Zym, a Z-machine for SymbOS

Technical Development Interpreters
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Hi all,

I recently released Zym 0.9, a Z-machine for SymbOS. It is available on the Archive, as well as the SymbOS homepage.

SymbOS is an Extremely Cool hobbyist operating system for several Z80-based 8-bit computers (Amstrad CPC/PCW, Enterprise 64/128, and MSX-compatibles, mainly manufactured in Eurasia). It is capable of a lot of things you really wouldn’t expect from an 8-bit system: preemptive multitasking, a windowed multimedia GUI, modern TCP/IP, etc. Now it has a Z-machine :slight_smile:

The underlying code for Zym is a C/assembler hybrid nominally based on fweep, but heavily rewritten and optimized for 8-bit. Z-machine versions 3, 4, 5, and 8 are supported. As is typical for 8-bit terps, Infocom games play quite well, while many Inform 6 games are sluggish and most Inform 7 games will not run at all. PunyInform and ZIL games tend to play decently.

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Amazing! I have several Z80 based machines that I have built, mostly RC2014. My favorite is an SC126 with CP/M. It uses a terminal interface. I doubt I would be able to configure it to use your SmbOS. It would be nice! It looks amazing for an 8 bit system.

sc126
sc1261503×1371 300 KB

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Cool machine! I’ve been wanting to build something like that. Yes, SymbOS is fairly tied to the graphics and bank-switching architecture of MSX and CPC-family systems, so it wouldn’t be an easy port. It runs on homebrew MSX clones like the Omega Home Computer, though.

(I should clarify that SymbOS itself is not my own work; most of the development since 2000 has been done by the German demoscene wizard Prodatron.)

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