PCTask vs PCx vs Emplant e586 what is the best PeeCee emulator

[psxphill]

But today we have Win10 and I doubt I could use that seriously with PCx - even on a Vampire, not to speak of an 68060@50mHz...

Windows 10 checks for PAE, NX & SSE2 before it will install. These came out after PCx, so unless they've been added recently then won't be able to use Windows 10 with PCx at all. Let alone seriously.

[B00tDisk]

That's great!
I'm just wondering how usable it is today.
Roughly 15 years ago I ran PCx on an 060@50mHz and used M$-Dos and Win3.1 with it.
IIRC, it was not possible to run later versions of Windows, although the old HAAGE & PARTNER Amiga page says it would support the Pentium instruction set.
With a Pentium cpu @233mHz and 64mB RAM (better a Pentium@300+mHz with 128+mB RAM) it should be possible to run Win XP.
.

Dude I don't know if you're kidding or not, I think you need to step back from the idea of a usable XP environment on a 233mhz CPU and 64mb RAM.  The lowest spec machine I would even attempt to run XP (without adding the service packs, mind you) on would be in the 500mhz range with 256mb RAM.  And even then, only to say "Okay, it boots up".  Once you start adding service packs to fix the various problems it has (like, security issues), that overhead goes way, way up.  You might run XP on those specs, but you won't run any programs in XP.

[dovegrace]

Dude I don't know if you're kidding or not, I think you need to step back from the idea of a usable XP environment on a 233mhz CPU and 64mb RAM.  The lowest spec machine I would even attempt to run XP (without adding the service packs, mind you) on would be in the 500mhz range with 256mb RAM.  And even then, only to say "Okay, it boots up".  Once you start adding service packs to fix the various problems it has (like, security issues), that overhead goes way, way up.  You might run XP on those specs, but you won't run any programs in XP.

Seconded.  I have, at various times, ran Win XP and Win XP Pro on a 600MHz SunPCI-II card in my Sun Ultra 5 and, while it boots up just fine, it runs slower than molasses in January. Couldn't fathom running it on a PPC Amiga.

[JimDrew]

That's great!
I'm just wondering how usable it is today.

Today, its just for nostalgia.  It's not fast enough (even on a Vampire) for any serious work.  It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.  Later versions of Windows expected newer architecture and won't run.

The PPC versions had been promised by 'Microcode Solutions'. iFusion PPC was released, but unfortunately PCx PPC was never published.

That's not true.  I don't make promises about software.  I was stating what was planned.  We did work on a PPC version of PCx briefly, and a version of PCx was released for the Mac and PowerMac.  When iFUSION was sold to Blittersoft (along with source code, etc.) I completely abandoned PPC.  I think it's the worst CPU ever made.  IBM conned Apple into using it originally, and they finally got smart and switched to something much faster.  I was stunned when I heard that the next generation Amiga was going to be PPC based.  What a mistake that was.  That limited the sheer number of people who could have been exposed to the great Amiga OS.  Had the next generation Amiga gone x86 based, it would be at least (if not more so) popular as Linux is today.

[B00tDisk]

Today, its just for nostalgia.  It's not fast enough (even on a Vampire) for any serious work.  It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.  Later versions of Windows expected newer architecture and won't run.

That's not true.  I don't make promises about software.  I was stating what was planned.  We did work on a PPC version of PCx briefly, and a version of PCx was released for the Mac and PowerMac.  When iFUSION was sold to Blittersoft (along with source code, etc.) I completely abandoned PPC.  I think it's the worst CPU ever made.  IBM conned Apple into using it originally, and they finally got smart and switched to something much faster.  I was stunned when I heard that the next generation Amiga was going to be PPC based.  What a mistake that was.  That limited the sheer number of people who could have been exposed to the great Amiga OS.  Had the next generation Amiga gone x86 based, it would be at least (if not more so) popular as Linux is today.

I can't speak to various expansion manufacturers but I think a lot of the user-base back then was "Anything but x86", so by that logic PPC was "good" and x86 was "bad", and what they didn't get was that Motorola's tradition of not supporting previous architectures and instruction sets in follow-on CPUs meant that the PPC was just as alien as an x86 system would have been.  PPC was no magical device that granted some kind of purity to the Amiga's legacy.  It hampered and crippled it.

