6502 simulator/emulator on iOS?

[shawnleblanc]

Hello!

It's been a while since I last visited!

Are there any 6502 simulators for iOS? An app that would let me write assembly code in it and have it run on an emulated machine. Kinda like 6502asm.com, but as an app. I don't imagine there are many, if at all, but I figured I'd ask. Google didn't reveal anything obvious.

Thanks!
Shawn

[BigEd]

I'd add easy6502 for the in-browser experience, but I don't know of a native app. You're most likely to find a games emphasis rather than a programming emphasis, I expect.
(There are more in-browser emulators: see here for a curated selection, and here on this site of course.)

[White Flame]

Does Apple still have rules about not allowing end-user coding in their published apps? I know some retro computer emulators ran afoul of this in the past, so that might affect the situation.

[Procrastin8]

I know this thread is really old but I have built a 65C02 simulator for iPadOS. I have not actually submitted it for review as there are still plenty of things that are missing (assembling, disassembling, syntax highlighting) and I am concerned about apple simply rejecting it, but I have added some pretty major limitations to hopefully mitigate some of that risk, namely:

• this is a learning tool, it is not meant to play commodore or NES games, so the only code it will run, is code I have included or code you write yourself
• it does not simulate cycle count or speed. it doesn't even "run", it does single stepping only
• it has only one system definition (devices, memory layout, etc) pre-defined by me, largely focused around the Ben Eater (and therefore Garth Wilson) sytem layout

In the future, I hope to be able to lift some (but definitely not all) of these restrictions. Again, my focus is on testing my own code, not trying to run abandonware, that focus will not change. But if anyone is interested in trying it (provided they approve my Test Flight beta) DM me

Included is a current screenshot of the debugging view

[shawnleblanc]

Nice! Keep going!

[Aloha6502]

Procrastin8 wrote:

I know this thread is really old but I have built a 65C02 simulator for iPadOS. I have not actually submitted it for review as there are still plenty of things that are missing (assembling, disassembling, syntax highlighting) and I am concerned about apple simply rejecting it, but I have added some pretty major limitations to hopefully mitigate some of that risk, namely:

• this is a learning tool, it is not meant to play commodore or NES games, so the only code it will run, is code I have included or code you write yourself
• it does not simulate cycle count or speed. it doesn't even "run", it does single stepping only
• it has only one system definition (devices, memory layout, etc) pre-defined by me, largely focused around the Ben Eater (and therefore Garth Wilson) sytem layout

In the future, I hope to be able to lift some (but definitely not all) of these restrictions. Again, my focus is on testing my own code, not trying to run abandonware, that focus will not change. But if anyone is interested in trying it (provided they approve my Test Flight beta) DM me

Included is a current screenshot of the debugging view

There is this on the App Store, been there for a decade already

http://alsoftiphone.com/i41CXplus/

and it allows full featured programming. It is an excellent emulation of that calculator platform. It's basically a little computer, not really calculator.

For an iPad/iPhone 6502 emulator, especially if I were to pay money for it (and if you go that route please make a PRO and a LITE version instead of in-app purchases that I need to "Restore Purchase" for new installs), I would want a decent text editor and assembly functions, and debugging of course. Just as simple as the web-based Easy6502, with basic keyboard input and simple memory-mapped graphics.

Actually recreating the AIM-65 would be cool, including thermal printer. Look at the above app for its excellent thermal printer simulator. I talked to the author before, and he said he actually had to carefully look at the colors that came out of real thermal paper to try and reproduce it. His app is a work of art and labor of love. Very detailed reproduction/emulation.

[spicyjack]

I'm guessing the author of this app is not on this forum, or they might have spoken up already, but there's an iOS app in the App Store called "VirtualKIM" that will emulate a 6502, with a keypad + 7-seg LEDs (KIM-1) or in terminal mode (KIM-1 or Apple-1). The author just added a basic assembler in the latest release.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/virtualki ... mpt=uo%3D4

It's a free app.

[jfoucher]

spicyjack wrote:

It's a free app.

The app looks good, it’s a pity it’s only for iOS 14...

[Dr Jefyll]

Welcome, spicyjack ! Thanks for sharing that with us.

-- Jeff

[floobydust]

jfoucher wrote:

spicyjack wrote:

It's a free app.

The app looks good, it’s a pity it’s only for iOS 14...

Worse yet, on a Mac machine, it's only written for the newer hardware using the M1 chip. Sadly, Apple is moving away from Intel, so there goes my virtual machine platform in time. By time the transition is over, I'll probably be too old to care.

Also wondering how much additional work it would be (for the author) to upgrade to the 65C02 processor.

[jfoucher]

floobydust wrote:

Also wondering how much additional work it would be (for the author) to upgrade to the 65C02 processor.

In my experience it’s only a few hours because the additional instructions are simple ones. (In c or other “high” level languages. In ARM assembly it would probably take me Infinity time.)

[jfoucher]

So virtualkim looked good. I love the Kim-1 and have built a Kim Uno. You can probably understand my frustration with the app not running on my iPhone 6 (iOS 12). So in the last few days I made a Kim-1 emulator that runs on everything from iOS 9.3. This means you can repurpose even an iPhone 4S to run it! A Kim-1 in your pocket at all times isn’t that great? I have also managed to have it build automatically for Mac OS even though the interface is a bit ugly (10.15 only though :/ but works on intel processors )
If you have a Mac with Xcode you can download the project on my github.
Otherwise well I don’t really know, I don’t feel like paying apple 100€ just to put up this free app... Any suggestions on this front?

The feature set is pretty bare right now, having only the keypad and 6 digits display. The emulation runs at about 7mhz on my phone but there is a way to limit it to 1 MHz

What should I work on next ? A serial terminal or a way to easily upload code to ram ? Do you have any good programs for the Kim-1 that I should include by default ?
Thanks !

Edit: Download the Mac version from here: https://github.com/jfoucher/KimOne/releases/tag/V0.0.1

[ThisWayUp]

sweet! i have a really old ipod touch just sitting in a drawer ill have to see what version of iOS its running.

[jfoucher]

Ohh, great idea, I'l check mine as well ! Although I seem to remember it was much older than that

Regarding the application I presented, I have got the serial terminal with tinybasic working!

Next will be a way to upload our own programs to RAM, to replace the tape input of the real KIM-1.

[jfoucher]

Well my ipod touch is a second gen one, with iOS 4. Still works fine though!