BBC Micro and b2 emulator

[spud11]

I've been experimenting a bit with the b2 emulator, but haven't got very far for the reasons set out below. https://github.com/tom-seddon/b2

This is an emulator created by Tom Seddon in about May 2017 on the stardot.org.uk forum to emulate the BBC Micro. Interestingly, b2 uses sdl so hypothetically it could/should be compatible with Retropie. I tried to compile it on my Raspberry Pi 3B but I'm still on jessie and cmake is only 3.6.2 and can't be upgraded further. (My system is now pretty elaborate, so am not looking forward to the transition to stretch which I will need to undertake at some point.)

I can't update cmake to 3.9 as required for compilation. I'm not sure whether stretch includes cmake 3.9 (or higher) but it might be worth having a go at compilation if it does.

There are quite good instructions for compiling b2 if anyone wants to see if they can get it working:
https://github.com/tom-seddon/b2#building
https://github.com/tom-seddon/b2/blob/master/doc/Building-on-Unix.md
https://ninja-build.org/

Ninja-build would need to be installed as well - hence, the address above.

Even if compilation works, it's not clear whether the b2 emulator has commandline support for starting games; it appears it might just be a gui interface. I suspect a GUI is all it has. It does have a help page: b2 --help via commandline.

Anyway, as the BBC Micro is a bit of a hot topic at present for some of us forum members, I thought I would raise this.

[Methanoid]

Such a hot topic.. zero replies...

I wish I had a clue why none of the Acorn machines are in RetroPie.. No Atom, no Electron, no BBC Micro and no Archimedes

This makes baby Jesus cry :-(

[hermit]

I'm also looking for a good emulator for Acorn Archimedes :(
however for BBC Micro you can use lr-mess. the configuration is a bit complex, but it seems to work well

[spud11]

I'm still using AdvanceMame, but have lr-mess compiled so will probably give that a go with the BBC Micro B and with the Electron, which I haven't had a go at emulating yet.

I had another look at the stardot forum again. Still no one working on a Linux or Raspberry Pi variant of Beebem or of any other BBC emulator unfortunately. All the current emulation is in relation to MacOS or Windows.

With emulating the Acorn Archimedes, I've seen somewhere on the web that it can be done using a Raspberry Pi, but as it is based on RiscOS, Retropie is a no go.