But we are wandering far afield.

[Motormouth]

Today, its just for nostalgia.  It's not fast enough (even on a Vampire) for any serious work.  It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.  Later versions of Windows expected newer architecture and won't run.

In so far as PC emulation even a 486slc bridgeboard could barely run windows 95.  If you could get PCx to run Windows 95 with something like a 1024x768x256 color display from the vamp's video out that would be actually quite awesome.

As for Fusion I would image you could get it to just fly, perhaps the fastest 680x0 mac ever ?? (I know this is a bold statement).  But Fusion V3.2 with an emplant board and voodoo3 graphics on my A4000/040/25mhz is already the fastest classic 680x0 mac I have, expect for my 33Mhz 68040 Quadra 950.  MacOS 8.1 (which is know to be slow) runs just fine on it.

[Dandy]

Dude I don't know if you're kidding or not, I think you need to step back from the idea of a usable XP environment on a 233mhz CPU and 64mb RAM.

Well, that's not my idea - thats what's listed at Wikipedia as 'minimum System requirements' for WinXP...

The lowest spec machine I would even attempt to run XP (without adding the service packs, mind you) on would be in the 500mhz range with 256mb RAM.  

I know - my own WinXP machine back then was 1.8mHz and had 512mB RAM. Later this turned out to be insufficient (PC became incredibly slow) and so I expanded the RAM to the max wich was 1gB for my mobo. Unfortunately the machine got 'hickups' from that and so I removed 256mB and ended up with a stable system with 768mB RAM.

And even then, only to say "Okay, it boots up".  Once you start adding service packs to fix the various problems it has (like, security issues), that overhead goes way, way up.  You might run XP on those specs, but you won't run any programs in XP.

Yes.
That's why I later put the real WIntel box besides my Miggy and networked both. For transferring files between them I used RDesktop and smbfs. This way I could save the space for a second monitor, keyboard and mouse on my desk...

[ferrellsl]

@JimDrew

I completely abandoned PPC.  I think it's the worst CPU ever made.  IBM conned Apple into using it originally, and they finally got smart and switched to something much faster.  I was stunned when I heard that the next generation Amiga was going to be PPC based.  What a mistake that was.  That limited the sheer number of people who could have been exposed to the great Amiga OS.  Had the next generation Amiga gone x86 based, it would be at least (if not more so) popular as Linux is today.

I have to agree with you on your perspective about PPC processors.  So far I'm enjoying AROS x64 and it's latest SMP capabilities.  I often wonder how far OS4 would have progressed in that regard had an x86 processor been selected back when the next generation Amiga was designed....I suspect OS4 would be at least as mature as AROS x86 is now and probably even more advanced.  A lot of OS4's momentum was lost and will never be regained by going with the PPC architecture. I'm looking forward to doing some AROS development and hope to port some classic Amiga apps to AROS.  I took a stab at some OS4 development around 2008 but there were just too many obstacles to be overcome, both in the OS and tool sets as well as the hardware, so I eventually sold my system and have been lurking around several Amiga forums for years.  Right now AROS seems to have the most potential.

[Dandy]

Today, its just for nostalgia.  It's not fast enough (even on a Vampire) for any serious work.  It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.  Later versions of Windows expected newer architecture and won't run.

That's what I assumed.
I'm just surprised that you say "It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.", as at the old HAAGE & PARTNER Amiga page it is stated that PCx supports the Pentium instruction set. It was promoted there as "The Pentium Emulator For The Amiga".

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...

That's not true.  I don't make promises about software.  I was stating what was planned.  We did work on a PPC version of PCx briefly, and a version of PCx was released for the Mac and PowerMac.  When iFUSION was sold to Blittersoft (along with source code, etc.) I completely abandoned PPC.  

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 think it's the worst CPU ever made.  IBM conned Apple into using it originally, and they finally got smart and switched to something much faster.  I was stunned when I heard that the next generation Amiga was going to be PPC based.  What a mistake that was.  That limited the sheer number of people who could have been exposed to the great Amiga OS.  

