One machine, six CPU views.

Universal service blocks

SYSINFO publishes RAM and feature bits. File I/O includes the IE64 FILE_DATA_PTR64 extension. Media load, Program Executor, terminal, serial, keyboard, mouse, RTC, clipboard, CPU wait, Voodoo register, texture, fog, and command apertures, Bootstrap HostFS, and a gated host-command helper are mapped as bus services.

Profile-specific bridges

AROS adds DOS packet handling, a Paula-style DMA shim into the shared SoundChip, a host socket bridge, clipboard integration, and IRQ diagnostics. EmuTOS uses an Atari MIDI ACIA bridge into the same live-MIDI engine.

SoundChip is the native subtractive synth.

The native path is ten FLEX voices plus 32 SFX channels. FLEX is the unified register surface: each voice has frequency, volume, gate/control, duty, sweep, ADSR, waveform select, PWM, noise mode, phase reset, ring modulation, hard sync, and signed 8-bit DAC input. The five oscillator types are square/pulse, triangle, sine, noise, and sawtooth; the noise generator covers white, periodic, metallic, PSG-style, TED 8-bit, and SN76489 15/16-bit white or periodic modes.

FLEX ch0-3   0xF0A80-0xF0B7F
SID2 ch4-6   0xF0C40-0xF0CFF
SID3 ch7-9   0xF0D40-0xF0DFF
SFX ch0-31   0xF2600-0xF29FF

Different chips keep their own clocks.

The final mixer renders at 44100 samples per second with global filter, overdrive, reverb, and limiting, but chip timing is not flattened into one generic synth. PSG defaults to 2000000 Hz, SN76489 has 3579545 Hz NTSC and 3546893 Hz PAL clocks, SID uses PAL-style 985248 Hz and NTSC-style 1022727 Hz, TED audio runs at 110840/111860 Hz, POKEY uses Atari PAL/NTSC clocks, and Paula/MOD period math uses 3546895 Hz.

SoundChip/SFX mixer   44100 Hz
AHX song ticks         50/100/150/200 Hz
MOD and Paula periods  3546895 Hz source clock
WAV and MIDI/MUS       parsed, scheduled, mixed

Live MIDI

The live-MIDI block is a guest-visible byte-stream port on MachineBus. EmuTOS reaches it through an output-only Atari ACIA bridge. AROS has an ie-m68k CAMD driver path. No current IntuitionOS MIDI driver path is present in the source tree.

Compositor fabric

The compositor runs a 60 Hz schedule, sorts sources by layer, supports scanline-aware rendering, dirty rectangles, frame-generation skipping, retained frame leases, and triple-buffer publication paths in the video engines. Hardware layers carry source dimensions, stride, alpha, visibility, and optional retained leases.

CPU state is readable and writable.

IE Mon can switch focus between registered CPUs, show and change registers, disassemble around expressions such as pc+$20, interleave source locations when available, single-step, continue, run until an address, and assemble one IE64 instruction at an address.

cpu
r
d /s pc 8
b main+0x10 if R1==$10 && hitcount>2
s
g

Watchpoints operate on memory and MMIO behaviour.

SoftICE-style bpm* watchpoints cover byte, word, long, and quad accesses by read, write, or read/write mode. Page guards, access logs, who, bfirst, and trace mmio identify bus activity from recorded access data.

bpmqw $f0000
pg add $f0000 $f0fff rw cpu=current
accesslog on 1024
who wrote $f0004
trace mmio voodoo 16

Backtracking covers CPU and device state.

rs restores the focussed CPU from local step history. rg, rt, tl, and history horizon work with retained whole-machine reverse snapshots covering registered CPUs, bus RAM, sparse IE64 backing pages, and registered versioned device blobs.

history horizon
tl 12
rg
rt PC==$2000
ss checkpoint.ie64state
sl checkpoint.ie64state

The monitor reads hardware as named register groups.

io exposes named I/O register views with native-width reads, including audio, video, SYSINFO, wait, Voodoo, MIDI, and other MMIO devices. Trusted .iemonrc files, aliases, macros, scripts, and the IEScript dbg.* API reuse the same monitor command surface.

io all
io sfx
io voodoo
rc list
rc trust .iemonrc
macro frame d pc 8; r

A script can be the programme or the harness.

