PC Emulator

[sim085]

Hi,

If I buy a PC emulator for my A500+ then I could install an old version of Windows? Or? What is the actual use of this device?

Thanks and Regards,
Sim085

[Crumb]

that will be much more expensive then getting an old pc from the trashcan.

Forget the software route as it will be really expensive and the result will be quite slow even with a 040.

There were hardware PC Emulators like AT-Once, AT-Once Plus, KCS PowerPC, other from GVP... you'll probably need a hard disk controller too.

[clemenza]

I don't think there's any way in A500(+) using either software or hardware emulators to achieve speed better than of a 80286. Which is tooooooo slow!

[Varthall]

@sim085

They are much more suited to run MSDOS.

Varthall

[sim085]

thanks for the replies

so what where there use in the past?

[spirantho]

Remember that Windows didn't take off properly till Win95 - long after these boards were made. Everything before that used MS-DOS.

My A500 has a Vortex ATOnce with a 10MHz NEC V30 (8086 compatible). It's actually a nice little board, especially as it's a RAM and clock board too. EGA is very slow, though and VGA is mono, but it's great for old CGA stuff!

You could run Windows 2 on it I think, but I could be wrong....

[sim085]

Well, if I could install Windows 3.1 then I would consider buying it ... Windows 2.0 would also be nice I guess!

[Varthall]

They were used to run any of the thousands of serious applications that the Amiga lacked, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Autocad, TurboPascal compiler, various business software (invoicing, payments, etc.), even games that haven't been ported to the Amiga. I have been using PCx (a software emulator) for some time on my 030 A1200 to play the original MSDOS Tetris (still my favourite version of Tetris) and for BBS messaging (Amiga lacked for a long time a good freeware Bluewave reader).

Varthall

[Varthall]

sim085 wrote:
Well, if I could install Windows 3.1 then I would consider buying it ... Windows 2.0 would also be nice I guess!

To run Windows 3.1 a 040/060, or a 386 card, is required to have a decent speed.

Varthall

[sim085]

Varthall wrote:

sim085 wrote:
Well, if I could install Windows 3.1 then I would consider buying it ... Windows 2.0 would also be nice I guess!

To run Windows 3.1 a 040/060, or a 386 card, is required to have a decent speed.

Varthall

hmmm ... but didn't these cards come with their own processors? or they still made use of the Amiga processor in order to function?

[Varthall]

sim085 wrote:

Varthall wrote:

sim085 wrote:
Well, if I could install Windows 3.1 then I would consider buying it ... Windows 2.0 would also be nice I guess!

To run Windows 3.1 a 040/060, or a 386 card, is required to have a decent speed.

Varthall

hmmm ... but didn't these cards come with their own processors? or they still made use of the Amiga processor in order to function?

Yes, they have their own CPU. The 040 I mentioned was in case a software emulator is used.

Varthall

[sim085]

aaa .. ok thanks well from my research so far I did not find any card with a 386 processor for the A500+! So I guess 3.1 would be a little impossible!

[curtis]

There are 486SX upgrades for 286 chips available.  Hard to find, but available.

[darksun9210]

as a bit of a speed guide for pure software emulation.
i managed to get Dos6.22 and windows3.1 installed on an A4000 with a 25Mhz 030, using AGA screenmodes. it updated the screen just about fast enough to show the seconds counter on the clock in windows.
an actual x86 chip would abviously give more speed. as would a GFX card, but with software emulation, you can emulate a 586 class CPU. i don't know who has the strenghth of will to do a win95/98 install on an amiga, but it would be purely an excersize in "cos i can" rather than being able to do anything usefull. :-)

[sim085]

Thanks that is good to know