A CHIP-8 emulator for Rust in ~350 LOC

Daniel Gatis

Last update: Apr 23, 2022

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Overview

chip8

An implementation of the CHIP-8 for Rust in ~350 lines of code.

What is CHIP-8?

CHIP-8 is a virtual machine (along with a supporting programming language). Since the CHIP-8 VM does not expose the fact that it's running on a host CPU, in theory the VM could be translated to physical hardware.

The CHIP-8 VM was used in the late '70s on some computers such as the Telmac 1800 and on some calculators in the 1980's.

CHIP-8 was mainly used as a gaming platform, and today you can play lots of games like Pong and Breakout on it.

Running a ROM

Given a CHIP-8 ROM, you can start the ROM in the emulator like so:

    cargo run romfile.ch8

Where to get a ROM?

Here.

Information on the emulator

The input is mapped similarly to most other CHIP-8 emulators I have come across:

Row 1	Row 2	Row 3	Row 4
1 - 1	2 - 2	3 - 3	C - 4
4 - Q	5 - W	6 - E	D - R
7 - A	8 - S	9 - D	F - 4
A - Z	0 - X	B - C	F - V

The screen runs at the default resolution of 64x32.

References

Cowgod's Chip-8 Technical Reference: http://devernay.free.fr/hacks/chip8/C8TECH10.HTM
CHIP-8 Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8
Reddit r/EmuDev commmunity: https://reddit.com/r/EmuDev

License

Licensed under MIT License

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