.ies files can run from the command line, through Program Executor dispatch, from BASIC with RUN "demo.ies", or from IE Mon with script demo.ies. The runtime executes scripts asynchronously and uses frame and timer waits as synchronisation points.

./bin/IntuitionEngine -script demo.ies
./bin/IntuitionEngine demo.ies
RUN "demo.ies"
script demo.ies

Frame hashes, screenshots, and recordings are scriptable.

Scripts can wait on compositor frames, pixels, settled frame hashes, or custom visual predicates. The recording module can capture screenshots and video, so a demo or regression can produce both a quick hash and a human-readable frame.

sys.wait_frames(2)
video.wait_stable(3, 120)
hash = video.frame_hash()
rec.screenshot("frame.png")
rec.start_screen("run.mp4")
rec.stop()

Lua can drive the same MMIO devices as guest code.

IEScript exposes memory and MMIO operations plus high-level modules for audio, video, media, coprocessors, symbols, and regions. The shipped rotozoomer script stages data with mem.write_block, writes VideoChip and blitter registers, and starts MIDI through MMIO.

cpu.freeze()
mem.write_block(texturePtr, texture)
cpu.resume()
video.write_reg(983040, 1)
video.blit_fill(1048576, 320, 200, 255, 1280)
video.blit_wait()

Scripts can inspect and steer IE Mon without parsing text.

The dbg module opens the monitor, steps, continues, sets breakpoints and watchpoints, reads registers and memory, disassembles, inspects I/O views, queries reverse-history settings, controls trace rings, and snapshots registered devices. Raw RAM access requires an explicit freeze; MMIO access is allowed without freezing.

dbg.open()
dbg.set_bp(0x2000)
dbg.step()
regs = dbg.get_regs()
io = dbg.io("midilive")
snap = dbg.device_snapshot("video")
dbg.close()

Native build path

RUN AOT
COMPILE "name"
TRANSPILE "name"
ASSEMBLE "name"

COMPILE rejects direct-mode-only commands and stored forms that cannot become a standalone image. TRANSPILE is the inspection path. ASSEMBLE is not tied to the stored BASIC programme; it reads IE64 source from the disk volume and emits a flat image.

Hardware from BASIC

10 POKE32 &H000F0800,1
20 SOUND 0,440,200,0,128
30 ENVELOPE 0,50,100,200,100
40 GATE 0,ON
50 VSYNC

The same vocabulary can initialise the mixer, configure a FLEX channel, open the envelope gate, wait for video cadence, and then continue into blitter, sprite, tile, Voodoo, file, or media-loader work.

BASIC can drive the full audio fabric.

The direct BASIC audio layer includes SOUND, ENVELOPE, GATE, SOUND FILTER, SOUND REVERB, SOUND OVERDRIVE, SOUND NOISE, SOUND WAVE, SOUND SWEEP, SOUND SYNC, SOUND RINGMOD, PSG, SID, POKEY, TED, SOUND PLAY, and raw SFX POKE32 writes.

SOUND PLAY "TITLE.MOD"
SOUND PLAY "INTRO.SID",0
SOUND PLAY "TUNE.AHX",1
SOUND PLAY "SONG.MID"

SDK and debug tools

The build produces ie32asm, ie64asm, ie64dis, ie32to64, and m68kto64 alongside the VM, and the preview image stages the SDK tool bundle with a checksum manifest. IE Mon adds disassembly, memory editing, breakpoints, watchpoints, source locations, reverse history, trace views, and scripted debugger entry points.

make
make headless-novulkan
go test -tags headless ./...