It is designed to run SymbOS on modern 32 and 64 bit hardware with the highest possible performance. Unlike common emulators for vintage computers, there is only a very thin layer between the Z80 environment and the host system, and there are almost no limitations on speed, memory and graphics.
The original idea was to run SymbOS bare-metal like on a RaspberryPi. Insane has been working on his own operating system called "InsaneOS" for several years, which runs directly on 32-bit RaspberryPi systems. One of its main purposes is to run emulators of vintage computers, music and video players of classic formats and things like ScummVM directly on the ARM CPU without lag, as there are no layers and host-OS interrupts in between. This makes it the perfect base for SymbOSVM. But by using SDL2 it is also possible to run it on Windows or Linux or other modern operating systems.
SymbOSVM offers the following features:
4 MB RAM addressable CPU memory (4 x 16K banked from a total of 256 x 16K)
16 MB RAM accessible via DMA, video and blitter (24bit addressing)
4-bit (16 colors) and 8-bit (256 colors) video display
bitmap mode with all possible resolutions
text mode with 8 x 8 and 8 x 16 pixel characters and a maximum of 256 characters per line
ultra-fast and -flexible video blitter for all kinds of operations, including bitmap handling, on-the-fly color depth conversion and support for proportional text output
"Hardware" mouse pointer
fast and easy access to the host system's keyboard, mouse and real-time clock
text console support for information and debugging
CPU idle mode; this allows the Z80 to sleep when no SymbOS apps are active, saving CPU time on the host side as well.
on an average 2020 computer, the virtual Z80 CPU runs at around 2GHz.
platform independant, using SDL2
32- and 64-bit support
SymbOSVM is available for...
Windows
InsaneOS: works for RaspberryPI Zero (2), 1, 2 and 3 (32bit)
Linux
Download
Documentation
Special keyboard shortcuts
CTRL+ALT+Return: Toggle between window and fullscreen mode
SymbOSVM has been developed by INSANE/altair^rabenauge^tscc in 2023-2024.
SymbOSVM is (C) copyright 2024, INSANE/altair^rabenauge^tscc. It is freeware. Source code and license can be found at https://github.com/insane-rabenauge/symbosvm .
