Yes, you all knew it was coming... even when you unconsciously denied it... resisting it was a futile attempt...

The first (afaik) 100% *Javascript* MSX Emulator (jsMSX) is now released, currently in beta version 0.9.1. Check it out at http://jsmsx.sourceforge.net !!

Currently it emulates the underlying Z80 CPU, TMS9918 Video Display Processor (VDP), PPI, RAM slots and Megaram. In its present form, it should be able to run any program or game developed for MSX 1.0.

The initial motivation was to find some interesting project to develop while exploring the possibilities of the new <canvas> tag to efficiently display graphics using Javascript in the most recent web browsers like Firefox 2+. As you may have realized, many challenges on performance are faced when emulating in Javascript. But I think that they present an interesting testbed for pushing the current Javascript implementations to their limits and for comparing their relative speed. jsMSX can also be used to tightly integrate existing MSX programs in web page logic.

Of course, there are still lots of work in order to optimize the performance and add MSX 2.0, 2.0+ and TurboR features. Version 1.0 will release an optimized javascript engine for MSX 1.0. Version 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 will be compatible with MSX 2.0, 2.0+ and TurboR respectively. If you like javascript, are just curious or would like to engage in a performance challenge, don't forget to download the source code and contribute back to it.

I would like to invite everybody to check it out, play, enjoy it and report all the bugs to the project forum.

Best,
Marcus Granado

Very nice


(BTW, your html over here is a bit borked. There's a '>' missing at the end of the title, making the CSS style show up as plain text in the page...)

On firefox 1.5 and IE v6 it does not work...
maybe you should consider to support also less demanding browsers

If you want to download the 4 .js files, replace "markup" by "download", then use "Save as ..."

Example :

http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/jsmsx/msx.js?revision=1&view=download

It should be possible to play offline.

When you copy the demo page, 6 .js files are copied in a subdirectory : urchin.js and show_ads.js are Google Analytics tools.

I guess that some changes in the source code of this page (delete the Google parts and change the urls to the BIOS and the ROMS) will be enough !

It does not work offline

Writing MSX emulator should become a mandatory project in every secondary school.
Until now average programming course usually had a "Conway's Game of Life" as it's final project.
This have to change. Every educated person should emulate MSX at least once in his life.

Quote:

Writing MSX emulator should become a mandatory project in every secondary school. Until now average programming course usually had a "Conway's Game of Life" as it's final project. This have to change. Every educated person should emulate MSX at least once in his life.

Are you a little msx fanatic? ( i guess )

No, I just can't count all existing emulators anymore

Quote:

It does not work offline

And I've reinstalled Firefox 1.5.0.6 !, so I can again enjoy the "Panneau de Traduction" extension

cax: I think every college student should help and contribute to openMSX and BlueMSX!

[edit]Oh wait, that is like advertising for other MSX-emulators in this topic

Ah well, let them contribute to jsMSX as well! Yay to all! ^_^[/edit]

But no other emulator can beat blueMSX and openMSX !

Thanks for the free promo .... actually, it was part of our secret deal

hello all. some comments:

ARTRAG: I'm thinking about implementing a fallback mechanism in jsMSX 0.9.2 to support drawing on javascript canvas without using the high performance get/putImageData() functions (they are due only in the next generation browsers such as Firefox 2.0, still in beta). It boils down to using function calls (moveto()/lineto()) instead of a direct array access, and I believe it will impact performance. However, after this modification you should be able to run jsMSX on current mainstream browsers such as Firefox 1.5, Opera 9.0, and even Internet Explorer 6.0 (with google's IE canvas plugin) - albeit a bit slower.

mars2000you: it's possible to run it offline if you sign the javascript code. I believe that it could also run offline from inside a XUL application making use of jsMSX.

DTail: indeed, I was thinking about creating a jsOpenMSX and a jsBlueMSX. what do you think?

[]s,
M.

--
But does it run Linux?

mars2000you: I forgot to add the link: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Bypassing_Security_Restrictions_and_Signing_Code

Very impressive and fun Well done mrcgran. Do you know if a modern high end PC is able to run it at full speed? My laptop doesn't get even close, but its almost two years old.