Colour Genie

The Colour Genie EG2000 is a home computer produced by EACA (Engineering And Computer Applications), a Hong Kong-based electronics manufacturer. It was introduced in Germany in August 1982 and later distributed in the UK (at GBP 199 by Lowe Electronics), Australia, and New Zealand. EACA had previously produced the Video Genie series, which were largely TRS-80 Model I clones.

The Colour Genie features a Z80A CPU at 2.2 MHz, 16 KB RAM (expandable to 32 KB), 16 KB ROM containing Colour BASIC, a Motorola MC6845 CRTC with custom circuitry for video (160×96 pixels, 16 colors), and a General Instruments AY-3-8910 sound chip providing 3 tone channels plus a noise channel with programmable ADSR envelopes. It includes 128 user-definable characters, a 63-key keyboard, cassette tape interface, composite video, RF modulator, RS-232, light pen port, parallel printer port, and a cartridge/expansion slot.

While the Colour Genie's BASIC was broadly compatible with the Video Genie and TRS-80 Model III BASIC (minus the new graphics/sound commands), the hardware differences meant it could not directly run TRS-80 software. This was a critical disadvantage — previous Video Genie models had benefited from the enormous TRS-80 software ecosystem, but the Colour Genie lost this advantage, resulting in a limited dedicated software library.

The Colour Genie was a commercial failure due to software scarcity, fierce competition from the Commodore VIC-20, Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64, reliability issues (one dealer reported returning 75% of units), and ultimately EACA's bankruptcy.

This system scrapes metadata for the “cgenie” group(s) and loads the cgenie set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

BIOS

MD5 checksum Share file path Description
bios/cgenie.zip Colour Genie BIOS ROM set

The cgenie.zip BIOS file must match the version of MAME used in your version of Batocera. You can verify your BIOS files from the Batocera menu: GAME SETTINGS > MISSING BIOS CHECK.

ROMs

Place your Colour Genie ROMs in /userdata/roms/cgenie.

Software was distributed primarily on cassette tapes. The supported file formats are:

  • .cas — cassette tape images
  • .wav — raw cassette audio recordings

The Colour Genie's software library was limited due to its incompatibility with the TRS-80 ecosystem. Software had to be written specifically for the Colour Genie's unique graphics and sound capabilities.

Emulators

MAME

MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is the primary emulator for the Colour Genie in Batocera.

RetroArch

RetroArch (formerly SSNES), is a ubiquitous frontend that can run multiple “cores”, which are essentially the emulators themselves. The most common cores use the libretro API, so that's why cores run in RetroArch in Batocera are referred to as “libretro: (core name)”. RetroArch aims to unify the feature set of all libretro cores and offer a universal, familiar interface independent of platform.

RetroArch configuration

RetroArch offers a Quick Menu accessed by pressing [HOTKEY] + South button (B SNES) which can be used to alter various things like RetroArch and core options, and controller mapping. Most RetroArch related settings can be altered from Batocera's EmulationStation.

libretro: MAME

The libretro version of MAME can be used to emulate the Colour Genie. It uses the same BIOS and ROM sets as the standalone version.

Controls

The Colour Genie is a computer system with a 63-key typewriter-style keyboard. A physical USB keyboard is strongly recommended.

See also

Troubleshooting

Black screen on boot

Make sure the BIOS file (cgenie.zip) is in /userdata/bios/ and matches the MAME version used in Batocera. Use GAME SETTINGS > MISSING BIOS CHECK to verify.

Further troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/cgenie.txt
  • Last modified: 5 weeks ago
  • by wizzard