A chip8 emulator
This is a simple emulator for chip8 chips: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8
In particular, it was implemented using this document http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/classes/2016/4840-spring/designs/Chip8.pdf.
Build
For building the project you need gcc/clang compiler and cmake build tool installed. You also need program_options by libboost and SDL2.
Than, you have to run cmake, for example in this way:
mkdir -p build/Debug
cd build/Debug
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../../
cmake --build . -- -j4
Use
You can find some rom to try, here: https://github.com/dmatlack/chip8/tree/master/roms
You have two programs available:
- dch8 is a dissambler for chip8
- chip8 is an emulator for chip8
dch8
run something like that
./dch8 pong.ch8
and you will get
0x200 ld va, 0x02 ## 0x6a02
0x202 ld vb, 0x0c ## 0x6b0c
0x204 ld vc, 0x3f ## 0x6c3f
0x206 ld vd, 0x0c ## 0x6d0c
0x208 ld i, 0x02ea ## 0xa2ea
0x20a drw va, vb, 0x6 ## 0xdab6
0x20c drw vc, vd, 0x6 ## 0xdcd6
...
0x2f6 sys 0x0000 ## 0x0000
where:
- first column is the memory address of instruction
- second column is mnemonic form of instruction
- third column is a comment with numeric form of instruction
chip8
chip8 is a command to run a chip8 program. For example:
./chip8 pong.ch8
open an SDL window running pong program. Use 'q' or 'Q' to quit, and 1 to 9 or 'a' to 'f' keys as input.
You can use different renderers with flag -r:
- sdl: default renderer. Creates an SDL window where every point is a square with side equals to magnify value.
- text: render graphics using ascii symbols in a terminal 64x32 chars
- debug: show instructions and registers at every step
- dsdl: show instructions and registers at every step, with default rendering