caio is an emulator of hardware platforms with a strong focus on 8-bit
home computers and consoles.
The following platforms are emulated:
- Commodore 64
- NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)
- Sinclair ZX-80
- Sinclair ZX-Spectrum 48K
The emulator of the Commodore 64 supports audio, video, joystick interfaces, the cartridge CRT format, and the C1541 disk drive unit (read and write). The D64 file format is not supported (yet).
This emulator concentrates in pre-1994 games and applications and it might not work as expected with advanced games that exploit specific video/timing tricks discovered after 1994.
The emulator of the NES console supports the NTSC version of this machine so games for the USA and Japan markets should run without any problems. The Family BASIC keyboard is also supported.
Available mappers (cartridge types):
- Mapper 000 / NROM
- Mapper 001 / MMC1
- Mapper 002 / UxROM
- Mapper 003 / CNROM
- Mapper 004 / MMC3
- Mapper 071 / Codemasters
- Mapper 232 / Codemasters
Other mappers are on the way.
The Sinclair ZX-80 came with 4K ROM
and 1K RAM. Soon after its introduction several RAMPACKs appeared, these
extended the RAM up to 16K.
When the ZX-81 came out, its 8K ROM was also available for the ZX-80.
caio supports the original configuration, the 16K RAM extension and
the 8K ROM.
Tape files .O and .P are supported (read and write).
The emulator of the Sinclair ZX-Spectrum supports the 48K version of this machine, the integrated 1 bit audio, the Kempston joystick interface, the cassette TAP file format (read and write) and snapshot files Z80 and SNA.
The supported host platforms are Linux and macOS.
Porting caio to any of the BSD Operating Systems should be smooth.
Refer to the Compile & Install guide.
Refer to the Usage & Configuration guide.
The first release is underway and it includes the following platforms:
Desired for future releases: