArcEm

Please tell us if you cannot get ArcEm to build using these instructions, or if there are build failures.

X-Windows:

With X development libraries installed, ArcEm should build out of the box. The exception is if you have a big-endian system, in which case you need to make a small change to the Makefile (documented near the top).

RISC OS:

ArcEm builds with GCC. You should use the following command:


     make SYSTEM=riscos-single

It is possible to build with Leo White's RiscXLib if you really want to make an X Windows version under RISC OS, but that is beyond the scope of this guide. Finally, it is also possible to cross compile it using GCCSDK. e.g.:


     CC=/home/riscos/cross/bin/gcc make SYSTEM=riscos-single

The desktop version of ArcEm has not been developed yet, and will not build.

Windows:

ArcEm will build under Cygwin. It builds a version which is indepedent of Cygwin (unlike the previous version of ArcEm for Windows), so you will also need to ensure you have mingw-runtime library installed (from Cygwin setup). Use the following command:


     make SYSTEM=win

Additionally, ArcEm will build in VC++. Project files are provided for this in the 'vc' directory.

GP2X:

The Makefile assumes that you have DevKitGP2X installed in D:/gp2x/
You can build by simply:


     make SYSTEM=gp2x

Contact

The best place to get in touch with the ArcEm developers is the mailing list.