jacobson@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (02/01/89)
In the new issue of Amazing Computing I read with interest of the Mac emulator hardware for the Amiga from Readysoft that was shown at the Commodore show in Phil. My question is to anyone who saw it or has more info, does it really work??? Second are the roms 64K or 128K roms that they were using for the $200 price. Also do they sell you the roms or does one have to buy them??? And most importantly if they use the 128K does hypercard run on the product. My reason for asking is I have a SE at work, and would like to use hypercard and several other applications at home on my A2000. If they only use the 64K roms then this will not of course work, but if the 128K roms are the ones used then using hypercard is possible. Other questions that come to mind. Does this allow you to read Mac disks on the Amiga drives, or does one have to buy an external Mac drive to attach to the hardware???? The fact that the hardware attaches to the external drive port makes me suspicious that the later case is true, but I would like to know for certain. Also has anyone heard any more about the Spectre 128 (which is out for the ST and supposedly is comming for the Amiga)??? I would like to compare them if the Amiga version is anywhere near ready. Any information would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance Russ Jacobson Illinois Geological Survey jacobson@uiucuxe jacobson%uiucuxe@a.cs.uiuc.edu jacobson%uiucuxe@uiuc.csnet [ihnp4,pur-ee,convex]!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!uiucuxe!jacobson
manes@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Mark Manes) (02/04/89)
In article <45600053@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> jacobson@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >In the new issue of Amazing Computing I read with interest of the Mac >emulator hardware for the Amiga from Readysoft that was shown at the >Commodore show in Phil. My question is to anyone who saw it or has more >info, does it really work??? Second are the roms 64K or 128K roms that >they were using for the $200 price. Also do they sell you the roms or does >one have to buy them??? And most importantly if they use the 128K does >hypercard run on the product. > The Mac Emulator from ReadySoft looked nice and not ready when I saw it at the World of Commodore. It required that you purchased your own ROM set, be it 64k or 128k. It really worked, I saw Mac Paint running and a few other things. Unfortunately the Amiga 1000 owner will make out until the new custom chips are released. The Mac requires contigious memory, and with the hole in between fast and chip memory in the current Amiga, the best you can hope for is a 256k Mac so Readysoft said. If you have a Amiga 1000, since the mac emulator does not use AmigaDOS at all, they kick out kickstart and so amiga 10000 owners can have a 512k Mac. Hypercard requires (I think) 768k to run, alas, neither the 1000 or the 2000 will be able to do this until the new custom chips arrive (and then I guess the 1000 owners miss out). >Other questions that come to mind. Does this allow you to read Mac disks >on the Amiga drives, or does one have to buy an external Mac drive to attach to the >hardware???? The fact that the hardware attaches to the external drive >port makes me suspicious that the later case is true, but I would like to >know for certain. > There is a 3 pass method in which a amiga can read a mac disk. It requires a Mac to do it unfortunately. Readysoft says they discovered that there is 272k on a mac disk that the amiga can read. They wrote software to allow disks to be moved in 3 passes, by writing a third of this disk to the compatible area. A bit of a pain, but better than no method at all I guess. According to several articles I have read, Readysoft has now added the ability to add a mac floppy that can only be used by the emulator. >Any information would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance > Your welcome. >Russ Jacobson >Illinois Geological Survey >jacobson@uiucuxe >jacobson%uiucuxe@a.cs.uiuc.edu >jacobson%uiucuxe@uiuc.csnet >[ihnp4,pur-ee,convex]!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!uiucuxe!jacobson --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark D. Manes "In Amiga We Trust" Programmer of Fortune, have compiler will travel "Only Amiga makes it Possible, but with 1 meg its hell!" ===========================================================================
hpchang@rose.waterloo.edu (Hsi P. Chang) (02/04/89)
In article <7521@xanth.cs.odu.edu> manes@cs.odu.edu (Mark Manes) writes: >In article <45600053@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> jacobson@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >>In the new issue of Amazing Computing I read with interest of the Mac >>emulator hardware for the Amiga from Readysoft that was shown at the >>Commodore show in Phil. My question is to anyone who saw it or has more >>info, does it really work??? Second are the roms 64K or 128K roms that >>they were using for the $200 price. Also do they sell you the roms or does >>one have to buy them??? >The Mac Emulator from ReadySoft looked nice and not ready when I saw it >at the World of Commodore. It required that you purchased your own ROM >set, be it 64k or 128k. From my understanding after speaking to the developers of the ReadySoft's Mac emulator, this is not true. They will sell you the MAC ROMs and the software for about US$200.00. (Information dated Dec 1, 88, at the World of Commodore, Toronto, Ontario, Canada). >Unfortunately the Amiga 1000 owner will make out until the new custom >chips are released. The Mac requires contigious memory, and with the >hole in between fast and chip memory in the current Amiga, the best you >can hope for is a 256k Mac so Readysoft said. Also from the Readysoft's developer, this MAC emulator does NOT have the problem with the non-contigious RAM. When I asked the same question, they laughed and said I had them confused with the *OTHER* MAC emulator. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- hpchang@rose.waterloo.{edu,cdn} Hsi P. Chang hpchang@rose.uwaterloo.ca 3B Computer Science, Co-op. uunet!watmath!rose!hpchang University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
c60a-1fy@web-2a.berkeley.edu (Anon) (02/07/89)
In article <7521@xanth.cs.odu.edu> manes@cs.odu.edu (Mark Manes) writes: > >Unfortunately the Amiga 1000 owner will make out until the new custom >chips are released. The Mac requires contigious memory, and with the >hole in between fast and chip memory in the current Amiga, the best you >can hope for is a 256k Mac so Readysoft said. If you have a Amiga 1000, >since the mac emulator does not use AmigaDOS at all, they kick out >kickstart and so amiga 10000 owners can have a 512k Mac. > Wait! I have the Chris Erving Amazing computing memory hack in my 1000. I have 1 Meg of continuous memory! Since Amigdog is kicked out, are there any provisions for the mac emulator so that it can use this ram? I have the hardware fix which disables this memory from autoconfigging. Thus, all is needed is for the mac emulator to "addmem" this memory to its memory list, and yet make sure that it doesn't treat it as chip ram though it is on the chip bus. -Vince