tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Tony Reynolds) (12/30/90)
In article <37358@cup.portal.com> Yonderboy@cup.portal.com (Christopher Lee Russell) writes: >Somebody left a message about ST emulators for the Amiga (soft and hard). >I am curious about the quality of these emulators. I had heard a hardware >emulator was coming out so have been glancing thru the adds in Amiga mags at >the magazine-rack, but haven't seen any for sale yet. > > ...........Yonderboy@cup.portal.com The software emulator that I've got are all jokes. I have an Amiga 1000 and a 1040ST. The Amiga Emulator was neat, it reminded me of AmigaDOS 1.1. A lot of windows did things the Amiga *used* to do, and it even Gurus. But, like I said, its a joke; a farce. The ST emulator that I have is poor. It puts up a low-rez default desktop picture, green/white/black colors, ya know? The mouse pointer turns into the Atari pointer, but other than that, it doesn't even do anything funny. It is a big dissappointment. Now, if anyone has a *real* emulator, or a better joke ST emulator, let me know.... BTW, has anybody used RezRender? If you do, go to the dialog where you can define the colors and materials, and click in the box marked "green." I couldn't stop laughing! +=/----\=+ Get up, get,get down \ Tony Reynolds |/ Byte \| I.B.M. is joking your \ tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu |\ Boys /| town. \ /usr/games/fortune: +=\----/=+ <<Appearing NetWide>> \If I had any humility, I'd be perfect. Starring MC 68000, Tony RISC, and V.G.A.\ --Ted Turner
don@brahms.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) (12/30/90)
In article <1990Dec29.215417.22716@cs.olemiss.edu> tony@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Tony Reynolds) writes: > >Now, if anyone has a *real* emulator, or a better joke ST emulator, let me >know.... > From p.109 of the Feb 1991 (!) issue of Amigaworld: brainSTorm The MAST Atari emulator Runs approx 98% of ST s/w, including MIDI support. Only programs which should have problems are those doing direct DMA or programming the MFP. Supports all ST resolutions incl. color, 8 meg fast & 2 meg CHIP RAM (Amiga side, not really related to Atari side) Full page monitor emulation w/scrolling (by this I assume it's talking about the Moniterm monitor, for which an Amiga version is also available). Uses amiga par & ser ports & all floppy drives (no mention of HD support) Two ST's at same time on Amiga "Almost ST speed, text is 120% faster, disk 108%" sockets for ST ROMS, hw emulation of Atari custom chips The above is paraphrased from MAST's ad. Cost is $99. No mention of whether it will work on accelerated Amigas, no mention of HD support. MAST has been around for a while, but their products, from my observations, have a mediocre reputation, and their record for getting products out on time is terrible (Their Infinity Machine is second only to the Video Toaster (which BTW, is finally shipping, & is incredible!) in the "Biggest Amiga Vaporware of the decade" category). In Germany there are supposedly several ST emulators. This is apparently based on one of them. -- Gibberish Amiga 3000 owner/fanatic is spoken Contact don@brahms.udel.edu for more information. here. DISCLAIMER: It's all YOUR fault.
Yonderboy@cup.portal.com (Christopher Lee Russell) (12/31/90)
Hmm.. $99.. makes you think, eh? If it even half works, it makes you wonder
why an ST couldn't be a little less expensive, eh? Oh, well.. I'll have to
look in those mags. again -- I am just curious about it is all...
..........yonderboymspacek@fquest.fidonet.org (Mark Spacek) (01/01/91)
don@brahms.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes: > From p.109 of the Feb 1991 (!) issue of Amigaworld: > brainSTorm > The MAST Atari emulator > Runs approx 98% of ST s/w, including MIDI support. Only programs > which should have problems are those doing direct DMA or > programming the MFP. > Supports all ST resolutions incl. color, 8 meg fast & 2 meg CHIP > RAM (Amiga side, not really related to Atari side) > Full page monitor emulation w/scrolling (by this I assume it's > talking about the Moniterm monitor, for which an Amiga version > is also available). > Uses amiga par & ser ports & all floppy drives (no mention of HD > support) > Two ST's at same time on Amiga > "Almost ST speed, text is 120% faster, disk 108%" > sockets for ST ROMS, hw emulation of Atari custom chips > The above is paraphrased from MAST's ad. Cost is $99. No mention of > whether it will work on accelerated Amigas, no mention of HD support. MAST > has been around for a while, but their products, from my observations, > have a mediocre reputation, and their record for getting products out on > time is terrible (Their Infinity Machine is second only to the Video Toaster > (which BTW, is finally shipping, & is incredible!) in the "Biggest Amiga > Vaporware of the decade" category). > In Germany there are supposedly several ST emulators. This is apparently > based on one of them. Sounds pretty interesting. There has been lots of discussion on ST emulators on Fidonet and on of the local Austin boards. I've seen a couple of the software-only ones. One of them actually worked to some degree. Got Chessmaster running on it in both low and high res. I've heard of one that sounds very similar to the one you posted about, I have to wonder if its not the same one. But the price was 195$, which seems a little more realistic, and it would only work on a 2000 or 3000, not a 500. Did the AmigaWorld article say which models it worked on? You say the article stated that text speed was 120% of an ST and disk I/O 108% of an ST. I would be curious to know how the numbers would compare if you used one of the inexpensive 'software blitters' like Quick ST or Turbo ST and used disks with a 'twisted' sector skew in the tests. Many, if not most ST users do these things and thus increase their performance greatly without spending much. I'd be curious whether you could do this on the emulator and how it would compare to an ST then. Also, the software emulator I saw working worked at a decent speed when in high-res monochrome mode (flicker often got pretty bad though). But, in medium and low res modes, the speed was significantly slower - not anywhere near what the high-res was. I guess that was it having to keep up with the color planes. I'm not saying that the others are this way to, it just makes me wonder. In Germany it wouldn't matter so much, as the migh-res monochrome mode is the most popular way to set up STs there, and most of the software will run in that resolution. You said that there were several ST emulators in Germany and this was based on one of them. Perhaps its not the same one I read about then, but I had only read about one confirmed ST emulator in Germany. It had been demonstrated at a computer show over there. Of course, I could have easily missed the others, I don't subscribe to German computer mags.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The following opinions are my own and not those of anyone else who might be registered on fquest.fidonet.org. All flames can be sent to alt.flames since we don't read that here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
