Is It Emulation or Not -- the Dilemma

[psxphill]

Microsoft started out selling software; if the hardware ran it, then the hardware did not become DOS 6.22 or Windows 3.11.

Weirdly they seem to have taken over the term PC (i.e. the "I'm a PC" adverts). Even more odd is that it was Apple that started it with the Get a Mac adverts.
 
So if it runs Windows then it's a PC, if it runs MacOS then it's a Mac. If it runs Linux, well I'm not sure what it is as Linux runs on my phone, my NAS, my TV but not one computer I own.
 
Running windows on a macbook air makes it ?

[psxphill]

Hmm, BRANDING? Let's use my logic: Did CUSA design their hardware? Uh... No. It is a frickin' Intel based chipset oft called a "PC." Did they buy the name to sell stuff? Uh... yes, I suppose. Is the stuff they sell original. Well they are "copying" the case design one of the previous BRAND name owners. Is their software an emulation? Yep.

Most of that same argument can be used against Intel Mac's.
 

Depends.

If you have a 68k program and you recompile it into being PPC instead, then you will have PPC opcodes running on a PPC system, fully native.

Both the above is how MorphOS does it. In other words, fully native.

What MorphOS does for 68k software is emulation, it's not native. Alot of emulators dynamically recompile executables into native code, AFAIK including WinUAE.

[psxphill]

In fact that describes the issue of emulation: the Mac OS is now "emulated" on Intel hardware, just like MorphOS, RuninUAE, WinUAE, et cetera.

With Intel Mac's the only time emulation comes into it is when running PPC applications. An Intel Mac is a thing in it's own right, it doesn't emulate itself when running applications compiled using the Intel Mac SDK.

[psxphill]

Let's put it the way Apple tried to sue Microsoft over Windows: "You then kludge the 'look and fell' of your operating system to run on whatever is the hardware flavor of the week. Thus 'emulating prior code' to give the consumer the idea nothing has changed; you sell it as just another 'improvement' to the Mac."

I'm not sure where you got your quotes from. In terms of Mac and Windows there is no code emulation. The case is all down to look and feel. Apple were upset because they licensed the look and feel from Xerox, while Microsoft developed applications for the Mac and then started working on something similar in secret. Big companies don't make money by being ethical.
 
If copying someone elses idea is bad then Linux is more evil than Microsoft.

[psxphill]

That is de-facto what MorphOS does before running an Amiga 68k app (or dynamically while running). Not from sources obviously, but from binaries. No 68k opcodes are being executed, they are all PPC native, running natively on the OS, which runs native on the HW.

No 68k emulator executes 68k opcodes, thats the point. It has to translate them to native opcodes. That is what an emulator does. MorphOS just has a 68k emulator built in.

[psxphill]

It would be foolish to incorporate backward compatible hardware if this solution is entirely adequate.

Both AmigaOS 4 & MorphOS both require obsolete hardware to run.
 
Running a PPC emulator on X64 is the best solution. It won't be long before someone emulates the Mac's that MorphOS runs on.

[psxphill]

I think a more correct description of "compatibility layer" would be something in the lines of: "A fully native, fully binary-compatible re-implementation of the full AmigaOS 3.1 API with extensions/additions like CGX, MUI, AHI, etc".
 
In other words: MorphOS.
 
:lol:

Er yeah, MorphOS includes a 68k emulator and a compatibility layer for mapping the 3.1 API onto MorphOS native API.
 
It's still emulation & you aren't fooling anyone.
 

Modern CPUs "emulate" the ISAs of earlier devices... It's all irrelevant, now... All tht matters is wether your software will run or not.

In terms of hardware emulating other hardware, that has been going on for years. It's kinda out of scope for this topic though. Hating all software emulators but loving MorphOS because it doesn't use emulation, is just delusion.

[psxphill]

In MorphOS, AmigaOS 3.1 API calls are not mapped to MorphOS native API. They are same.

Some of them are mapped. Exec sits on top of quark.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(kernel)
 
Which kinda ends the discussion
 
"Under the Quark kernel a PowerPC native reimplementation of the OS known from the Commodore A1000, A500(+), A600, A2000, A1200, A3000(T) and A4000(T) systems runs as a mixture of a virtual emulation and a driver. This OS driver is called as ABox.
The 68k emulation is written in C and uses gcc assembler macros where necessary to speed up certain complex instructions. Even though the emulation is written in C, its structure is on a level where handcoded assembler isn't significantly faster.
A JIT (Just In Time) engine called Trance for MorphOS to speed up old 68k programs beyond the current state of the traditional emulation is also available."