MartyPC
Shares rank 10 of 20 emulators by recommenders
A cycle-accurate IBM PC/XT emulator written in Rust, praised for accuracy and for testing against real hardware; critics note limited hardware support and some bugs.
A cycle-accurate IBM PC/XT emulator written in Rust, praised for accuracy and for testing against real hardware; critics note limited hardware support and some bugs.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Accurate, tested against real hardware
“the author built physical harnesses for real early CPUs so that he could build test suites against the real hardware”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust” “marty's PC may not have a lot of breadth in terms of supported hardware, but it gets the accuracy totally right”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Limited hardware and keyboard support
“marty's PC may not have a lot of breadth in terms of supported hardware, but it gets the accuracy totally right”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust” “Doesn't seem to support non-QWERTY keboards”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust” “Who cares about non-qwerty!”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust” Freezes and input mapping bugs
“it just freezes shortly after the "Thanks for running on real hardware!"”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “MartyPC – A Cycle-Accurate IBM PC/XT Emulator” “Mysteriously, backslash has been mapped to backspace for some reason.”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “MartyPC is a cross-platform emulator of early PCs written in Rust”
Other emulators people recommend
The four most recommended other emulators, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 20 emulators, rankedWhat people said
11 of the 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it just freezes shortly after the "Thanks for running on real hardware!"”
“great emulator and nice guy too”
“the author built physical harnesses for real early CPUs so that he could build test suites against the real hardware”
“marty's PC may not have a lot of breadth in terms of supported hardware, but it gets the accuracy totally right”
“Who cares about non-qwerty!”
“Can't get that to run on my older OS X machine nor my Amiga.”
“Doesn't seem to support non-QWERTY keboards”
“this doesn't actually emulate the FM Towns Marty”
“Mysteriously, backslash has been mapped to backspace for some reason.”
“They did a lot of benchmark testing with some really iconic demoscene productions, and the results are fascinating.”
“Another option is MartyPC”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.