M2000 - Philips P2000T Home Computer Emulator

Version 0.9.4

Supported platforms

• Windows - standalone app
• Linux - standalone app
• macOS - standalone app
• RetroArch (Libretro) - running the M2000 core in RetroArch
• P2000T Web Player - runs from your browser

👉 Note: to download P2000T cassette programs, please go to: https://github.com/p2000t/software/cassettes/

Download and install M2000 (as Standalone Emulator)

To download the latest standalone release of M2000, please go to the M2000 releases page.

Installation of M2000 depends on your platform:

• Windows (64 bit)
  Unzip the downloaded release package and double click the M2000-installer.exe, which guides you through installation. After installation, "M2000 - Philips P2000 Emulator" will be added to your Windows apps.
• macOS (version 10.11 or higher)
  Unzip the downloaded release package (usually this is done by just double-clicking it) and drag the resulting "M2000" app into the Applications folder. Now you can start M2000 from your applications - probably after allowing M2000 to run in the security settings.
• Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint)
  Unzip the downloaded release package and double-click M2000_amd64.deb to start the package installer(*). After installation is done, type M2000 in a terminal to start the emulator.
  (*) If double-clicking doesn't open a package installer, then open a terminal to the unzipped .deb file and do:

  sudo apt -f install M2000_amd64.deb
  

Download the M2000 Core (inside RetroArch)

If you want to run M2000 as core in RetroArch, you first need to have RetroArch installed and running.

• From RetroArch's Main Menu go to Online Updater and then select Update Core Info Files to ensure you've got the latest core info files.
• Then from RetroArch's Main Menu go to Load Core > Download a Core and then select Philips - P2000T (M2000).
  This Core let's you play .cas cassette games, but you can also run the M2000 Core without content to start in P2000T Basic right away.

For more information, please go to https://docs.libretro.com/library/m2000/

What's emulated

• Philips P2000T home computer
• Support for a single ROM cartridge
• User-definable amount of RAM (only for Standalone Emulator)
• One tape drive
• Sound
• SAA5050 character rounding

Control Keys (only for Standalone Emulator)

Ctrl-I           -  Insert cassette dialog
Ctrl-O           -  Open/Boot cassette dialog
Ctrl-E           -  Eject current cassette
Ctrl-R           -  Reset P2000
Ctrl-T           -  Trigger interrupt (NMI)

Ctrl-Enter       -  Toggle fullscreen on/off (not supported on Linux)
Ctrl-L           -  Toggle scanlines on/off

Ctrl-C           -  Save current state to file (without dialog)
Ctrl-V           -  Load previously saved state (without dialog)
Ctrl-S           -  Save screenshot picture to file (without dialog)
Ctrl-D           -  Dump visible video RAM to file (without dialog)

Ctrl-1           -  START key (start loaded program)
Ctrl-2           -  STOP  key (pause/halt program)
Ctrl-3           -  ZOEK  key (show cassette index)
Ctrl-0           -  WIS   key (clear cassette dialog)

Ctrl-P           -  Toggle pause on/off
Ctrl-M           -  Mute/unmute sound

Ctrl-Q           -  Quit emulator

Configuration (only for Standalone Emulator)

Command line options

M2000 [filename]       Optional cassette (.cas) or cartridge (.bin) to preload
                       When a cassette (.cas) is provided, BASIC will try to boot it

Configuration file

After starting M2000 for the first time, a configuration file named M2000.cfg will be created in the root of the M2000 folder inside the user's Documents folder. This is a plain text file which can be edited by the user.

Keyboard emulation

There are two keyboard mappings available in M2000:

• Symbolic key mapping (default), in which typing a key on your keyboard will - as far as possible - show the actual character/symbol written on the keycap. So that means that typing Shift-2 will show the @ symbol in the emulator.

• Positional key mapping (alternative), in which the keys are mapped to the same relative positions as they would be on a real P2000 keyboard. So that means that typing Shift-2 on your keyboard will show the double-quote (") character, because that matches a real P2000 keyvoard when you type Shift-2.
  Note that P2000's "<" key (located between the left shift and the Z-key) is also mapped to the Delete key, as some modern keyboards are missing this key.
  

How to compile M2000 from the sources

If you want to compile the M2000 sources yourself, then the instructions below will get you on your way. Note that M2000 is depending on the Allegro 5 library, which might not be available as pre-compiled package on every platform.

Linux

• Using your Linux distro's package manager, install the essential build tools and Allegro 5 libs. For Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint you can use the apt package manager:

  sudo apt update && sudo apt install git build-essential liballegro5-dev
  

• Clone the M2000 repo:

  git clone https://github.com/p2000t/M2000.git
  

• Go into the M2000 directory and run make

  cd M2000 && make allegro
  

• After successfull building, you can run M2000:

  ./M2000
  

macOS

Make sure you have both the Xcode command line tools and brew installed.

• Now install the Allegro 5 libs using brew:

  brew install allegro
  

• Clone the M2000 repo:

  git clone https://github.com/p2000t/M2000.git
  

• Go into the M2000 directory and run make

  cd M2000 && make allegro
  

• After successfull building, you can run M2000:

  ./M2000
  

Windows

The easiest way to build M2000 on a Windows machine is by using the MSYS2 toolkit.

• After you've installed MSYS2, open its MINGW64 shell environment and install the required tools and libraries:

  pacman -S base-devel git mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-allegro
  

• Clone the M2000 repo:

  git clone https://github.com/p2000t/M2000.git
  

• Go into the M2000 directory and run make:

  cd M2000 && make allegro
  

• After successfull building, you can run M2000:

  ./M2000
  

More information on the P2000

👉 For P2000T documentation, please go to: https://github.com/p2000t/documentation

👉 To download P2000T games, please go to: https://github.com/p2000t/software/cassettes/games

P2000 documentation

• A large collection of (scanned) P2000 documents, P2000gg and Nat.Lab. newsletters and editions of TRON magazine can be found on: https://github.com/p2000t/documentation
• The P2000T community on Retroforum can help out with questions. They're nice people :-)

P2000 software

• Many P2000 cartridge images and cassette dumps (games, utilities, etc.) can be found on: https://github.com/p2000t/software

Credits

• Thanks to Marcel de Kogel for originally creating M2000 back in 1996-1997. His M2000 distribution site, which contains the original source code and MS-DOS binaries, is still up and running.

• Thanks to Stafano Bodrato for creating the initial Allegro driver for M2000 in 2013.

• Thanks to the M2000 maintainers and contributors for its continued development: Ivo Filot, Martijn Koch and Dion Olsthoorn.

License

M2000 is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3 as described in LICENSE.