Classic99

Classic99 is a Win32-based emulator authored by Tursilion (Mike Brent), who is also involved in other retro communities.

It is special in the fact that the author acquired permission from Texas Instruments to distribute code with their copyrighted ROMs.

Classic99 has an interesting quality in that it can read a raw TI file (as binary) from a folder on a PC. It doesn't necessarily require a disk image in order to load and use a file. It also has some other niceties, such as the use of DirectX for speed-up in drawing, along with the ability to also use a 'filter' to make the output look more like a TV image.

Classic99 started life on the Amiga as Ami99 in '94 or '95, and was later ported to DOS with the same name. Sometime after being ported to Windows it was renamed to Classic99 after confusion about whether it was still for the Amiga or not.

Classic99 features:

• Emulation of the 9900 including cycle counting and external opcodes.
• Full emulation of the 9901, including timers, DSR select, joystick and keyboard
• Full emulation of the sound system, including the noise channels with variable pitch and simulated DAC via both high frequency and CRU (audio gate) input
• Full emulation of the 9918A including undocumented and illegal mode settings and pixel-accurate sprite collisions, and raster effects
• F18A GPU emulation and partial F18A graphical emulation (palettes, multi-color sprites, overlay, dual planes)
• 9938/F18A compatible 80-column text mode supported
• Disk emulation via the 'Files On A Disk' approach, compatible with V9T9 and TIFILES formatted files (with TIFILES preferred to allow transfer with a real TI). Capable of reading Windows text files as DISPLAY type files to allow direct loading of Windows generated assembly object files. Use of Windows paths permits subfolders and variable length filenames, as well as removing the limit on files on a 'disk'. (In practice some TI programs will still limit filename length).
• Full read/write access to disk images today, both PC99 and V9T9 format.
• Implementation of the TI Disk Controller card for disk images for testing
• Experimental support for the CF7 compact flash device
• Experimental support for the Horizon RAMdisk, up to 16MB
• Experimental simulation of the TIPI disk, network and mouse features
• Speech emulation through external DLL, based on publicly available 5200 emulation, including recent corrections shared with MAME
• Display filtering - both to enhance resolution and to reproduce NTSC artifacts, through external DLLs based on code contributed by third parties. Display available via GDI or DirectX, both Windowed and Full Screen available for DirectX
• Speed control - the CPU may be over- or under-clocked in configuration, CPU may be 'overdriven', or the entire system may be sped up
• Built-in ROMs - provided under license from Texas Instruments - includes console ROMs for the 99/4, 99/4A, and v2.2 99/4A, as well as a number of games and user-provided software, right from the menus. Certain disk files, such as QUEST for Tunnels of Doom, and the Editor/Assembler files, are also built in.
• Support for up to 32MB of standard bank-switched cartridge
• Support for 128MB GigaCart as used in Dragon's Lair
• Support for the "UberGROM" GROM emulation system with 120K of GROM and 512K of ROM
• Integrated debugger - offers disassembly, memory view, register dump, debug output, and single step.
• High compatibility - Classic99 runs most software correctly.

Classic99 can be found here: http://www.harmlesslion.com/software/classic99