Arnold

Arnold is an emulator of the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, Plus/CPC+ and VEB
Mikroelektronik KC machines. The 8-bit Amstrad CPC (Colour Personal Computer)
machines, released on the market back in 1984, entered into direct competition
with the other popular 8-bit machines at the time - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum,
sharing the same processor - the Zilog Z80, and the Commodore 64, with
attractive colorful graphics and synthesizer quality sound. The CPC range of
computers became very successful in the western part of Europe, spawning
thousands of software titles - mainly games, but also application software. The
all-in-one concept of the machines made them easily accessible for the people
who wanted affordable computer in their home or office. Sinclair games and
education titles are easily portable to the Amstrad machines, making the Amstrad
CPC series of computers desired platforms for gaming and education. The first
Amstrad CPC models - CPC464 featured 64KB of RAM, Zilog Z80A processor at 4 MHz,
up to 16 colours video from a palette of 27 colours, three channel AY-3-8912
audio and built-in tape deck. The later Amstrad CPC models - CPC6128 featured
more memory - 128 KB of RAM and floppy disk drive. The latest Amstrad CPC
compatible machines - the Plus series featured hardware sprites and scrolling
for games, additional colors with choice of 32 colours from a palette of 4096,
DMA sound and analogue joysticks. Thanks to the Arnold emulator, users can enjoy
the software written for all the CPC and CPC+ range on Amiga machines.


The Arnold emulator is very accurate, featuring full 1us cycle emulation,
emulation of the undocumented features of the CPC+ asic, the undocumented
features of the various CRTC types, undocumented opcodes of the Z80, full
support for Z80 interrupt mode 0, 1 and 2, interrupt mode 0 and mode 2 work as
they would on the CPC+, all the features of the CPC+ hardware (including the
incompatibilities between the CPC+ and the CPC), all the features of the CPC
hardware, Genius mouse, Digital joysticks, different memory expansions:
DK'tronics 64k or Dk'Tronics 256K Silicon Disc, Multiface 2 (the final model
with automatic switch), Digiblaster 8-bit D/A sound device, Inicron RAMROM
device, tape emulation using tape images or sampled/digitised sounds, disk
emulation using disk images, CPC+ cartridge emulation using cartridge image
files, scan-line interrupts from the Z8536 CIO for the KC Compact and
undocumented operation of the AY-3-8912 I/O. The emulator executable file
contains built-in ROMs of the emulated Amstrad machines, provided free for
emulation use by Amstrad plc. The possibility to save machine snapshots make is
easier to play hard to beat or very long games or typing long BASIC type-in
programs. The emulator supports joysticks emulation via AmigaInput making the
games more enjoyable with the retro feeling, not presented by pressing the
keyboard keys.

Recommended games for Amstrad CPC machines are Alien Syndrome, Chase HQ, Elite,
Gryzor, Karnov, Manic Miner, Prince of Persia and The Addams Family.

Notable games for the Amstrad Plus machines are Batman the Movie, Burnin' Rubber
(included with the sold machines), Crazy Cars II, EPYX World of Sports, Pang and
Robocop 2.

Quality software for the Amstrad machines, both brand new and old is widely
available for download on the Internet. With Arnold, all these impressive
applications and games can be used and played on the AmigaOS 4 as well.