Can anyone tell me the name of the old 8 bit processor used most for emulator beginners?

Question

I remember a few years ago writing an emulator for an 8 bit processor, which IIRC, never really existed. It was thought up by someone in order to write a emulator, and was referenced a lot for beginners in the field of emulation. I lost the code that I had and I wanted to look it up again. (bummer really. It had a nice debugger, with register, stack, and memory views and break points. Full screen, sound, saved states. I liked it a lot D: )

I've been googling with no luck. The name in my head was Z80, but I quickly realized that that was the processor for the Gameboys xD hahaha

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 24 '11 at 06:57

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I don't have an answer to the specific question (name the 8-bit processor) but on computer architecture courses in college classes they usually teach MIPS (32bit) cpu design.

The emulators used in those courses are usually Mars or QTSPIM which both emulate the MIPS assembly code and don't really emulate the actual cpu.

http://spimsimulator.sourceforge.net/ http://courses.missouristate.edu/KenVollmar/MARS/

There are graphic emaulators for the actual cpu design too, although single cycle, for example: http://jamesgart.com/procsim/

Sorry I couldnt help with the 8 bit cpu.

answered Nov 24 '11 at 06:57

user632607

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Although it wasn't the answer I was looking for, it was still great information! Thanks! Yeah, 8 bit isn't very relevant anymore, but as far as the design of the emulator and processing of op-codes it was small and easy to implement. I made a comment in my original post that I found what I was looking for. It's called Chip-8, and apparently wasn't a processor it was a language, but ran at a byte/op code level so writing a virtual machine for it was very much like the emulation of a really basic processor. – Caleb Stewart Nov 24 '11 at 15:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 10 '12 at 11:15

Chip-8 is what I was looking for!

I came across it here: http://www.zophar.net/chip8.html

Found out it wasn't technically a made up processor, but actually a made up language created for the purpose of writing basic games in old computers. The reason I had it in my head for emulation is because, by writing an emulator for this, you get a very good idea of how to efficiently process op-codes in the emulation of something like a real processor. So it wasn't so much of a "Here is a useful thing to emulate," but more of a "This would be good to show you how to do design the emulator, then you can move on to more complicated things."

Can anyone tell me the name of the old 8 bit processor used most for emulator beginners?

2 Answers2