how do u make an emulator

[caleb]

i have many emulators for many systems and they are remarkable things, i am just wondering how u can make such a thing, i personally love the epsxe emulators,they run like a charm, i dont know how they can make a thing that runs ps1 games soo good.
i am looking forward to a proper development of a 128-bit system emulator that actually runs commercial games, i know some gamecube games can run on the dolphin emulator.
anyways
catcha
caleb

[onewecallgod]

im sure you need to have extensive programming knowlege (i'm thinking c++). and i think you would need to know the hardware of the thing you want to emulate very well

[Jet Set Willy]

Yes - if you have to ask the question "How do you make an emulator?" you aren't qualified to make one. I'll explain the basic principles though.

Emulators can be made due to the fact that all computers really do is alter RAM values and send signals to output hardware. A ROM file consists of numerical instructions, for example, one instruction might be telling the processor to put the value 3434 into memory address 9384. If the programmer writes an program which can take the ROM file and make a program which interprets the values within in the same way as an actual processor would, he's got the processor portion of the emulator written. From there he just needs to write routines to show data from RAM as video, sound, and to add interrupts and other platform specific things. Some emulator programmers use pre-made emulation cores for common processors (such as the Z80) so that they can concentrate on writing the platform specific stuff.

Learn about low-level stuff and you'll soon be able to go about writing an emulator without wondering how. :-)

[Computergeek]

Can u even make one that acutaly works?

[onewecallgod]

Originally posted by Computergeek@Jul 20 2004, 09:08 PM
Can u even make one that acutaly works?

when you say "you", who is that directed to?

many emulators work

[Guitar Gamer]

Some people suggest starting with NES if you have previous programming language in C++ but if you're relatively new I'd go back even further. Take it back to the basics. Build from the ground up such as a Chip8 emulator.

I'd recommend reading this thread over at NGEmu. It should help you out a lot.

http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php...t=make+emulator

Read up

[animemulator]

Depends on what system you want to emulate. if you no very little don't try anything higher than atarti.

[Jet Set Willy]

Last two posts are semi-bad advice, from non-programmers.

How to make an emulator:

1) Be a programmer.
2) Be self-motivated, and intelligent enough to teach yourself advanced topics.
3) Be the sort of person whose brain works well enough in these fields to automatically have a "feel" for knowing how to do something and how to research it. Fact: Nobody who posts a question on a forum asking how to make an emulator will ever be able to make one. They just don't have the right mindset. A potential emulator programmer would have already found his answers through Google and his own initiative.

[Postspy]

So you want to Create an emulator! B)

You will make a "ATARI 2600 EMULATOR",lets begin..

Download this file first..
The ATARI 2600 Source Code
then upzip this file in its own folder.
This is a Source code for you to look at how to "emulate" meaning "To be like" an "Atari 2600" it is written in C

What you need now is to download "Microsft Visual C++" a program that allows you to READ or edit etc "The ATARI 2600 Source Code"

Do you have "Microsft Visual C++"? you can download it from "Imesh"
Imesh
install imesh then serach for "Microsft Visual C++" its about 80MB

When you have finished all this I will continue from here...

PS: There many ways to do Emulators blah blah..this is my way. goodluck

[Jale]

To make an emulator you must first know how the console works and be very skillful on C++