I'm no hardware expert, but I recall that back then the PPC was 'hyped'.
After the end of 68k cpu development it was clear that a new, more powerful cpu is required and most people thought it to be a good idea to go the PPC route.

Had the next generation Amiga gone x86 based, it would be at least (if not more so) popular as Linux is today.

It could very well have been that going the x86 route would have been a greater success for the Amiga platform than going PPC.

But would this have saved Commodore and the Amiga?
I'm not sure.

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...

[JimDrew]

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.

[Khyron]

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.




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.

.

Reading this thread is knocking bits of rust in my head.. My memory's a bit hazy..  I was one of the pre-orders for iFusion.. as far as I can remember think I pre-ordered from you directly (MicroCode-Solutions)?? was that right?

[Rabbi]

In so far as PC emulation even a 486slc bridgeboard could barely run windows 95.  If you could get PCx to run Windows 95 with something like a 1024x768x256 color display from the vamp's video out that would be actually quite awesome.

I've got the GoldenGate 486slc 50MHz bridge board card with the 387 maths co-processor & FDC chips installed (with the optional Monitor Master), ISA video card, & an ISA network card in my A4000.  I've also got Windows 98 installed on it.  It runs a whole lot faster than PC-Task 4.4 or PCx.  I would say that I does run at an acceptable level for the CPU it has on the bridge board.  I think that by having an ISA video card, the speed increases.

On another note: I had installed Windows95 on PC-Task ver. 4.4 on my NTSC A1200 with a Blizzard 1260 CPU accelerator.  You need the patience of a saint to complete the installation.  It took several hours to complete.  I wanted to install Windows98 on my A1200, but never got around to doing so.  You need to enter some parameters to install it so that it bypasses some stuff, which I've forgotten now.  I'd have to review that to remember what it was, but W98 could definitely be installed on PC-Task ver. 4.4.  W98 is the latest & last version that I know of that could be installed on PC-Task ver. 4.4.

[Motormouth]

I've got the GoldenGate 486slc 50MHz bridge board card with the 387 maths co-processor & FDC chips installed (with the optional Monitor Master), ISA video card, & an ISA network card in my A4000.  I've also got Windows 98 installed on it.  It runs a whole lot faster than PC-Task 4.4 or PCx.  I would say that I does run at an acceptable level for the CPU it has on the bridge board.  I think that by having an ISA video card, the speed increases.

On another note: I had installed Windows95 on PC-Task ver. 4.4 on my NTSC A1200 with a Blizzard 1260 CPU accelerator.  You need the patience of a saint to complete the installation.  It took several hours to complete.  I wanted to install Windows98 on my A1200, but never got around to doing so.  You need to enter some parameters to install it so that it bypasses some stuff, which I've forgotten now.  I'd have to review that to remember what it was, but W98 could definitely be installed on PC-Task ver. 4.4.  W98 is the latest & last version that I know of that could be installed on PC-Task ver. 4.4.

I have a similar setup A2386sx upgraded to 486slc3 75mhz, 387, cardinal VGA/SCSI/Audio board, ISA ethernet, and Kurwell IDE/SERIAL/Parallel board in a A2000 with all the ISA slots upgraded to 16 bit.

The 486slc is basically,  386sx on with 486 instruction set and bigger cache on a 16 bit bus / 32 internal.  Most were frequency double or even tripled.  This chip is quite nice when compared to a 386sx, but it really cannot hold a candle to the 486DX or DX2/DX4.  

By the time Windows 95 came out Pentiums 100mhz+ were out.

Windows 95 (which needs a 386 min) and Windows 98 (which needs a 486 min) will certainly install on these configurations, but alas they are already slow by the time windows 95 came out.  Certainly you could do regular "windows" tasks with these configuration, but certainly not any real gaming or anything too taxing.

