Re: Emulators

[nathan@subzero.winternet.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <4qampj$i6o@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us>,
Martin Gruen <z008729b@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us> wrote:
>All this talk of apple emulators for other computers, has anyone tried to 
>make a software based PC emulator for the GS?  Is it even possible?

   To make an emulator run with any sort of speed, you normally need a
machine many times more powerful than the emulated machine. Based on
the standardized benchmark, dhrystone, my Pentium 90 box has roughly
185 times the processor power of my Zip 9/32 GS. Machines in its class
do a good job of emulating a 1Mhz //e. GS emulators aren't really
complete, but you might be able to decently emulate a 4Mhz GS on that
kind of machine. Reversing the math, you might get a 0.04 Mhz 8086
emulator on my GS. [Let's say that SoftWindows 2.0 on power macs is
fairly slow at emulating a PC also, and the PPC chip is _way_ more
powerful than the GS]

   Emulators in general are a fairly useless thing to me. I _own_ a
real GS. And a real pentium box. Both do an great job at being
themselves, and not something else. You can pick up a used //e system
for $100 on c.s.a2.marketplace, and it does a 100% perfect job as a
//e. Unless you're using a machine for <5 minutes a week, buying a
real one is the best option by far.

   You could probably make some sort of PC emulator for a GS, but it'd
be slower than molassas, have very little memory available, (most PC
programs want 8MB of ram for starters, not even counting swap), and
generally suck. Hardware is the only way to get ay sort of speed out
of 'emulation,' so if you want a PC (80186, 640K ram tops) running on
your GS, buy a PC Transporter card.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
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