Amstrad PC5286 Emulation Part II: The Return

[Banjo]

I *finally* managed to get the bios (main and VGA) from an Amstrad PC5286 which I would dearly love to be able to emulate in PCem.

My question is, what is my next step? Do I talk to someone about working on a patch? I would be happy to do it myself but I have zero developing skills and there are MUCH more experienced people here, I feel.

Obviously Sarah is busy with the actual program, and it seems a lot of "niche" machines are added via interested users making their own patches, so that's where my thinking went.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated if it means getting this Amstrad machine available for emulation.

Not sure how posting bios files goes, so I won't make it available on this forum (it will likely be available on my blog though) but happy to share with anyone who asks in the name of adding it to PCem.

(I am also looking to dump the bios of an Amstrad PC7486 as I have one on the way and would love that to be able to be emulated too!)

[Siggy12]

send the the roms to the developer

[Cheez]

I wouldn't recommend that as I don't think anyone's actually done that before. And it would probably be annoying for someone who has other things to do than implement random machines.

[Siggy12]

I wouldn't recommend that as I don't think anyone's actually done that before. And it would probably be annoying for someone who has other things to do than implement random machines.

look here...
http://pcem-emulator.co.uk/phpBB3/viewt ... e71101f31d

[Cheez]

Hm. Still, it's not a good idea to do that without knowing what's up first.

[Banjo]

I was contacted by someone from MAME and gladly posted the bios roms for them, however I still see the best future chance of emulating this machine being PCem, so if the dev or anyone else wants the roms to look into creating a patch, please let me know and I can send them (or a link to them).

My first and foremost concern was getting the bios roms "out there" as they seemingly have never been dumped before and I hated the idea that they might be lost forever. Obviously the best outcome though is that they actually lead to emulation. The roms are at least online now, which makes me very happy. As we all know, once something is online, it very rarely vanishes completely, so I consider this "preserved" to a degree.

I'm not sure if I should link to them here, though; I would be *very* surprised if anyone including Alan Sugar himself had a copyright issue given this machine is decades old, long discontinued, and the company itself no longer exists... but I don't want to tread on any toes as I know some folks get worried about such things (and fair enough, if it's their own site... and ass on the line!).

[JohnElliott]

Certainly in the past Amstrad have been happy to grant permission for use of their ROMs in emulators, but these days I think the copyrights are owned by Sky, who may not be so obliging.

[Banjo]

Certainly in the past Amstrad have been happy to grant permission for use of their ROMs in emulators, but these days I think the copyrights are owned by Sky, who may not be so obliging.

If Sky want to "make" me buy real Amstrad machines from them rather than emulate, I'd be happy to oblige of course.

[Banjo]

Just a heads up that I've also dumped the bios from my new (old) Amstrad PC486SLC33. Available on my "Banjo's Mods and Retro Gaming" blog (no links here, as bios links aren't allowed). I can't be sure they work properly until someone takes a look and tries to make a PCem patch with them, though!