An example of a test I did, this was in the late 90' something like 97.  I bought warcraft package with warcraft one, warcraft II , and the warcraft II expansion.  What was nice about warcraft series is that they were on hybrid disks, that could be install on both a PC or a mac.   I ran warcraft II, (a SVGA game) on my (at that time) A3000/040 25 mhz both with the with the A2386 with the 486slc3 bridgeboard and on the I think either emplant pro or an early version of fusion.  Warcraft II installed on the A2386 486slc configuration side but was so slow that is was basically unplayable.  whereas on the mac side of this the game played smoothly.  The full 68040 consider roughly equivalent to the 80486DX (I know we could get into a lot of controversy with this statement, but is not the point of this reply.)  I am not going to pretend that this was a accurate test, but roughly a practical comparison.  

Now as for the original warcraft, both ran smoothly.

It is my opinion  (opinions are a dime a dozen) that the 486slc bridgeboards (with a VGA card) make a super windows 3.11 with workgroups computers and can handle games from from the early 90's extremely well.  It can run windows 95/98 and do basic tasks well enough, but choke when you throw anything semi hard at them.  Eitherway it is fun just trying to get them to work with either configuration.

My friends thought it was just crazy that my A3000 could run AmigaOS, Windows 95 (yes I has 95 on it to show off), MacOS (probably 7.6.3 at the time), and NetBSD. It was nice to have this configuration at this time as I was a graduate student.  In trying to write my thesis I needed data from MatLab (primarily a mac product at the time), early dos data acquisition computers, Mac office computers, and Sun Unix workstations.  It was also nice having NetBSD for its LaTeX support as many theses were written in TeX at the time.

[psxphill]

I can't speak to various expansion manufacturers but I think a lot of the user-base back then was "Anything but x86", so by that logic PPC was "good" and x86 was "bad",

After commodore management (and to a certain extent the commodore engineers) had almost killed the Amiga's chances of being successful, the "Intel Outside" crowd came in and finished it off.

Hombre released in 1993 would have given the PS1 or Saturn a run for it's money, but by then Amiga had lost the price/performance war with PC's.

To take on the PC market they would need an x86 and an off the shelf graphics & sound chip with PCI slots, to differentiate they could have built a custom north/south bridge that abandoned PC architecture for something a bit more Amiga like. You could build backward compatibility for copper/blitter/paula etc registers in the chipset, leaving legacy applications running on a simple 68k emulator.

and what they didn't get was that Motorola's tradition of not supporting previous architectures and instruction sets in follow-on CPUs meant that the PPC was just as alien as an x86 system would have been.

Motorola licensed PPC in from IBM, so it was always going to be different to 68k.

[OlafS3]

Today, its just for nostalgia.  It's not fast enough (even on a Vampire) for any serious work.  It runs Windows 3.1 just fine, and probably could run Windows 95... but that's it.  Later versions of Windows expected newer architecture and won't run.

That's not true.  I don't make promises about software.  I was stating what was planned.  We did work on a PPC version of PCx briefly, and a version of PCx was released for the Mac and PowerMac.  When iFUSION was sold to Blittersoft (along with source code, etc.) I completely abandoned PPC.  I think it's the worst CPU ever made.  IBM conned Apple into using it originally, and they finally got smart and switched to something much faster.  I was stunned when I heard that the next generation Amiga was going to be PPC based.  What a mistake that was.  That limited the sheer number of people who could have been exposed to the great Amiga OS.  Had the next generation Amiga gone x86 based, it would be at least (if not more so) popular as Linux is today.

from a logical point of view you are right. I had switched to X86 PC at that time already (some time after Commodore went bankrupt) and many others had too. But the die hard fans left were not ready for that switch propably. Look how the die hards even today react, from a person outside it looks pretty strange. So from logical and economic point of view, and looking back yes the switch to X86 should have happened but PPC propably was easier to sell to what was left of the amiga community at that time. And there was a lot of propaganda and illusions at that time, RISC was hip and the CISC chips from INTEL and other companies were on demise if you believed what was told everywhere. History of course tells something different...

[OlafS3]

@Dandy

Yes RISC in general and PPC in special was very much hyped at that time. I rebought all the old magazines of the most popular amiga magazine at that time and there was only future is PPC, future is PPC, RISC is future, CISC is past and so on, not even any discussion about what is the better route.