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Author Topic: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable  (Read 6172 times)

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Offline cgutjahr

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #14 on: October 29, 2014, 04:54:42 PM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;776086
I'm talking about any variant of UAE I could get hands on (uae,e-uae,fs-uae), all the same problems.

Everything but FS-UAE is not worth your time if you want to do more than boot a Lemmings disk image.

FS-UAE used to have a known problem with CPU emulation, they were discussing it over at EAB. Some 68k software Author even came up with Benchmarks to narrow down the problem.

Maybe you could help narrowing it down further.

Quote

No, there is no windows here, and no, I don't see why I should finance Microsoft for Amiga-usage.

You can run WinUAE under WINE. I'm not a big fan of WINE, but I had to access a HDF image with a nonstandard geometry, and only WinUAE supports that. Works perfectly fine, and WinUAE is noticably faster than FS-UAE, due to the bug mentioned above.

Quote

 I don't see options for JIT here. A tutorial is a nice thing to have, but a program that requires a tutorial to be usable is not.

You haven't used mmu.library in a while, I take it ;)
 

Offline kamelito

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #15 on: October 29, 2014, 05:11:14 PM »
Worst thing about emulation is CPU at 100%, transforming a nice silent laptop into a hot noisy hoover.
Kamelito
 

Offline wawrzon

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2014, 05:30:40 PM »
Quote from: cgutjahr;776094
You haven't used mmu.library in a while, I take it ;)


well, now that you mention it, winuae support for mmu is restricted to non-jit mode, this might be a show stopper for thomas.
 

Offline Linde

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #17 on: October 29, 2014, 05:48:08 PM »
I've been using FS-UAE for a while, and it's been very useful. Before that I used WinUAE, which seems to have more features, but FS-UAE has everything I need, really. Can't tell you about performance, this machine is quite a power horse so it's all smooth to me. A problem that seems inherent with emulators is that there is a slight input/output lag. If it wasn't for that, I would probably only use emulators, but I'm getting more and more used to it.
 

guest11527

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #18 on: October 29, 2014, 06:44:22 PM »
Quote from: buzz;776091
also seems to be a bit of PEBCAK :)

It's arguable whether the mouse grab is a matter of PEBCAK - one only has to read the manual and get used to it. The current choice is probably "only" a matter of a bad user interface design. That's bad enough, but it doesn't "break" anything. It only makes matters harder than necessary.

However, if I cannot enter a backslash from the keyboard, then that's a real show-stopper. I cannot work with it if the backslash is missing, no chance.

Of course, one can argue that all these emulators address a completely different use-case, namely that of a (causal) gamer that wants to play some old Amiga games. For that, it might be actually sufficient, and more convenient than a real machine. However, that's not quite the point I'm trying to make. I wanted to give my personal impression why it is not usable for me, and for my use-case.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #19 on: October 29, 2014, 07:21:49 PM »
The MMU emulation is there, backported from Aranym, mostly for those of us who want to run Linux or BSD under m68k emulation. And for that it works fine. And yes, JIT and MMU emulation are mutually exclusive, you cannot have both.
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Offline kolla

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2014, 07:31:32 PM »
One way out is an old A1200 keyboard and a keyrah, then you get a (very bulky) amiga USB keyboard. With some luck you can cram a PC mobo in the case too, I'm sure.
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Offline psxphill

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #21 on: October 29, 2014, 07:36:19 PM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;776065
1) The keyboard. Not everybody is using a US keyboard, and even with local keyboards permitted, users are free to redefine keys.

The only way to make it work reliably is to pass keys through by position and ignore what the host operating system would map it to. But this means you can't use other input methods. There are various compromises you can make, some will work better than others for you but worse for others.
 

guest11527

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #22 on: October 29, 2014, 07:57:34 PM »
Quote from: psxphill;776110
The only way to make it work reliably is to pass keys through by position and ignore what the host operating system would map it to. But this means you can't use other input methods. There are various compromises you can make, some will work better than others for you but worse for others.

No, not really. Look, the problem is not all new to me. As said, I also wrote (and still maintain) an emulator, and was stuck pretty much with the same problem - how to map keys. The procedure that worked best for me was really to make the mapping dependent on the keys, or rather their function. It is certainly not impossible to create a useful keyboard mapping, but ignoring the host layout -or- ignoring the client keyboard layout is both not a solution as it means that certain keys are not even reachable.
 

Offline fishy_fiz

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #23 on: October 30, 2014, 12:53:11 AM »
There's also amithlon I guess, which is significantly faster than any other amiga emulator out there (especially with fpu performance). It's also void of the input lag "problem".
Im still a bit unclear about the slash character "issue". Every single keyboard I have has both forward and back slash keys. Backslash also has same character as amiga for shift+backslash (not sure what a person would call that character though).
Most of my coding is done under emulation, and keys have never even crossed my mind. Theyre just there.
Near as I can tell this is where I write something under the guise of being innocuous, but really its a pot shot at another persons/peoples choice of Amiga based systems. Unfortunately only I cant see how transparent and petty it makes me look.
 

Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #24 on: October 30, 2014, 03:07:01 AM »
Ah, I always hated emulation.  Nothing beats the real thing.  Although I do occasionally use a Commodore 64 emulator on my Amiga, since I don't have desk space for a C64 setup.  I realize my PC could emulate a C64 waaay faster, but yeah.  Just like keeping it all as close to original as possible.  ;)
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Offline Thorham

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #25 on: October 30, 2014, 06:32:58 AM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;776144
Ah, I always hated emulation.
What's wrong with emulation? It's great for running GCC :) It was also great when my Amiga was broken :)

Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;776144
Nothing beats the real thing.
Indeed!
 

Offline Georg

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #26 on: October 30, 2014, 08:27:50 AM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;776105

However, if I cannot enter a backslash from the keyboard, then that's a real show-stopper. I cannot work with it if the backslash is missing, no chance.


Make your own keymap by modifying the asm source of the Amiga "d" keymap (can be found on Amiga Dev CD 2.1).

Code: [Select]

-       DC.B    '_','-','?',$DF ; sharp s, ?, -, _
+       DC.B    '|','\','?',$DF ; sharp s, ?, -, _
 

Offline Faerytale

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #27 on: October 30, 2014, 08:50:58 AM »
For me Amiga is all about the software! WinUAE is a gods gift(i mean Toni Wilen). no need for old clunky hardware here :)
 

Offline Georg

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Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #28 on: October 30, 2014, 10:51:55 AM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;776065
Write a C program without the backslash is challenging.


Btw, when using UAE it makes more sense to use text editors running in the host OS (UAE can mount host directories as volumes). AOS needs to be rebooted -> host text editors stay open. No need to restart/reopen all your source files.
 

Offline psxphill

Re: Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable
« Reply #29 from previous page: October 30, 2014, 09:11:56 PM »
Quote from: Thomas Richter;776111
but ignoring the host layout -or- ignoring the client keyboard layout is both not a solution as it means that certain keys are not even reachable.

How can keys not be reachable if every real hardware key is mapped to an emulated hardware key?
 
 Mapping real keyboard scan codes to emulation is the only reliable way to emulate a keyboard in all circumstances and all locales.