emulation

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Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage
2 months ago
- A Qemu fork by Malte Kuhlmann now emulates the Itanium Merced CPU, capable of running Windows XP/2003.
- Building the cross-compiler (GCC 15.3.0 and binutils 2.46.0) on macOS required workarounds like editing zlib headers.
- The Qemu build uses a custom 'merced' branch, requiring careful configuration to avoid macOS dependency conflicts.
- Windows XP Itanium installation succeeds about 1/5 of the time; RDP is recommended for better usability.
- Future support is expected for Windows Server 2003 and early Itanium builds, but not other OSes like HP-UX or VMS.
- The project highlights ongoing development, with potential for fixing binary compatibility and improving the emulator.
6o6 v1.1: Faster 6502-on-6502 virtualization for a C64/Apple II Apple-1 emulator
2 months ago
- 6o6 v1.1 improves performance with faster addressing modes, trimmed instruction from hot path, interrupt flag control, and fast zero page stores.
- The update includes an Apple-1 emulator (VA1) running on Commodore 64 or Apple II, celebrating Apple's 50th anniversary and the author's 50th year.
- 6o6 uses macros from xa65 for inlining memory access, reducing host instructions per guest instruction from 52.3 to 51.0 (2.6% improvement).
- Apple-1 hardware details: WOZMON monitor, 40x24 text display using shift registers, memory map via jumpers, and no CPU-accessible video memory.
- History of Apple-1 emulators: Mark Stock's Apple II emulator (2006), Simon Owen's SAM Coupé emulator, Green Delicious for C64, and VA1 using 6o6.
- VA1 provides isolation via 6o6, syncs to jiffy clock, handles exceptions, and allows running unmodified Apple-1 software on C64 and Apple II.
- Future plans include a fast path for stack operations and a dynamic pagetable to simplify memory access.
A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator that boots Windows
2 months ago
- A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator version 0.1 has been released, capable of booting Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit for Itanium.
- The emulator was developed by Yufeng Gao with assistance from gdwnldsKSC, achieving a breakthrough in non-x86 CPU emulation, though it runs slowly at performance levels comparable to a 486 on modern hardware.
- Current limitations include no support for OpenVMS, HP-UX, Linux, or BSD, but future development may expand compatibility, with hopes for OpenVMS emulation.
- The code is not open source yet but is planned to be cleaned up and made available on GitHub; there is also a mention of a QEMU fork that can run Server 2008 and uses LLMs.
- Itanium architecture was historically used for HP-UX and OpenVMS, but these have largely migrated or declined, with Windows on Itanium not being widely used in practice.
Reverse-engineering a forgotten 80s arcade game for the Taito SJ System
2 months ago
- A group of arcade enthusiasts discovered the obscure 1982 Taito game 'Adventure Canoe' on the Taito Egret II Mini, a mini arcade console with 40 pre-installed games.
- The game was largely unknown, with minimal pre-2021 mentions, and no original cabinets, PCBs, or art records existed, making it a forgotten title for nearly 40 years.
- The author borrowed the Egret II Mini to reverse-engineer it, starting with hardware inspection, finding UART ports, and analyzing boot logs, but faced limitations without soldering tools.
- By examining the console's firmware update file, the author extracted a Linux filesystem and discovered encrypted ZIP archives containing game resources and the frontend binary.
- Using Ghidra to analyze the 'game_launcher' binary, the author found a hardcoded 64-character password that decrypted the main 'egret2' binary, revealing internal logic.
- Dynamic analysis with gdb and gef on a Raspberry Pi helped locate the decryption key for 'resource1' and 'resource2' archives, allowing extraction of ROM files.
- The ROM files needed splitting to match Taito SJ hardware specifications, and MAME's source code was updated to include checksums and DIP switches for 'Adventure Canoe'.
- After building MAME with the new game added, it ran successfully, and the author also explored porting it to the Analogue Pocket using an existing FPGA core.

emulation

Windows XP 2002 for the Itanium: Unbridled rage

6o6 v1.1: Faster 6502-on-6502 virtualization for a C64/Apple II Apple-1 emulator

A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator that boots Windows

Reverse-engineering a forgotten 80s arcade game for the Taito SJ System