Zig-GigatronEmulator

A Gigatron emulator written in Zig

This is a casual project I work on for my own amusement. I'd never written an emulator before, and CHIP-8 seemed too trivial, so I choose the Gigatron instead.

Unfortunately the project is completely unbuildable on current Zig master due to the removal of stage1, which is required to handle the async function

Status

• Emulation of the Gigatron itself is more-or-less cycle accurate, with the exception of how undefined behavior behaves relative to real-world.
• VGA is emulated well enough to show the Gigatron ROM's intended image, although it could be improved in relation to real VGA hardware.
• Blinkenlights blink.
• Audio is emulated, although I am skeptical that the implementation of the bandpass filtering is correct.
• Gamepad emulated (though no platforms yet support an actual gamepad).
• Pluggy McPlugface key inputs work, including gamepad emulation. tinyBasic save/load works (F3 loads, not ctrl-F3).

Platforms

• Currently only Windows Vista or higher is supported on x64.

Building

• Clone the Git repository
• Run zig build

Dependencies

• This project depends on zigwin32 for the Windows build (included)

Running

• Place resulting binary in a directory with a Gigatron rom file named "gigatron.rom". ROMv5a can be obtained here.

Images