New Year, New PC, New Logo

January 26, 2026

It’s a new year and this year, that comes with a new PC.

The development of Gopher2600 has thus far has been conducted entirely on a very old machine. For the sake of posterity I will reveal that it consisted of a Sandy Bridge i3, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 650.

It’s decent enough and likely more powerful than the computers used by many of the people who are interested in Atari 2600 emulation. But none-the-less the time had come for a new computer.

I splashed out on this one. Not overly expensive but it’s definitely a step up: a Ryzen 7 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a RTX 5070 to shovel the graphics. Definitely strong enough for emulating the 2600. Indeed, initial tests show that I can now run the emulation at full pelt within the debugger! That’s an improvement for sure.

I have big plans for Gopher2600 this year (and for Test7800, which will probably be renamed to Gopher7800 soon enough). Early days yet but one of the plans will involve the meaty potential of the 5070…

To complete the new year joy, we also have a brand new logo. And when I say brand new, I really mean it. Commissioned and delivered within an hour by my old friend Tango, the revered ASCII artist, making a rare appearance at the CygnusEd keyboard.

    _________ _______  ________   _______   _________ _______
   (    ____/\____  ¬\ \______¬\ (    / ¬\ (   _____/\_____ ¬\
   /.  / ¬\_\/.  /   /\/.  ____/\/.  _   /\/. ___/__\/.  _ __/\
  //  /   /\//  /   / //   /\__\//  /   / //      /\//  /   /\/
 /___    / /___    / /____/ /  /___/   / /___/   / /___/   / /
 \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\____\/   \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\__/___/ /
    \___\/    \___\/              \___\/    \___\/    \___\/
                       ________   _________ _______   _______  
 //----------------\\  \_____ ¬\ (    ____/\____  ¬\ (____  ¬\ 
                       /. _____/\/.  /__\_\/.  /   /\/.  /   /\
     Gopher 2600      //      /\//  /_  /\//  /   / //  /   / /
                     /___/   / /___    / /___    / /___    / / 
 \\---------------// \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\__/___/ / __/___/ /  
                        \___\/    \___\/    \___\/tGø \___\/

Or if you prefer, white text on a dark background.

    _________ _______  ________   _______   _________ _______
   (    ____/\____  ¬\ \______¬\ (    / ¬\ (   _____/\_____ ¬\
   /.  / ¬\_\/.  /   /\/.  ____/\/.  _   /\/. ___/__\/.  _ __/\
  //  /   /\//  /   / //   /\__\//  /   / //      /\//  /   /\/
 /___    / /___    / /____/ /  /___/   / /___/   / /___/   / /
 \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\____\/   \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\__/___/ /
    \___\/    \___\/              \___\/    \___\/    \___\/
                       ________   _________ _______   _______  
 //----------------\\  \_____ ¬\ (    ____/\____  ¬\ (____  ¬\ 
                       /. _____/\/.  /__\_\/.  /   /\/.  /   /\
     Gopher 2600      //      /\//  /_  /\//  /   / //  /   / /
                     /___/   / /___    / /___    / /___    / / 
 \\---------------// \__/___/ /\__/___/ /\__/___/ / __/___/ /  
                        \___\/    \___\/    \___\/tGø \___\/

The old logo has been relegated to the foot of the Github page for some time. It was amusing to begin with, but much like the gopher- prefix, the novelty gopher logo is overused by programs written in Go.

And while I can’t do much about the name this late in the game, I can change the logo.

Current development activity of Gopher2600 is looking at the implementation of the 6507 emulation. The current implementation was amongst the very first Go code I wrote and hasn’t changed much.

Related to this work is an investigation into the mysteries of the SARA chip. SARA has been emulated by Gopher2600 for many years but there is one important property of that chip that isn’t really emulated at all by any emulator…