Re: emulator for Windows 3.1

[Roger Johnstone <rojaws@es.co.nz>]

In <3D55837B.6020502@digitalcivilization.ca> Mike Pfaiffer  wrote:
> mad ATARI user alternate wrote:
>> where can i find an apple 2 / 3 emulator for Windows 3.1 ?
> 
> 	You'll have to write/compile it yourself. Nobody has done it before. 
> There are a lot of things to consider.
> 
> 	Check out http://www.winehq.org (if the link doesn't work look for 
> the  wine project under google). You'll have to change the system 
> calls to  match those required by your machine.
>
> 	In addition, you'll need to work up an 80X86 emulator. It will have 
> to be  at least a 386 emulator. This is going to be tough taking the 
> larger  wordsize down to 8 bits.
>
> 	Even if you did get things working (no reason why they shouldn't), 
> running Windoze programs on a //e or/// would be *SLOW*. They are slow 
> on a 486/50 (my other PC). Take the speed of the program you are 
> looking  at on the PC and slow it down by the clockspeed. If you see 
> it running  on a 33MHz machine slow it down by 33 times. Then take 
> into account the  emulation. Let's be generous and say each 
> instruction on the PC can be  emulated on the Apple with 10 
> instructions. This makes it 330 times  slower. Then there is the speed 
> of the Windoze emulator. There *is* a  reason I spell it Windoze. 
> Emulating it on my Linux box results in the  program running at 1/2 to 
> 1/4 of the speed. Let's be generous again and  say it will only slow 
> down to half speed. This means if you decide to  run a Windoze program 
> on a stock Apple//e it will be 660 times slower  than on a 33MHz PC.
>
> 	I forgot about memory. A full four Mb are necessary for a minimum 
> installation. Add more for the 386 emulator and the programs. Fine for 
> a  GS but you'd need some fancy processing on the older machines. 
> Again  this would slow things down.
>
> 	Seriously, if you have a favourite Windoze program you'd like to see 
> running on your machine... Disassemble it, look at the library calls, 
> draw a flow chart for actions (and AI if necessary), then write it in 
> 6502 code. Then look for optimisations. You should be able to port 
> quite  a lot of programs and have them running at a reasonable speed 
> this way.  You'll also end up with something around 10% the code size.
> 
> 				Later
> 				Mike

You didn't put a smiley after this, so I feel compelled to point out 
that mad ATARI user almost certainly meant "where can i find an (apple 2 / 
3 emulator) for Windows 3.1 ?" and not "where can i find an apple 2 / 3 (
emulator for Windows 3.1) ?"  :-)

In the first case, I don't know of any Apple II emulators that run under 
Windows 3.1, although they might exist. The earlier ones normally ran 
under MS-DOS, laters ones under 32-bit Windows i.e. Windows 95/NT and 
later.

In the second case, the only IBM PC emulator I know of for an Apple II 
is the PC Transporter, a card which emulated a PC/XT with 640KB of RAM 
and CGA graphics. It can run up to Windows 3.0, but not 3.1, and even 
then is very limited because of the memory and graphics limitations.

-- 
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand

Apple II - FutureCop:LAPD - iMac Game Wizard
http://homepage.mac.com/rojaws
________________________________________________________________________
Oh sweet Baby Jesus, if Windows is the OS of the future, please
let me die now.
                           Bryan Chaffin, The Mac Observer