Java Apple Computer Emulator (JACE) Released

Posted by: Bill Martens Date: January 26, 2011 0 Likes 526 Views

Brendan Robert and Nick Westgate released a new Java based Apple ][ emulator which has a number of features not found in other emulators.  The new emulator also runs on a number of OS platforms that are normally not supported by emulator writers.  The full release from Brendan is below:

Jace (Java Apple Computer Emulator) has finally been poked and prodded enough to be a usable emulator.  It’s not AppleWin, nor will it ever try to be.  But it is cross-platform friendly and runs well at least in Linux.  Most likely it runs well from any platform that has Sun Java 6 or OpenJDK 6 or higher.

What’s new:
-Better speed throttling, no more emulation lurches when sound starts/stops.  Experience is overall much smoother than before.
-Auto-accelerates when disk access is detected, so boot times and CATALOG are a lot faster.
-Primitive joystick support (uses mouse movement for now, more options will be forthcoming later such as keyboard mappings)
-Hard drive (HDV/2MG) support (also 800kb floppy images) for reading/writing
-New configuration interface that allows tweaking various aspects of the emulator — still a work in progress but some things work.  (You have to use it to insert a hard drive image)
-Any card configuration is possible.   7 hard drive controllers?  Why not.  14 floppy drives?  Go for it.  (why??).  Default configuration is Slot 2: SSC, Slot 6: Disk ][, Slot 7: Mass storage
-Configuration SAVE will store settings to be automatically loaded on next startup.  Settings are saved in .jace.conf (delete this to revert settings to defaults on next start)
-Super Serial Card emulation can optionally strip/add LF characters for you — useful for telnet support in some cases, but it’s not complete telnet support like Kegs has.
-Nice shiny startup help screen, with more helpful features to be added later.
-Aspect ratio correction (Press F8)
-Paste support (shift+insert)
-Experimental console support that redirects character input/output to stdin/stdout (doesn’t work very well though) — you can enable/disable it from the config screen.

Download:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/java-ace (download should be 600kb or so, if it is >700kb then it is likely an older copy)

To start: If JRE is registered with your file manager you might have the option to start the program directly by right-clicking and telling it to open with Java.  If that option doesn’t present itself, from the commandline use:

java -jar jace.jar

Thanks to everyone here for all the useful help and code snippets along the way, not to mention very patient testing and helpful feedback.  Big thanks to Nick and MDJ for lots of help needed to even get this behemoth off the ground.  I’ll still be adding features periodically, keep an eye on the sourceforge activity for small progress updates.

Author: Bill Martens
A.P.P.L.E. Chairman of the Board and Club president -- Bill worked for the founder, Val J. Golding and A.P.P.L.E. from 1981 to 1982. In 1999, he began archiving the materials which were distributed and sold by A.P.P.L.E.. That project led to the group that remained of A.P.P.L.E. Bill was involved in the financial industry in Tokyo and has over 20 major office infrastructure projects to his name. In March 2001, he retired to write books and to spend more time pursuing personal interests. As the president of the users group, Bill is in charge of distribution of Call-A.P.P.L.E. magazine as well as the organization of this web site. Bill currently resides in Tokyo, Japan and Shelton, Wa splitting time between the places.
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