Emulators
An emulator is a program which reproduces the behaviour of one computing platform while running on another. There are a wide variety of emulators for Sinclair machines.
List of emulators
A more complete list can be found at WoS; many of the links here point to the WoS FTP archive.
Multiplatform
Fuse (Free Unix Spectrum Emulator) by Philip Kendall. Very accurate.
- Despite the name, has been ported to non-Unix systems including Windows and OS X.
- Fuse for Unix, libspectrum, fuse-utils; all three are required. Your vendor/distribution may have a packaged version; the Fuse home page has links to some unofficial packages.
- Fuse for Windows
- Fuse for Mac OS X
JSpeccy by José Luis Sánchez. Written in Java.
Windows
ZX Spin by Paul Dunn. A popular choice which supports a wide range of hardware including addons such as the ULAplus.
- Runs on anything from 95 onwards.
- No longer under active development.
- Last stable version
- Experimental version with ULAplus support
BASin by Paul Dunn. Not strictly an emulator, but a Spectrum BASIC Development environment.
- No longer under active development.
- Last stable version
- Experimental version with ULAplus support
Spectaculator by Jonathan Needle. Distributed as a shareware trial version; the full version costs 20GBP. Reputedly very accurate and complete.
- Runs on XP and up (older versions for 9x onwards exist).
- Spectaculator home page
Spud by Richard Chandler.
RealSpectrum by Ramsoft. Claimed to have complete accuracy, but we now know that was wishful thinking at best.
- Originally DOS-based, runs on XP and older.
- No longer under active development.
- Disappeared from the web when Ramsoft left the scene in a huff; copies are still floating around...