OpenEmulator For Mac

OpenEmulator aims is an easy to use, accurate, portable emulator of legacy computer systems.

By using a software components framework, it is easy to expand a software emulation with additional software devices, just as a real system could be expanded with real devices.

The first pillar of OpenEmulator is a component framework. The "Inversion of Control" design pattern is used to wire software components through an XML description, and therefore increase the level of abstraction.

This XML file also stores the configuration and state of the components, thus saving and opening an emulation from disk is straightforward. One last advantage is that it is possible to add "devices" to an emulation, even while it is running. You could, for example, add a particular sound card or a certain kind of monitor, in the same fashion a real system is set up. The second pillar is a state-of-the-art user interface. After many experiments, an easy to use but yet powerful design was developed: an "emulation" window which lists connected devices. Each device has properties which the user can modify (e.g. motherboard jumpers, or video monitor settings).

There are "mountable" devices that let the user mount disk or cartridge images, and there are "canvas" devices, which can display the visual detail of a device in a separate window. Canvas devices also receive keyboard, mouse and joystick input, so it is very easy to implement video monitors, printers, keypads, or LCD displays.