dnewton@carroll1.UUCP (Dave Newton) (09/13/89)
Another question: Is there a _good_ PD Apple ][e emulator? (][+ would probably work). I got appleemu off of terminator, but it doesn't work too well. Any info greatly appreciated. To those who replied to my previous question of text to GEM windows, what I meant was: an easy way. I didn't want to write routines to figure where lines in the window were or anything like that. But thanx anyway I guess. is there such as a thing as a GEM programmers front-end that will do things like this? If not, maybe I'll write one to ease others' suffering. -- David L. Newton | dnewton@carroll1.UUCP | I prefer to remain (414) 524-7343 (work) | dnewton@carroll1.cc.edu | isolated from the (414) 524-6809 (home) | 100 NE Ave, Waukesha, WI 53186 | majority of people. The more people I meet, the more I understand the point of the Flood.
w-darekm@microsoft.UUCP (Darek Mihocka) (09/16/89)
David, the public domain Apple emulator you tried was probably an older version of ST Xformer, which required you to copy the Apple ROMs over to disk on the ST. Because I was told by a lot of people that this is probably in some obscure way a violation of copyrights (even if the user doing it owns an Apple II and an ST) I decided to drop everything related to the Apple II and Commodore 64 emulators. It's too bad though. I don't know about the C-64 emulator, because I never got that beyond running Commodore BASIC, but I had machine language video games running on the Apple II emulator almost 3 years ago. The problem then was that it was very slow (about 20% speed). Using the same optimizations I used for the 800XL emulator, I had one version running at about 40% the speed last year, and if I were to implement the optimizations that I used this year in the 130XE emulator, the speed would be over 50%. The problem with Apple II emulation is not the actual emulation of the machine's hardware. The Apple II has a super simple design, such as not using any interrupts at all! Unlike the Commodore 64 and Atari XL/XE emulators, there Apple is a snap. The keyboard is polled, and the video is very straightforward. The biggest impediment in the Apple emulator is getting hold of code compatible with the Apple ROM. I asked Apple two years ago if I could somehow licence their code, and they said forget it. Last year I contacted the makers of the Laser and Franklin computers. The Laser people said to call Taiwan, because that's where the machines are made, and the Franklin guy (who was supposed to be one of the engineers that designed that computer), I swear, could not grasp the concept of what an emulator is. The only other reasonable alternative is to make a cartridge along the lines of the Magic Sac, but I certainly don't have the money, skills, or resources to attempt something like that. If anybody reading this is willing to make the cartridge, contact me. I've got the software. Also David, you have to realize that since the Apple II uses radically different joysticks and disk drives than the ST, disk drives would have to be emulated (using virtual disks) and joysticks would have to be emulated with a mouse, which may or may not work well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Darek Mihocka ST Xformer II CIS: 73657,2714 Box 2624, Station B Quick Utilities GEnie: DAREKM Kitchener, Ontario MegaBlit SSG SPX DELPHI: DAREKM N2H 6N2 BIX: darekm Canada CheapNet: ...!uw-beaver!microsoft!w-darekm (519)-747-0386 A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so just say no to TOS. Opinions expressed are my own and not those of anyone not named Darek Mihocka. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------