And a 'Pentium CPU' is listed as 'Minimum System requirements' for WinXP, while for Win98se it still was 'just' an "Intel 80486DX2 66 MHz or a compatible CPU with a math coprocessor (Pentium processor recommended)" according to Wikipedia.
So I thought PCx would - at least theoretically - be capable to run WinXP (at an extremely slow speed, of course). Just the max amount of RAM in my Miggy seemed to be 'showstopper'. WinXP needed at least 256mB RAM, while my system just had the 128 mB on the CSPPC plus 2mB CHIP mem...
Well, it might run WinXP, I have never tried it. You have to remember that Windows95 didn't even exist yet when EMPLANT's e586dx emulation was written, and that was the basis for PCx.
Well Jim, I don't know what was going on 'behind the scenes' back then.
I can only tell that this was what the customers here in Germany got as information for PCx on the old HAAGE & PARTNER Amiga page:
16 Juni 99: Fusion PPC Vorbestellung
Microcode Solutions erwartet bis zum 1. Juli 500 Vorbestellungen um die Produkte Fusion und PCx für den PowerPC fertigzustellen. Wir finden dieses Vorgehen aus verschiedenen Gründen bedenklich, doch da die erste Stufe noch keiner Vorauszahlung bedarf, kann man so sein Interesse an dem Produkt nochmals bekunden. Link
(June 16th, 1999: Pre-ordering Fusion PPC
Microcode Solutions requires 500 pre-orders by July 1st to complete the products "Fusion" and "PCx" for the PowerPC. We find this course of action questionable for several reasons, but as no pre-payment is required in this first phase, this is a way to express interest in the product once more. link)
I am not sure what the link showed, but I know the pre-order thing was a joke. We had around 30 pre-orders and that was it. Not worth the time, but iFUSION was completed and it worked (on the Cyberstorm) and I sold it all off.
The Pentium 1 was introduced on March 22, 1993 and Commodore declared bankruptcy on April 29, 1994 and ceased to exist. So it seems it already was too late for a change...
I was talking about machines produced after the CBM bankruptcy, making future OS4 machines based on x86 instead of PPC.
While I was looking around for the old Microcode Solutions website backups, I found the source code to iFUSION and iFUSE. iFUSE was the PC version a PowerMac emulation that used the GXC604e PCI CPU card. I had a deal with the company to provide the Mac emulation for their board, but their company struggled and the card was never released. That was too bad - that actually was a great piece of hardware, providing 512MB of RAM directly connected to the CPU. The PCI bus was the bridge for the peripherals (video/audio/serial/etc.) and the "Mac" ran exclusively on the RAM of the card. No libraries to deal with, which was the biggest battle for iFUSION on the Amiga.