Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: neofree on January 15, 2003, 01:51:15 AM
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If I remember correctly when Apple first started to use the PowerPC processor, their systems where able to run PC software also in a Window. Surely the same could be possible on the A1, which could make the A1 more useful so that people can use that program that they can't find a replacement for on the A1.
Comments?
Also, wasn't there an 8088/XT emulator for 68K CPU's? If so, has one became available on the net that I could run on my 030/40 A1200?
Thanks,
Neofree
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@neofree
I've also wondered about the possibility of a PC emulator for the A1. I think that almost everyone would like to be able to run MS Word and so forth. Though I game of Half-Life (and by extension Day of Defeat) would be nice :-D . Considering that the A1 is using mostly standard PC equipment (in terms of sound and video cards) would a relatively fast PC emulator be possible?
I'm sure there are technically minded individuals who can answer this one ;-) .
Cheers
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There already is PC emulation for OS4. Two even,
PC task and PCx :-D
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Slaps myself :hammer: :hammer: :python: :whack:
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But on a more serious note.
They might just even be practical at PPC speeds (although still 68k emulated). PCx emulated Pentium instruction set IIRC. So perhaps it would be quite possible to run Windoze 9x on it :-o.
Has anyone tried PCx/PCtask on a very fast WinUAE setup? I'm wondering how fast that would be (completely pointless, but still interesting...in a geekish way :-)).
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@Odin
I've downloaded a demo of PCx, might give it a whirl on WinUAE
Cheers
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I've used PCx and PCTask on my 060/50. PCTask was better. It could do memory paging, whereas PCx, for all its claimed pentium emulation, could not.
This meant only PCTask could run Win95. Mind you, PCTask running Win95 was slower than a very slow thing.
Running Win3.1 in standard mode was quite acceptable for apps like WP - Word2 and Word6 both worked well. Excel had some glitch whereby it would only work in Windows enhanced mode, which was slow.
I can imagine that Windows 3.1 would be reasonably snappy, perhaps even in enhanced mode. That might make Win95 useable under PCTask. But the real question would be....why?
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But the real question would be....why?
Because it's possible! :-)
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What about Bochs ?
There already is a native MorphOS port,
it should be possible to make a OS4 port
from that sources.
Just a idea.
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I have visions of MacOnlinux running MacOS running SoftWindows in an AmigaOS window... Two "minor" obstacles, a port of MacOnLinux required (either for MorphOS or AOS4), and a permission from Apple :-) Sad, that it never will happen.
AFAIK PCTask relies heavily on the custom chipset, and not developed anymore, so making a port would be a pain, if even possible...
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AFAIK PCTask relies heavily on the custom chipset, and not developed anymore, so making a port would be a pain, if even possible...
I spoke to Chris Hames about this a few years ago when the blizzards first came out.
PPC-PCTask 5 as it was going to be never materialised, However Chris did say that he began converting the code from 68K asm to C.
How far he got with it i dont know.
It would be a good foundation for an OS4 ppc version.
Be nice if the code was released into the public domain ?
Maybe Bernie should put his knowledge of emulation into an PC Emulator for OS4 instead.
Make him some $$$
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Most Amiga users already have a PC at home, which is presumably faster than any emulated PC. I'm an exception tho, and I'd gladly pay for a MOS version. Or OS4 version, when it will be available on Pegasos and I'll like that better. Any more potential purchasers? :-)
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Yes, I would buy it....
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I don't think I would, a mac emu probably yes. (Heck the friggin 603e@175MHz I have is way to slow I guess to run the more recent MacOSes ;-)).
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Personally, there are a few obscure MS-DOS applications (mainly econometric stuff such as Frontier 4.1, DEAP ) I would like to use. PC-Task and PCx would be more than up to the task, I hope :-)
Cheers
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Felix wrote:
What about Bochs ?
There already is a native MorphOS port,
it should be possible to make a OS4 port
from that sources.
