The Acorn BBC Micro is emulated by BeebEm, the reference emulator, which the Recalbox team ported to SDL2 and adapted to its needs. A second core, Libretro B2, is also available.
Your games go in /recalbox/share/roms/bbcmicro, in .ssd, .dsd, .adf, .adl (floppies), .uef, .csw (tapes) and .m3u formats.
BeebEm supports four models: BBC Micro (default), B Plus, Integra B and Master 128. The model is derived from the subfolder the game sits in; names are case-insensitive.
| Model | Recognised subfolder names |
|---|---|
| B Plus | bbcbplus, bbc-bplus, modelbplus, model-bplus, bbcmodelbplus, bbc-model-bplus |
| Integra B | bbcmicrointegrab, bbcmicro-integra-b, integrab, integra-b |
| Master 128 | bbcmaster, bbc-master, bbcmaster128, bbc-master-128, master128, master-128 |
Unless you have a specific reason, stick to the BBC Micro and the Master 128: the latter is the right choice for the more demanding games.
| Combination | Action |
|---|---|
HOTKEY + START |
Quit |
HOTKEY + A |
Toggle smoothing |
HOTKEY + B |
Reset the machine |
HOTKEY + X |
Show the keyboard and peripheral LEDs (tape, floppy, hard disk, special keys) |
HOTKEY + Y |
Screenshot at native resolution |
HOTKEY + L1 / R1 |
Cycle through tapes or floppies — use with an .m3u file |
HOTKEY + L2 |
Pause |
HOTKEY + R2 |
Show FPS |
HOTKEY + L3 |
Change the display type (colour, black and white, green, amber) |
HOTKEY + R3 |
Toggle floppy write protection (read-only files and .zip archives stay protected) |
The emulated keyboard layout is QWERTY.
The original joystick and mouse both work: the joystick is mapped to the left stick, the D-pad and the A and B buttons.
Tube expansion boards are supported, through the core options or a configuration override.
Only three floppy controllers are supported, to be enabled in the core options: acorn1770, opusddos and watford. On the B Plus model, acorn1770 is enabled by default.
Configuration overrides work on two levels only: <game>.<ext>.xxx.cfg for a single game, and .xxx.cfg for a whole folder.
Some parts of the system are not emulated: teletext, Econet support, the debugger, the disassembler and the serial ports. Loading IDE or SCSI hard disks is not possible either.
.zip is accepted for floppies only. The .uef and .csw tape formats are already compressed: zipping them wastes space for no gain.