MAME, MESS, and Other Fun

If anyone wants to try it out, I just committed my CPU core and driver for the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), or “Baby”, to the MESS SVN depot.  It currently runs all known SSEM programs bundled with David Sharp’s SSEM simulator, available here.

I am not entirely happy with the fact that it is compatible with all of the programs, though.  Certain programs in particular, i.e. “nightmare.snp”, would not run on the SSEM had it ever been extended to the full 8192 words of storage space of which it was theoretically capable (per some SSEM history sites), as they pad out the unused 8 address bits with pretty patterns.

And now, a pretty picture:

The controls are as follows:
Up / Down: Move the selected store line up/down
Button 1: Halt / un-halt the SSEM
1-8, Q-I, A-K, Z-,: Toggle bits 0-31 of the currently-selected store line

I was rather intrigued by David Link’s project to resurrect the Manchester Mark I, and commenced digging up more info about the Manchester Mark I and its predecessor, the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine, or “Baby”.

As it turns out, there’s already a Java-based emulator out there.  Inspiration struck, and I decided to see how easy it would be to emulate the SSEM in MESS.  It was, historically, the first electronic stored-program computer (if I read my sources right), so it seems like a prime candidate for support in MESS.

Without further ado, here is the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine displaying the results of Tom Kilburn’s “Highest Common Factor for 989″ program, including the correct answer (43).

Chances are good I’ll be able to get clearance to add this to MESS.  Fingers crossed!