Making an Emulator in JavaScript?
summary
Builds a CHIP-8 emulator in JavaScript that actually runs and beeps, implementing a 64x32 monochrome display via Canvas 64x32 monochrome and a single-tone output with the Web Audio API beep. Implements CPU emulation with 4,096 8-bit memory locations, 16 registers, two-byte opcodes parsed with bitwise operators and hexadecimal math, a 60Hz run loop that advances the program counter by two each instruction, and a GitHub repo (chippy) containing the working code.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:21Why build an emulator
- 4:35Emulation legality
- 5:40Hardware vs software emulation
- 6:42JavaScript and Chip-8
- 7:44Core emulator components
- 8:49Monochrome display
- 13:32Sound with Web Audio API
- 15:57CPU and memory
- 18:47Loading ROMs
- 20:14Hexadecimal notation
- 23:27Decoding opcodes
- 25:10Executing instructions
- 28:40Keyboard input and timers
- 30:48Final demo
- 31:30Resources
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