Technically the FileReader API of Javascript is used, and this API is currently (November 2010) implemented only by Chrome (or Opera). Every disk is also a drop-area, so you can mount disk images per drag-and-drop from your desktop into the emulator. It opens a new window, showing the current status of each drive. But how do we mount these drives? The “dsk” commands comes to rescue. or via the “bye” executable.Įmu8080 supports four drives, so you can either format the other drives (“F” command) or search for other images on the internet and load them yourself. To go back to the monitor, you have two choices: Ctrl. Ta da!, CP/M 2.2 has been loaded and started! Now issue a “g” command to start execution. With the “b” command, the boot sector is loaded into “main memory”, starting at address 0. This needs to be done only once, causing the disk to now be loaded into your browser as Emu8080 drive 0. This command expects the image of an 8-inch IBM formatted SS/SD diskette and writes it sector-wise into the browser-local WebSQL database. To insert a pre-formatted CP/M disk, issue a “r 0 cpma” command. The first step in using it is to either insert a pre-formatted disk or to format an empty disk. “r file” reads an Intel HEX file into memory, for example “r basic” will load the well-known Microsoft 8K BASIC interpreter for the Intel 8080.īut as already mentioned, a disk subsystem is also available. Without any parameters, it lists the available files on the tramm.li server. So far this is pretty normal machine emulation.
Now you are working inside a classical machine monitor for an 8080 microcomputer from the 70’s. Want to try out? Use Chrome6+ (or Safari5) and visit Together with CPU and RAM emulation, you have a complete machine inside your web browser… Drag-and-Drop is used to mount a desktop file onto the virtual tape device.
Modern web browsers offer a local WebSQL database, which is used to implement block storage devices. Such emulators are nice to play with but they are incomplete – they lack an Input/Output subsystem.Įmu8080 is the first known Javascript-based emulator which adds a floppy disk system, a fast paper tape reader/writer, a line printer and a VT100 terminal emulator to the mix. There are a lot of web-based computer emulators out there for ancient machines – the Commodore 64 and MSX home computers or the more exotic Space Invaders arcade machines.
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