MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust (martypc.net)

202 pointsby boilerupnc19 hours ago82 comments

wiz21c 9 hours ago

besides the fact that it was written in rust, rust happens to be a really nice language to write emulators, you don't have to think much about threading and not much abut memory management, rust makes that easy => you can concentrate on your pixels. Moreover LLM grasp it very well so that you can get a bit more spare time for your emulator-side-project.

It was very long since I wrote any sort of C++ and using rust was pretty refreshing.

Second "besides": marty's PC may not have a lot of breadth in terms of supported hardware, but it gets the accuracy totally right. It's a very special kind of achievement.

(I'm not a rust fanboy :-) I just appreciate the language for writing my emulator)

pjmlp 15 hours ago

Adlib support! At least someone else remembers it wasn't only Soundblaster.

anonzzzies 12 hours ago

All my friends had Soundblasters; I had a self soldered Covox. Fun times.

abrookewood 9 hours ago

Whaaat?? Do tell more!

anonzzzies 9 hours ago

For not well off geeks you could just solder a bunch of resistors together and get vastly better sound than from the crappy PC speaker and there were games that supported it and I wrote some software for it (which unfortunately is gone I think). I had a lot of just having this on the pc in the house.

https://github.com/necroware/silly-sound-bastard

_flux 11 hours ago

But Soundblaster came with Adlib, so surely complete support for SB should mean Adlib support as well.. ?

pjmlp 9 hours ago

Yeah and eventually Adlib was gone.

From Wikipedia,

"Not long after its introduction, Creative Labs introduced its competing Sound Blaster card. The Sound Blaster was fully compatible with AdLib's hardware, and it also implemented two key features absent from the AdLib: a PCM audio channel and a game port. With additional features and better marketing, the Sound Blaster quickly overshadowed AdLib as the de facto standard in PC gaming audio. AdLib's slow response, the AdLib Gold, did not sell well enough to sustain the company."

ranger_danger 16 hours ago

Ironically, and unfortunately, this doesn't actually emulate the FM Towns Marty (or even the regular FM Towns PC) like I assumed it would.

rrr_oh_man 15 hours ago

Doesn't seem to support non-QWERTY keboards :(

teiferer 13 hours ago

But it's written in Rust! Who cares about non-qwerty!

Dwedit 17 hours ago

Mysteriously, backslash has been mapped to backspace for some reason.

unixhero 16 hours ago

Old terminals had this shenanigans going on too. Backspace was not backspace and so on

datakan 9 hours ago

I don't think Backspace as a key was standard internationally until 1994. Apple still doesn't use it, just Delete.

Dwedit 8 hours ago

This is about early IBM PCs, not apple computers. And the non-working key is the Backslash key \ , not the backspace key.

JMiao 15 hours ago

probably in the minority but i want the screeching and grumbling hard disk sounds

hggh 13 hours ago

IBMulator has HDD sounds: https://www.ibmulator.org/

chvid 15 hours ago

Almost usable on an iPhone.

benj111 9 hours ago

I assume it's called MartyPC because it Marty McFlies?

throwaway5727 12 hours ago

This comment is itself a meta comment but here we go I guess...How is it possible that half the comments in this thread are about the title itself? It’s not even a made-up title, it’s taken straight from the project’s README...I keep seeing people complaining almost aggressively that others are touting Rust as a useful tool (which, to me personally, it certainly is). Does someone have a financial stake in opposing Rust’s development, or what?

tonyedgecombe 9 hours ago

I suppose it makes a change from complaining that the post was written by an LLM.

braiamp 9 hours ago

But if it's written in rust and with llm then they both implode and we get really insightful comments

BobMcBob 15 hours ago

Yet another avenue to play EGATREK in a browser. For that, its work it.

unixhero 15 hours ago

What's great about Egatrek?

EvanAnderson 14 hours ago

Oh, holy crap. I haven't thought about EGATREK in at least 30 years. I'm going to go dig it up right now. Thanks for causing me to recall that memory!

gaoheyang 11 hours ago

nice

azwaterdamagere 15 hours ago

lol

szundi 16 hours ago

Why never seeing a title “written by C” or Java or js

tenox7 16 hours ago

The main feature of apps written in Rust is that they are written in Rust.

dosisking 16 hours ago

"It's not a feature, it's a bug"

fortran77 16 hours ago

I flag all these “written in Rust” posts.

globalnode 15 hours ago

its just ppl trying to be different from their boring parents. wish i had enough karma to flag them too but i keep getting downvoted into oblivion for making fun of written in rust posts

pigeons 16 hours ago

"Hax – a minimalist, terminal-native coding agent written in C" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49273175

but I see your point.

imhoguy 16 hours ago

Because nowadays "written in Rust" means "written by AI", as Java or C are not so sexy for LLMs /s

pjmlp 15 hours ago

Because they predate HN, and aren't hip languages any longer.

There was a time for CoffeeScript, PureScript, Elm, Ruby and whatever else you can think of.

Naturally Lisp has to have monthly entries.

teiferer 13 hours ago

Because their following is not cult-based.

(To clarify: I like Rust. I use it every day. But this is going too far.)

fukaiall 9 hours ago

I believe a true engineer should love problems not only languages. But it seems like majority of Rust devs only love the language and try to convert all the problems into Rust problems.

If you have problems in C/C++? Write Rust.

If you have problems in Python? Use Rust.

If you have an issue with your product? Rewrite it in Rust.

Is your company in pinch? Launch a new product in Rust.

If you burn your finger while you’re cooking? Write Rust.

If you have a mental problem? Read a Rust book.

You don’t have a girl friend? You have Rust next to you.

If you hate yourself? Writing Rust will solve your life problems.

globalnode 15 hours ago

the other week i wrote a program in python, and ive been thinking of upgrading my cpp knowledge from v11, wish me luck

tonyhart7 14 hours ago

how to use this fossil computer era ????? I cant type shhiiii

rvz 12 hours ago

   Written in Rust™

teiferer 13 hours ago

What does the "written in Rust" contribute to the title, exactly?

Kudos 14 hours ago

Not specific to this project, but nowadays when I see "written in rust" I hear "written by Claude".

binaryturtle 13 hours ago

"cross-platform" and Rust, as advertised in the current title/link label, is incompatible for sure. Can't get that to run on my older OS X machine nor my Amiga. :)

hnlmorg 15 hours ago

Early PCs weren’t written in Rust.

pjmlp 15 hours ago

In C neither, despite urban myths.

hnlmorg 14 hours ago

Is that something people believe? I can’t say that’s a myth I’ve ever heard.

pjmlp 13 hours ago

Yep, before UNIX and C there were no systems programming languages, and after getting the clay tablets from UNIX and C, all civilisation was built upon them. /s

At least when you spend long time around some programming circles.

avadodin 12 hours ago

computer, remove the extraneous slash es from the statement.

pjmlp 12 hours ago

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

queenkjuul 13 hours ago

Early PCs were made of steel which can rust

hnlmorg 13 hours ago

Nicely done!