Editors / Emulators for Mac

[Spider]

17 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

However, these are just my personal preferences. I know people use other emulators, like Fuse or Qaop. It would actually be interesting to hear what other emulators people use these days

I'm similar but reversed 😉 

I use Spin 99% of the time as I like the way it works plus the ease of 'small code edits' directly.

To record .rzx's I use Spectaculator as Spin likes to pause it on each save (hugely annoying) plus I find it easier with the INS/DEL of Spectaculator.

I do have Zero and Fuse installed but they are (probably) out of date and I only use them if I have a specific need. In particular Zero has an absolutely fantastic debugger, you can break on a memory location being read -or- (or not and) being written or when it contains a specific value and only that value. Also you can break on registers containing specific values (say "Break if HL is set to 34567) etc. It is not hugely friendly I found as the 'continue/start' ignores the settings you have to use the actual debug window to restart but in the past I have found it hugely helpful for backtracing, where for instance someone has provided a poke for infinite lives or such but then I want to backtrace to where they are actually initially set instead. Does save time looking 😉 🙂 

I do remember ZX32 for Windows 9x and also X128. The latter 'full version' (or was it the former?) was released free I think eventually. I do recall one of these, the demo trial version after 10 minutes would not expire but set it to full speed.

[GawpGRP]

23 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

I used zx32 back in those days, but it's definitely out of date now.

I believe this list of emulators may be useful, and also this one (the latter featuring direct download links).

That’s great, thanks Daniel 🙌

[GawpGRP]

And thanks @Spider too 🙌

[Richard Hallas]

On 4/24/2024 at 3:03 PM, IRF said:

I think @Richard Hallas uses a Mac, so he may have some experience in this regard? 

I do use a Mac primarily, yes, and still RISC OS too, some of the time. I only use Windows when I have to, because I really dislike it.

I do get frustrated, though, by the fact that so many of the emulators, editors and tools that I’d like to use are typically Windows only. Or Windows and Linux only, but never Mac. It’s though there’s a conspiracy only ever to support crap user interfaces! 😉

Nevertheless, there are still lots of options on the Mac, and plenty of Spectrum emulators (including two separate ports of Fuse).

When I want to use PC software I typically use Parallels Desktop, which is an absolutely fantastic product and typically just as fast as a real PC. Or there are several Wine-based alternatives that perform really well too; CrossOver is a good commercial option with a range of enhancements, but there are several free Wine-based options.

The complication of recent years, though, is the move from Intel to ARM in recent Apple Silicon Macs, as this has had ramifications in terms of PC emulation/virtualisation. Basically, it means that if you’re on a modern M-series Mac, then (a) you have to virtualise a recent ARM-based version of Windows under Parallels, and (b) a lot of the Wine-based options are Intel-only, so won’t work at all. But it could be worse. If you’re happy to use Windows 11 under virtualisation, then it’s likely to run everything you want, and as for Wine, CrossOver somehow still works (very well) on the latest M-chips – and new freeware options seem to keep appearing.

Of course, it would still be vastly preferable to have native tools on the Mac, so if John or anyone else were to build JSWED for the Mac, I’d be extremely interested.

At one point I did start making a half-hearted attempt to get JSWED working on the Mac myself. Unfortunately my personal circumstances these days are such that I have very little free time of my own in which to tinker, so I can’t say anything very useful about JSWED specifically, except that I’m sure it’d work in something like Parallels or CrossOver. But I’d love it if someone created a decent native port. If that happened, it’d probably give me the incentive to start on a new JSW game myself.

[GawpGRP]

Thanks @Richard Hallas, appreciate the reply. Mine is not M series so one of the tools you mentioned should be ok. I don’t think I have the time or knowledge to rework JSWED on the Mac, so my choice is either a windows em or using my old Windows laptop. Either is ok at the moment. 
currently I have it all working on the laptop so all ok for now. I will finish what I started over 20 years ago!!

[igormakovsky]

Due to recent activity of JetSetDanny in playtesting of my Frosya the Cat game, I once again can confirm, that launching JSWED upon Mac is so much in need. I would definately create something new for the JSW scene then! As JSWED is unix compatible, I suppose it would be not impossible to make an installer for a mac for a pro user (sadly, I'm not).

[igormakovsky]

I did it. JSWED runs on Mac!

Free and easy.

1. Download Jswed229.exe
2. Download and run Porting Kit. It is safe.
3. Give it permission to read some folders like Download folder where you keep Jswed and some games to edit.
4. Switch to Apps → Custom port, like on the screenshot
5. Agree on all, choose downloaded jswed229.exe when prompted
6. When it's done you get an app that runs windows based software in one click perfectly

Happy JSW editing, mac users

[jetsetdanny]

Well done, Igor! 😁

Did you try porting JSWED version 2.3.7 as well, by any chance? Even though John Elliott describes it on his website as "the latest Unstable Version", it is really THE version to use, IMPO, unless you like/are used to 2.2.9 so much that you want to stick to it. 2.3.7 is at least as stable as 2.2.9, in my experience.

In fact, now that I've looked it up, I can see that v. 2.3.7 was released on 7th April 2015. So a month from now it will be 10 years since its release. High time to change the description, John, if you happen to read these words! 😉

[igormakovsky]

I haven't tried, yet it seems there will be no problem. It doesn't depend on the current version only. I haven't used it due to unstableness, so it might be a good idea to mark it a the final stable one.

Was so inspiring to launch a software I haven't been using for almost 20 years straight

[jetsetdanny]

Happy JSWEDiting, Igor! 🙂