Emulating the Sega Genesis - Part I
A few months ago, I wrote a 68000 emulator in Rust named Moa. My original goal was to emulate a simple computer I had previously built. After only a few weeks, I had that software up and running in the emulator, and my attention turned to what other platforms with 68000s I could try emulating. My thoughts quickly turned to the Sega Genesis and without thinking about it too much, I dove right in. What started as an unserious half-thought of "wouldn't that be cool" turned into a few months of fighting documentation, game programming hacks, and my sanity with some side quests along the way, all in the name of finding and squashing bugs in the 68k emulator I had already written.
If you haven't already, you might want to read Making a 68000 Emulator in Rust where I talk about the basic structure and function of the emulator, as well as details about the 68000. I wont go into too much detail about that here and instead focus on the Genesis-specific hardware, and the challenges of debugging the emulator itself.
This is Part I in the series, which covers setting up the emulator, getting some game ROMs to run, and implementing the DMA and memory features of the VDP. Part II will cover adding a graphical frontend to Moa, and then implementing a first attempt at generating video output. Part III will be about debugging the various problems in the VDP and CPU implementations to get a working emulator capable of playing games.
