Retro section

~* Spectrum  *~

Emulator: Spin Authors: Paul Dunn, Mark Woodmass, Mark Boyd, & Damien Guard Spin is currently one of the best free emulators for the Spectrum, if not the best. It emulates a host of spectrum models starting right from the 16K to the Spectrum +3e, and it emulates them rather accurately. Spin also supports all the major peripherals that were available for the Spectrum including the Multiface 1, Currah Microspeech, et al amongst others. Spin also has an excellent built in assembler with a very easy to use interface with auto label generation and error reporting. Plus, it has a really neat disassembler, which has some excellent facilities that greatly aid in debugging. Certainly one of the best that I've seen! On the downside, it doesn't support Disciple disks nor the TRDOS yet.
Emulator: Emuzwin Author: Vladimir Kladov Emuzwin is one of the relatively newer emulators for the ZX Spectrum and one of the most frequently updated amongs the current crop. It emulates almost all the Spectrum models starting from the 48K to the +3. It also supports the Russian clones, namely the Scorpion and the Pentagon. Needless to say, it also emulates the TRDOS interface. In the latest version it has also added General Sound support. Emuzwin's major strengths is it's ability to extend the normal colour pallette of the Spectrum to 256 colours by using an overlay scheme (see screenshot). It even features a built in 256 colour graphics editor so that you can make your own 256 colour versions of your favourite game! Emuzwin also has a built in map builder, assembler and disassembler, which are quite capable. On the downside, it's GUI isn't the best around.
Emulator: BASin Author: Paul Dunn Well actually it is not an emulator in the usual sense. It is actually a specialised development environment for the Sinclair BASIC, which makes the process of programming in Sinclair BASIC a whole lot easier! It features a full screen editor with syntax highlighting, error reporting, predictive auto-typing, et al. It seperates the output window from the editor so you know what is happening all the time. Add to this some excellent debugging aids and you have an indispensable BASIC development tool!

~* SAM Coupé *~

Emulator: Sim Coupé Authors: Simon Owen & Dave Laundon The SimCoupe is probably the best emulator out there for the SAM. It's fast and it's accurate and comes with all kinds of nice options to tweak the emulator to just the way you want it. It emulates the SAM Mouse via the PC Mouse, and supports joystick and gamepads. It also the emulates the printer interface and supports MIDI Out too! It seems to run all the SAM software I've found without any problems whatsoever. The greater difficulty lies in finding some SAM software to run, apparently.