xtiger is Jonas Minnberg's TI-92 emulator for Linux, and the original one: this is the codebase that TiEmu and most of the other TI-68k emulators descend from.
Jonas Minnberg wrote it in the late 1990s as "Tiger", closed source, in SVGAlib and Xlib versions. After he had stopped working on it I (Misha Nasledov) asked whether he would consider open sourcing it; he gave me the source and permission to release it under the GPL, which happened in 2001. It has been forked and ported many times since — most visibly by TiEmu, which took the emulation core and grew a full TI-89/92/92+/V200 emulator with a graphical debugger around it.
This repository is preserved, not actively maintained. If you want a TI-68k emulator to actually use, use TiEmu. What's here is the original source, brought up to date in 2026 to the point where it still builds and runs on a current system — SDL2 in place of Xlib, and a fix-up pass for modern compilers — and then left there. Pull requests are welcome but not watched closely; open an issue first if you want a reply.
There are two frontends:
- tiger uses SDL2, so it runs natively on Wayland and X11 (chosen automatically at runtime), and should be portable to other operating systems SDL2 supports.
- tiger-term renders the LCD directly in your terminal with 24-bit color, picking the sharpest mode your terminal size allows (Ctrl-T cycles): half-blocks (240x64 cells, per-pixel gray), quadrants (120x64), sextants (120x43, needs Unicode 13 glyphs), or braille (120x32, fits anywhere).
Earlier versions used SVGAlib, Xlib, and later libggi.
Requires a C compiler, GNU make, and SDL2 development headers
(libsdl2-dev on Debian/Ubuntu, SDL2-devel on Fedora).
make
make install [PREFIX=...]
The 68k CPU core is generated at build time by build68k/gencpu,
a process inherited from UAE.
You need a TI-92 ROM image (1MB or 2MB), which xtiger looks for as
ti92.rom in the current directory:
./tiger [-r romfile] [-c cfgfile]
Machine state is saved to ti92.mem on exit and restored on startup.
Most keys map directly (letters, digits, F1-F8, arrows, Enter, Escape, Backspace, and the usual arithmetic keys). Notable mappings:
Shift SHIFT Ctrl DIAMOND
Alt 2ND Caps Lock HAND
Tab STO> Home CLEAR
PageUp MODE Scroll Lock ON
Insert LN Delete SIN
End COS PageDown TAN
F12 APPS ( or [ (
) or ] ) ; THETA
< (-) negate
F9 enter the built-in debugger
F10 enter command mode (load files, change settings)
F11 quit
Terminals have no key-release events, so a key reads as held for a short time after each press (keyboard autorepeat keeps it held), and modifiers work differently:
UPPERCASE letter SHIFT + letter
Alt + key 2ND + key
Ctrl + key DIAMOND + key
Ctrl-O ON
Ctrl-T cycle render mode (braille/sextant/quadrant/half-block)
Ctrl-L force redraw
Ctrl-Q quit
Press F10 to enter command mode on the terminal. help lists
commands; load file.92p sends a file over the emulated link port;
quit returns to the emulator. Settings can also be placed in a
config file (default tiger.cfg; see the putcfg command).
Originally written by Jonas Minnberg; released as open source and
maintained since 2001 by Misha Nasledov. The 68k emulation core, and the
build-time code generation that produces it, come from UAE. See AUTHORS
and ChangeLog for the details, and HACKING for Jonas's original notes
on the source.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License; see COPYING.
No ROM images are included or distributed here. TI-92 ROMs are copyrighted by Texas Instruments and must be dumped from a calculator you own.