Eventhough Bochs is fairly easy to port, its slooow as hell. (1.5 mips on a 400 mhz or something dont quite remember).
The main problem with Bochs is that everything is written in C for portability. Now if someone replaced the code for the x86 emulation with a more advanced emulation (JIT, assembler code dont really know how much is possible) we could actually have a nice and fast emulation.
A pc emulator WOULD indeed be really nice to have
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How fast is VirtualPC on modern Mac or on MacOnLinux on AmigaOne/pegasos?
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ViritualPC is very usable. You shouldn't expect P-IV speeds, though...
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Quite an interesting point! Would love to be able to emulate PC on AmigaOne. I believe this is possible, but there may be different possibilities to to this. One possibility is to run Windows under LinuxPPC, as it's possible with MacOS X Jaguar under it, the other one is to have some kind of a native PC-emulator. I don't know, but it should be completely possible...I can't see the problem in making this possible... :-)
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You didn't ask, per se, but most people are wondering the same thing, can you run PC games....
Short answer is 'NO', even the fastest Mac, running a very mature highly optimized accelerator like Virtual PC, cannot run the latest PC 3D games......2D games, if they are spec'd low enough will work, but if it required hardware 3d acceleration, in general, you can forget about it....no modern 3d games will work at playable speeds.
Thats on a Mac, and on the Amiga, the situation is even worse, with less optimized emulators, and even less likely someone would right the native 3d driver to emulated machine drive interface that you would need to get 3d acceleration working in the emulated box.
And on the amiga where the native 3d stuff is likely only a subset, not a superset of what the emulated machines 3d driver...well, a lot has to change before getting 3d accelerated games (even of the Mac variety) to work on Amiga hardware.
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I'd be interested in emulating a PC initially, only as way of tempting my g/f away from her PC. Then I would hope to gradually switch everything across to AOS and eventually only have one machine in use.
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I think that we want is work with windows appa on the Amiga,
we need a windows emulator not a PC emulator.
A port of WINE will be good for use those windows apps
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or if emulation was not fast enough
a pci card to slot into the A1 a
shark PC card Elbox would have made
a lot more money than trying upgade
the a1200 :-o
as i have thought about buying a shark
ppc card but i have so many bits on
my a1200 i think affects the stability
of computer and os so i think i will
be investing in a A1
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From what i've heard, WINE needs a x86 (since it's not an emulator) and a VM like bochs would be the only answer.
Though maybe it would be possible to somehow implement the Win32 APIs - it'd be hard, though, and microsoft would't like it one bit!
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One of the reasons I was very excited about the proposed NG Amiga running on X86 was the ability to dual boot the Amiga with Windows and thus ease the software transition. I’m into graphics and animation.
When new and better software appeared for the Amiga I could purchase it and let the old Windows stuff fall into disuse.
Soo being able to run PC software on a new Amiga would be just as good - better even! :-)
Bob C.
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Didnt NT4.0 have Mips, DECAlpha and PPC versions
on the same CD? I could be wrong on that(its been
a LONG time) but if the PPC version worked on A1 it would make PC emulation beyond DOS moot.
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Here`s an idea that might speed up the emulation...
Make a driver for Windows that`s written in PPC code, that redirects the windows graphics acceleration into P96 ones
Someone could also make a DirectX8 driver for Warp3d (Nova)
The IDE control could also be re-written
Just an idea....
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> Didnt NT4.0 have Mips, DECAlpha and PPC versions
> on the same CD?
It certainly had those versions, I don`t know if they all came on the same CD though...
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alx wrote:
From what i've heard, WINE needs a x86 (since it's not an emulator) and a VM like bochs would be the only answer.
Though maybe it would be possible to somehow implement the Win32 APIs - it'd be hard, though, and microsoft would't like it one bit!
As it has been posted on the WinE mailing, it should be possible to build the CPU emulation of Bochs into WinE to make it possible to run x86-Windows software on other systems :-D
If someone would port WinE itself, then we could be able to use the few PPC-Windows programs, from WinNT-PPC :-D But there are only few!
