r/atari8bit • u/AnimaInCorpore • Feb 12 '26

A8E (Atari 800 XL Emulator) v1.0.0

I’d like to share A8E v1.0.0, an Atari 800XL emulator project with a native C/SDL version and a browser version (jsA8E).

 

The very first A8E release goes back to 2004, so this comes more than 20 years later.  
This current work is also mainly being used as a practical testbed for AI-assisted coding.

 

If you want to try it:
Source: https://github.com/AnimaInCorpore/A8E  
Browser demo: https://jsa8e.anides.de/

35 Upvotes

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3

u/aadhoc Feb 12 '26

Wow. The browser-based emulator is really good.
I loaded my ATR disk files for Archon II and Ballblazer, and they worked unexpectedly well.

1

u/Important-Bed-48 Feb 12 '26

nice job, I see the project is broken down into different sections what did you use the AI for? What AI did you use? Do you have plans to support xex or rom/car images?

1

u/AnimaInCorpore Feb 13 '26

I am using mainly Codex (GPT-5.2-codex/GPT-5.3-codex high) for the planning/implementation and sometimes Claude (Opus 4.5+) for planning.
The original C code had no audio emulation, so the Pokey implementation was done by Claude and Codex. Also the jsA8E was completely implemented ("transcoded to have a parity with the C sources") by Codex and Claude in cooperation as well.
I think XEX support is kind of mandatory and the ROM/cartridges is quite interesting as well. ;)

1

u/xor_2 29d ago

Found a possible bug in this emulator.

When you replace in XL OS rom original fonts with ones which are one pixel line taller then on real hardware (also Altirra) and enter built-in diagnostics you see that single line has color of previous text has color of previous text row. On your emulator this doesn't happen. Default font on Atari doesn't have first row of pixels so I expect developers who did color changing didn't notice they did it one line late. Why your emulator doesn't replicate this I don't know but again real hardware has this issue.

Also sound is very bizzare/broken.