Murmulator – an ultra-budget microcomputer
How did I get acquainted with the Murmulator? I was looking for some inexpensive single-board computer to run retro-computer emulators. What didn't suit me about using emulators on a “real” computer? Nothing. I just wanted a separate device. I considered buying an old laptop specifically for this task, then looked at the Raspberry Pi 400, Orange Pi and other single-board computers. In the process of searching, I came across a video of self-assembly of an original single-board computer with a budget of $5. It is clear that later I did not invest anywhere near this amount, but this product still hooked me. That's how I got my first ZX Murmulator.
I won't get attached to the prices, as they change and depend heavily on the location, but it must be admitted that the Murmulator assembly kit is an ultra-budget solution. The main expenses are the microcontroller board itself – Raspberry Pi Pico, and ready-made kits for self-assembly are sold on almost all sites in the world.
After purchasing this “piece of hardware” I realized that I had slightly miscalculated, because I bought a ready-made model with HDMI output, and most of the applied emulators for it supported (at that time) only VGA. At the time of writing this article, most still support the VGA interface. The USB input for the keyboard also had a number of problems (some of which are still not solved, or solved with external adapters, see https://github.com/No0ne/ps2x2pico).
Having read a bit of material on the topic (https://t.me/ZX_MURMULATOR and https://murmulator.ru/types), I chose another configuration – VGA output and PS/2 keyboard. I assembled the next murmulator myself from the purchased kit.
If you look at it from a slightly detached perspective, what is a Murmulator? A Murmulator is an adapter board from a Raspberry Pi Pico to a specific peripheral configuration. And for this configuration, people sharpen firmware for the “pico”, which are emulators.
Considering that I didn't know how to solder such small things as SD card connector lamellas, I screwed up the soldering, hung snot and unsoldered places somewhere, and for a long time I did without an SD card at all. But using the Murmulator without a card is a dreary occupation, because the choice of suitable software is very limited, and what it can do in this mode. Here fate intervened)) The thing is that I am a programmer myself. And if some program is missing, then it is enough to just write it, or adapt/port an existing one.
I started with pico-nes (https://github.com/xrip/pico-nes) – an emulator of the Dendy-8 console, also known as NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). Fortunately, there was no need to develop anything, and adaptation to the lack of an SD card was quite simple – I made a firmware with built-in games, then another one, then screwed on an LZW package of built-in games, i.e. had fun to the fullest. I got to the point of packing 37 games into one firmware and… fixed the SD card.
Now firmware with built-in games has lost its relevance, but the programming itch did not leave me, so I participated in the development of several more firmware. In particular, for pico-xt (https://github.com/xrip/pico-xt) I completely reworked the virtual memory subsystem, implemented emulation of HIMEM, UMB, XMS, EMS, implemented swap and crossed it with the work of external PSRAM, which by that time appeared in Murmulators, in the form of a mounted module.
Then I took part in the “voicing” of this HT emulator… Prince of Persia, which shouldn't even run on such hardware – he played the musicychku virtual AdLib'om! Wolf 3D, working under HT – delight! For me. Not everyone likes and understands the passion for retro emulators.
Later I participated in several more projects together with xrip (https://github.com/xrip), and also ported emulators myself: Atari 800 (https://github.com/DnCraptor/atari800), RK-86 (https://github.com/DnCraptor/pico-rk86), BK-0010/11M (https://github.com/DnCraptor/PICO-BK), Apple //e (https://github.com/DnCraptor/pico-iie), although the latter does not yet support disk drives.
The guys from the community also did not sit on their asses and created an impressive collection of all sorts of emulators, which are headed by a set of ZX Spectrum emulators, after which the device is named – ZX Murmulator. The most impressive collection of firmware for the Murmulator is collected here: https://murmulator.ru/firmware-zx and here https://murmulator.ru/firmware-cross.
ZX Murmulator is a relatively young project with a not very large community, but we will be glad to welcome you to our ranks.
Currently, ZX Murmulator OS is being actively developed – an operating system for Murmulator (https://github.com/DnCraptor/murmulator-os). It already exists in version 0.2.6, which has a BASIC interpreter, an analogue of mc, mcedit, cmd, many unix/dos utilities, but this is a completely different story, which I will probably also tell you somehow…
