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I released my ZX Spectrum emulation Wspecem, and GPL sources first time publicly in the Internet at large, the 15th May 1996, for Windows 95.

I am quite sure it was the first ZX Spectrum emulation developed specifically for the Microsoft Windows 3.11/95 API - (or any previous Windows versions before that)

Can I claim at least, it was the first ever non-commercial computer emulator developed for Windows? At least at the time, I did not find anything else.

Rui F Ribeiro
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    In case it saves anybody else some time, those of the other freeware mid-'90s emulators I've been able to date: Gerton Lunter's Z80 didn't make it to Windows until 1999; Stella was 1997; VICE 1998; vMac 1996; UAE 1997. Executor and Gemulator were first released in 1990 but didn't become free until much later. – Tommy Mar 29 '17 at 02:37
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    In 1995, UAE was for Unix, and I don't think WinUAE existed before 1996. I have an impression that almost all emulators on PCs that pre-dated Windows 95 were hosted in DOS, probably for performance reasons. I know of no emulators that were designed for Windows 1, 2, or 3. Therefore, in early 1996, you likely had one of the very first Windows-hosted emulators available. – Brian H Mar 29 '17 at 02:39
  • @GregHewgill the author seems to want to limit discussion to free software for Microsoft Windows though. – Tommy Mar 29 '17 at 02:41
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    @BrianH Gemulator and Executor are emulators for Windows 3.x of the Atari ST and Mac respectively, from 1990. But neither was freeware at the time. Gemulator's introduction video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNOw3eyBygw – Tommy Mar 29 '17 at 02:43
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    I'm not sure it counts, since it's a simulator rather than a system emulator — spimsal was available for Windows 3 in December 1994 (if not earlier). – Stephen Kitt Mar 29 '17 at 05:12
  • @BrianH BrianH, your comment was spot on. At the time I was aware of Executor in the 90s, however time erased that from my memory. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:15
  • @StephenKitt I will investigate that spimsal, never heard of it. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:15
  • @StephenKitt Simulator indeed. "Spim is a self-contained simulator that runs MIPS32 programs. It reads and executes assembly language programs written for this processor. Spim does not execute binary (compiled) programs." – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:25
  • "Executor 1.0 was released in October, 1993. The source code of the emulator was made public in 2008." "It's not a true emulator"...It worked via API hooks, and emulated the CPU, but apparently not all the hardware...i.e. only "well behaved" programs. Interesting. I also remember vaguely it being paid. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:28
  • @BrianH Gemulator: This was followed in 1995 with releases to run on Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:33
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    Yes, Executor was commercial initially (with a demo version available). Re SPIM, note that spimsal isn’t quite the same as the current SPIM MIPS32 simulator; AFAIR it does run executables (albeit only executables using its particular syscalls). – Stephen Kitt Mar 29 '17 at 06:36
  • @BrianH Gemulator: released in August 1995. The trail is flimsy, but it seems my emulator predates their Windows version by 3 months. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:38
  • @GregHewgill I am aware of previous emulators, in fact I was collecting all of them by the time I wrote the emulator. I was asking for Windows. Actually I wrote a rather crude speccy emulator for DOS much earlier on - around 1990, never released, that I only used as a development IDE to debug the Windows emulator. The Windows emulator is actually the much improved core of that emulator with specific Windows files. I actually had a working version of WSpecem as early as Summer-Autumn '94, however did not want to release and disclose my academic task was in an advanced state. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 06:54
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    @RuiFRibeiro You might consider editing your question and specifying which version of Windows are you asking about, and what do you mean by "in Windows" - MS DOS based emulators ran often happily under Windows. If you mean an emulator specifically targeted towards Windows OS (and using Windows API), then it is unclear what does it mean before Win 3.0, since these Windows were not much more than just an application launcher running under MS DOS. (BTW I remember Wspecem, but as I tried to stay clear of Windows, I did not really use it :-)) – Radovan Garabík Mar 29 '17 at 09:18
  • Thanks for the input @RadovanGarabík, edited my question ; I also made a couple of contributions to Warajevo btw; it can be argued MSDOS run in the command line of Windows, but I think we all know they are MS DOS programs. – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 09:24
  • @RadovanGarabík (Nuclear ZX, interesting). – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 10:03
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    @RuiFRibeiro Yeah :-) On topic - Nuclear ZX ran fine under Windows 95 (fullscreen, otherwise the performance impact was too big), but the sound was no longer clear - it exhibited regular mini-glitches, with maybe few Hz frequency, obviously caused by the OS scheduler taking control. – Radovan Garabík Mar 30 '17 at 09:17
  • Also from "summer 1996" (per Wikipedia) was MagicPC. Not strictly an emulator though because I don't believe you could run other OSes under it. IIRC it was Magic 5 running on an emulated 68000 Atari ST in a Windows window. I'm pretty sure the OS (under Windows) was paravirtualized. Only ever ran Magic on the STe and TT myself though... – Alex Hajnal Dec 08 '17 at 01:32

2 Answers2

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AppleWin was announced in August 1994, so it turns out yours isn’t the first non-commercial emulator developed for Windows. It was made available by April 1995 if not earlier.

Stephen Kitt
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  • Interesting find! It seems the sources where first released only in 2006 from the history in their github. I actually have documented in the sources I had private betas sent to people in April and early May, but indeed my public announcement was a month later on. So to be entirely fair, at least being the first open source emulator AND the first ZX Spectrum one. https://github.com/AppleWin/AppleWin/blob/master/bin/History.txt - 1.12.9.0 - 25 Feb 2006
    • Moved source to BerliOS & released under GPL
     – Rui F Ribeiro Mar 29 '17 at 09:17
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    @RuiFRibeiro that's probably merely indicative of a licence change or formalisation; source was definitely available earlier — e.g. "And it now comes with source code!" from https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/comp.emulators.apple2/applewin$20source%7Csort:relevance/comp.emulators.apple2/dqPV49_yYVc/v54BPS-Z9rcJ would suggest a first source release in 1996. But not until July! – Tommy Mar 30 '17 at 18:47
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XTricator was the first ZX-81 emulator for the Sinclair QL, released as shareware August 1994. So not entirely non-commercial (although today it is).

tofro
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