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SimCoupe (standalone) - RetroBIOS
Type standalone
Classification Official ports
Source https://github.com/simonowen/simcoupe
Version v1.2.17
Profiled 2026-10-04
Cores samcoupe
Systems sam-coupe
Technical notes

SimCoupe is the SAM Coupe emulator by Simon Owen. The modern 1.2.x releases are standalone (SDL and Win32 ports), separate from the older pre-1.0 code the libretro simcp core wraps. Four files sit next to the binary in the installed Resource/ directory and are picked up by OSD::MakeFilePath(PathType::Resource, name).

samcoupe.rom is the SAM Coupe ROM v3.0. LoadRoms (Base/Memory.cpp :167-229) opens it, reads two 16kB pages into ROM0 and ROM1, and returns true on a complete read. A failed open or a short read falls back to another load of samcoupe.rom (lines 194-196) and, if even that fails, fills both ROM pages with 0xFF and prints "Error loading ROM" (lines 225-228). The emulator keeps running but the Z80 then executes 0xFF (RST 38h) from reset, so nothing boots: the file is practically required.

atom.rom and atomlite.rom boot the SAMBUS Atom / Atom Lite IDE drives the SAM community added. Memory.cpp:180-189 picks atomlite.rom when either drive is configured as drvAtomLite, atom.rom when drive 2 is drvAtom, and otherwise stays on samcoupe.rom. The default option atombootrom = true (Base/Options.h:46) enables this path, so a user running an Atom-configured machine needs the matching ROM; a plain SAM Coupe never opens them.

sp0256-al2.bin is the Microchip SP0256-AL2 allophone data loaded by the Blue Alpha VoiceBox device (Base/VoiceBox.cpp:35-40). VoiceBox is enabled by default (Base/Options.h:124, voicebox = true) and the constructor opens the file at reset; if it is absent the SP0256 stays zero-initialised and the device returns silence to any program that queries port 0xFF (Base/SAMIO.cpp:538-539, 760).

4 files | 1 required, 3 optional | 4 in repo, 0 missing

samcoupe.rom required in repo
SAM Coupe ROM v3.0 (ROM0 + ROM1 pages)

atom.rom optional in repo
SAMBUS Atom IDE boot ROM, loaded when drive 2 is drvAtom

atomlite.rom optional in repo
SAMBUS Atom Lite IDE boot ROM, loaded when either drive is drvAtomLite

sp0256-al2.bin optional in repo
Microchip SP0256-AL2 allophone data for the Blue Alpha VoiceBox

Generated on 2026-10-10T11:26:02Z