don@brahms.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) (01/02/91)
In article <N1Z2u1w162w@fquest.fidonet.org> mspacek@fquest.fidonet.org (Mark Spacek) writes: > >I've heard of one that sounds very similar to the one you posted about, I >have to wonder if its not the same one. But the price was 195$, which >seems a little more realistic, and it would only work on a 2000 or 3000, >not a 500. Did the AmigaWorld article say which models it worked on?i No, it did't say. I imagine MAST's board is just a place to plug in ROMs & whatever custom stuff is needed to emulate an ST. Wouldn't be surprised if it sits in the 68000 socket with the 68K plugged into the emulator board. There's another I've heard of, which may be one you're talking about, called Medusa. I beleive it's an actual Zorro II (the bus on the 2000) card, so it won't plug into a 500. >You say the article stated that text speed was 120% of an ST and disk I/O >108% of an ST. I would be curious to know how the numbers would compare >if you used one of the inexpensive 'software blitters' like Quick ST or >Turbo ST and used disks with a 'twisted' sector skew in the tests. Many, >if not most ST users do these things and thus increase their performance >greatly without spending much. I'd be curious whether you could do this >on the emulator and how it would compare to an ST then. The claimed speed increase is probably due to the Amiga's hardware blitter. I guess the s/w for the emulator makes use of it somehow. I really have no idea how the various ST speed-ups would work, but it'd be interesting to see. >Also, the >software emulator I saw working worked at a decent speed when in high-res >monochrome mode (flicker often got pretty bad though). But, in medium >and low res modes, the speed was significantly slower - not anywhere near >what the high-res was. I guess that was it having to keep up with the >color planes. I'm not saying that the others are this way to, it just >makes me wonder. In Germany it wouldn't matter so much, as the migh-res >monochrome mode is the most popular way to set up STs there, and most of >the software will run in that resolution. I haven't seen any of them in action, so I'm not sure about their relative speed. What I'd be more interested to know is whether they'll work with non-68000 Amigas... I've got a 25MHz A3000 here (which also kills the flicker problem). Do they take over the machine entirely (a la Amax) or will they run as a process under AmigaDOS, or even come with their own on-board processor? HD support? As you can see, I've got a few questions about these emulators myself.... >You said that there were several ST emulators in Germany and this was >based on one of them. Perhaps its not the same one I read about then, >but I had only read about one confirmed ST emulator in Germany. It had >been demonstrated at a computer show over there. Of course, I could have >easily missed the others, I don't subscribe to German computer mags.... I'm fairly sure I've read reports of two emulators being shown, but I can't remember where I read about them, and it was only a brief blurb somewhere without much information. (It'd be interesting if a TT emulator showed up here before the TT did :-) Don't take this as Atari bashing or Amiga fanaticism (despite my .sig) but I really don't think there's much of a market in the US for ST emulators. The only legitimate users will most likely be those who have switched or are thinking about switching from ST to Ami. Others will most likely just get it as an "oh, and I can do this, too" kind of thing, pirate a few pieces of ST software, and proceed to let it collect dust. Of course, there's always the problem of how to get ST ROMs, and they'll probably end up being pirated also, such as has been done with the Amax Mac emulator. Just dump the ROMs to disk & hack the emulator code to load it from disk. Pirating an entire computer is sinking pretty low, but that's what's very likely to happen with these ST emulators... -- Gibberish Amiga 3000 owner/fanatic is spoken Contact don@brahms.udel.edu for more information. here. DISCLAIMER: It's all YOUR fault.
mjv@brownvm.brown.edu (Marshall Vale) (01/04/91)
In article <17129@brahms.udel.edu> don@brahms.udel.edu (Donald R Lloyd) writes: > Of course, there's always the problem of how to get ST ROMs, and they'll > probably end up being pirated also, such as has been done with the Amax > Mac emulator. Just dump the ROMs to disk & hack the emulator code to load > it from disk. Pirating an entire computer is sinking pretty low, but that's > what's very likely to happen with these ST emulators... Which is the exact problem with some of the emulators in particular the Medusa ST emulator. I picked up a British Amiga magazine because it had a cover article on emulators. It described the Medusa emulator in particular. The article stated that the way to get the ST roms was to take a ST program that came with the emulator that dumps the roms to disk. Then you use that to boot the ST emulator. The Medusa card was a very small being that only had a couple of chips and NO roms sockets. BTW ST roms aren't hard to get. You can easily buy TOS 1.4 roms from any Atari dealer (finding the dealer is the hard part :-) But I doubt Amiga people would stoop to paying the ~$90 for the roms. Any, back to Medusa. I was just amazed (or as they say here in the Brown Daily Herald: "Shocked and outraged!") that the magazine was condoning such blatant pirating. And don't doubt that Atari won't sue this company. Atari has sued in the past and they are probably strong enough in the Germany arena to do it. It just amazes me that a big magazine would condone a product that used pirating to work. Marshall ******************************************************************* -> Internet: mjv@brownvm.brown.edu "He had found the perfect TV mix, on Marvin's Hour of Power. (The show that put the FUN back into fundamentalist)." -- Neil Gaiman; Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Propecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch