Discussion Forum for all things Microbee
Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC - Printable Version

+- Discussion Forum for all things Microbee (https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum)
+-- Forum: Microbee Forum (https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/forum-1.html)
+--- Forum: Microbee Software and Documentation (https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/forum-7.html)
+--- Thread: Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC (/thread-999.html)



Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC - fathertedcrilly - 05-03-2026

All,

[ you might see the same post across different forums.  I'm not sure if everyone has access to Facebook, MSPP or Microbee Technology Forums.  Apologies if it seems like spamming ]

My previous attempt at a Microbee emulator (Abeja) turned out to be something of an architectural dead end.

So I decided to let the concept gestate for a while before coming back to try again last last year.

Introducing Novato ( Spanish for beginner, novice or newbie )

Completely rewritten from scratch using modern Swift concurrency,  Novato is now at the point where it can boot BASIC 5.22e.

Of course,  you won't get any further than that at this stage as I still need to :
  • Finish off decoding the z80 instruction set (  mostly flag affecting opcodes )
  • Restructure the emulator hot loop to count t-states and update 6545, audio and interrupt routines
  • Tie keypresses from SwiftUI into the 6545 class
  • Build audio output code
  • Build cassette load/save functionality.

[Image: 34999e8d-b5df-44d4-98cf-b7f04fa15478]

You can find Novato at https://github.com/fatherdougalmaguire/Novato

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Tony


RE: Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC - ChickenMan - 05-03-2026

Well done, a great start, keep it up and I'm sure you will get there.


RE: Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC - RedskullDC - 06-03-2026

Hi Tony, et al.

Looks really good.

Loaded it up in XCode this evening to take a look.

See there is some support for loading some other bundled ROMs.

Looking forward to seeing your progress with it.

Cheers,
Leslie