Files
libretro/emulators/stella.yml
Abdessamad Derraz 58f3006d20 docs: add core_version, display_name to all 260 emulator profiles
Every profile now has:
- profiled_date: date of source code analysis
- core_version: version from libretro-core-info .info files
- display_name: human-readable name from .info files

260/260 profiles complete. 294/294 libretro cores covered.
Standalone emulators (cemu, rpcs3, xemu, vita3k) versioned manually.
2026-03-18 05:20:05 +01:00

58 lines
2.2 KiB
YAML

emulator: Stella
type: libretro
source: "https://github.com/libretro/stella2014-libretro"
profiled_date: "2026-03-18"
core_version: "6.6"
display_name: "Atari - 2600 (Stella)"
cores:
- stella
- stella2014
- stella2023
systems:
- atari-2600
notes: |
Stella is an Atari 2600 (VCS) emulator. The libretro port available is
stella2014, which is a fork frozen at the 2014 codebase. The upstream
"stella-libretro" repo redirects to stella2014-libretro. There is no
separate stella2023 libretro core published at this time.
The Atari 2600 console has no BIOS ROM. Games run directly on the
hardware with no boot firmware.
The Starpath/Arcadia Supercharger add-on had a 2K BIOS ROM on the
physical hardware. Stella does NOT load this BIOS from an external
file. Instead, the core contains a built-in dummy BIOS
(ourDummyROMCode, 294 bytes in CartAR.cxx) that simulates the
Supercharger load sequence. The initializeROM() function copies this
dummy code into the ROM bank (bank 3) at reset, sets up the 6502
reset vector to 0xF80A, and handles multiload via a hotspot at
address 0x1850.
The "fastscbios" setting (offset 109 in the dummy ROM) controls
whether the SC load progress bars are shown (0x00) or skipped
(0xFF). This is toggled automatically during ROM format detection
(Console.cxx:119-120).
The real Supercharger BIOS ROM (MD5 4565c1a7abce773e53c75b35414adefd)
is recognized in DefProps.hxx as a known cartridge entry but is not
required or loaded as a system file.
The libretro interface (retro_set_environment) does not call
RETRO_ENVIRONMENT_GET_SYSTEM_DIRECTORY and declares no firmware
requirements. No core option references BIOS loading.
files: []
platform_details:
supercharger_emulation:
source_ref: "stella/src/emucore/CartAR.cxx, CartAR.hxx"
notes: |
The Supercharger (type AR) uses 4 banks: 3x 2K RAM + 1x 2K ROM.
The ROM bank is filled with ourDummyROMCode at reset. SC games
are multi-load images (8448 bytes per load: 8192 data + 256 header).
loadIntoRAM() handles loading game data when the hotspot at 0x1850
is accessed with the ROM bank mapped. The bank switching byte and
start address are written to zero-page RAM (0xFE, 0xFF, 0x80) for
the dummy BIOS to read.