PC-Task is now free!

[B00tDisk]

Hmm, I wonder how this runs in UAE with the CPU cranked all the way up.

Yes, I'm being serious.

[ami_stuff]

Hmm, I wonder how this runs in UAE with the CPU cranked all the way up.

Yes, I'm being serious.

It works just fine. I have Win 3.1 installed under PC-Task and the speed is acceptable.

[LoadWB]

I have to wonder, how in the world could anyone obtain financial advantage of it?  I'm glad to see more old apps being released to public domain, even with restrictions, but I'm wondering what they are thinking on others making money off their code?  At worst, just GPL it and don't worry about some nasty person selling it on a floppy disk to 10 or 20 people.  Piracy happens and for this level and age of software, life is just too short to worry about the possibility of piracy.

I read that as, I am releasing this for free, so no one should be getting ripped off buying it.

[Karlos]

It works just fine. I have Win 3.1 installed under PC-Task and the speed is acceptable.

Try running UAE on PC-Task within UAE on a real PC... :lol:

[hardlink]

Yikes, I haven't yet installed my purchased version of PC-Task, and now it's becoming free. At least I got the nice looking packaging

[LoadWB]

Try running UAE on PC-Task within UAE on a real PC... :lol:

I dunno.  The release notes say 4.3 supports Windows 95.  That ought to be pretty interesting.

I wonder how 95 would run on my 060... heheheh

[Amiga_Nut]

Yikes, I haven't yet installed my purchased version of PC-Task, and now it's becoming free. At least I got the nice looking packaging

That reminds me, I have a 56k PCMCIA modem brand new in a box unopened for the last 15 years haha

This is great news, and the author should be applauded.

If memory serves me right, PC-Task is not PPC compatible so the fastest PC emulation is via 060 66mhz on real Amigas yes?

[hardlink]

I dunno.  The release notes say 4.3 supports Windows 95.  That ought to be pretty interesting.

I wonder how 95 would run on my 060... heheheh

I bought a "laptop" (more like a portable) clone at a thrift store recently for its plasma display - easy way to make a neon clock. Brought it home and booted it up, find out it's a 386 with a little memory. Then it starts loading Windows 95!?! I thought it was somebody's joke, but after 5 or 10 minutes, Windblows 95 was running - I was amazed.

Your 060 is at least 4 times faster than this 386, so even with emulation, it might actually work.

[zipper]

I wonder how 95 would run on my 060... heheheh

Done. Slower than a snail; just booting takes 2.5 - 4 mins and you can see in which order the screen is refreshed.

[Tension]

I have Win 3.1 installed under PC-Task

That line made me spit out my tea all over my laptop.

[B00tDisk]

Hmm.

I've run this before in WinUAE, and while it booted plenty fast, I couldn't mount a DOS disk image to get any flavor of Windows installed (and it doesn't support .ISO images so booting right off of, say, a Win98 install CD is out).

Any advice?

[ami_stuff]

That line made me spit out my tea all over my laptop.

So you never tried to run any Win version under PC-Task? This hardfile was created when I had 060@75Mhz.

[KimmoK]

How fast is PC-taks's with JIT on a PPC with 68k JIT ?

(IIRC, PC-task had some kind of 386->68k JIT)

[amyren]

Pc-Task was sure a piece of excellent software. I did use it for running som dos apps om my A4000 years ago and I was impressed with the emulation speed. Just for fun I even tried to install w95 on it. After many tries I finally got it running - but to slow to be useful for anything. And unstable as well, it usually would crash soon after the desktop apeared.
Its a nice gesture from Chris to release it for free. Also it would have been great to see a Aos4 PPC native version, so unless he have any plans for it, I hope he would consider releasing the source code as well some day.
Another option is Bochs, which source code is available as well. But it seems like its not updated since 2006. Also I have a feeling that Bochs will be much slower than a native PC-Task version would be.
Then there is Dosbox. Not made for running w95 at all, but it apears like people have successfully managed to run w95 on it. Not sure if the Amiga versions are up to it though.

[johnklos]

"Porting" is about as easy as rewriting from scratch. In order to get halfway decent performance, emulators either have to run on hardware which is orders of magnitude faster than the emulated device or the emulator has to be written in assembly language. In order to rewrite the x86 emulator for PowerPC, you might as well start from scratch.

[marcfrick2112]

Thanks much, Gulliver! Not sure how long your luck can hold out, but please do what you can to get other Amiga software released to the public.

Although, I've had trouble doing much useful with the PC-Task version that came on some Amiga cover disk... maybe someone might want to make a tutorial, or have a hardfile available? (hint, hint...)

Again, great job!