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huronking wrote:
Didnt NT4.0 have Mips, DECAlpha and PPC versions
on the same CD? I could be wrong on that(its been
a LONG time) but if the PPC version worked on A1 it would make PC emulation beyond DOS moot.
Yep, they where all on the disc, but what would you use it for ... there where only few PPC-Windows aplications!!!
If someone would port WinE to AmigaOS4, then we would anyway be able to use those aplications :-D
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huronking wrote:
Didnt NT4.0 have Mips, DECAlpha and PPC versions
on the same CD? I could be wrong on that(its been
a LONG time) but if the PPC version worked on A1 it would make PC emulation beyond DOS moot.
yep, there was win NT for mips alpha ppc x86 and possibly sparc, all on the same CD, but the ppc version wouldnt work on A1, it only worked on a small number of ppc machines years ago, all manufactured by the same company
i would love to see an ibm-pc emulator for amigaone/aos4 - perhaps the original authors of pc-task & pcx would be interested...
... i would probably be willing to help work on a new ibm-pc emulator in the futre perhaps!
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Hey I'm in nashville too.....anyway its been covered before, but Windows NT on PPC, is not Windows NT on x86....your regular x86 applications are not going to work, the company would have had to release a PPC version of the software.
This was true for most versions of NT, except for the Alpha version, DEC included a really nice x86 to alpha instruction set converter...I don't know, call it emulation, whatever, but it worked.
I would mostly want pc compatibility to play games and no solution like that is evident, except buying one of those $200 dollar pc's and a kvm switch.
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Hello
What about Omnicluster SlotServer products?
This X86 PCI Co-processor card can run DOS + Windows (even XP) at native speed.
Using AmigaDE AMP capability, it is possible to use both X86 + PowerPC together at the same time.
Omnicluster (http://www.omnicluster.com)
MS release Windows NT 3.5 for PowerPC for IBM PS/2 850 and IBM Risc 6000. Unfortunately when Apple buy back the clone license, MS drop the PowerPC version.
MS also dropped support for MIPS RISC and Digital Alpha (after Compaq buy Digital).
The binary code translator for converting NT X86 program to NT PowerPC is called FX!32:
FX!32 (http://www.support.compaq.com/amt/fx32/)
There is a similar Binary code translator from UK:
Transistive Dynamite translator (http://www.transitive.com/products.htm)
Perhaps the most exciting future is:
What happen if MS port their portable WindowsCE OS to PowerPC?
Can AmigaOne run WindowsCE + Amiga DE?
WindowsCE is already ported to ARM, Xscale and AMD RISC CPU.
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x86 emulation on PowerPC should be quite reasonable if using a JIT implementation - I say reasonable in the comparable processor sense. Don't expect AthlonXP performance on a 603e :-) Given that the PPC has more gen purpose registers than the x86, I could forsee a really nice JIT that actually keeps the x86 register set in the PPC during execution of the code - kinda register allocation architecture taken to its logical conclusion.
Perhaps on Altivec systems some clever person might find a way to emulate some of the x86 SIMD stuff [mmx/3dnow].
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@Felix
Bochs isn't an ordinary emulator, it's more of a box within the box kind of emulation (hence the name "bochs"). It's a tool for dual booting without having to actually reboot. Bochs is more suitable for developing your own bootstrap or that kind of thing rather than to be used as an emulator. You see, it's awfully slow since it emulates the entire hardware setup even if you're running it on the same hardware as the one you're emulating. Even PCTask would do a better job at running Windows and Windows applications than Bochs simply because it's a developer tool rather than a user application.
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The Omnicluster/Slotserver solution would be interesting. It's pretty pointless, but then we might be able to run x86(Amithlon) versions of Amiga soft with it too. Good commercial emulator in bundle with 700mhz P3 Slotserver...