Emulators Part 2

More on the topic of PC, Mac, Amiga and PostScript emulation

PC Emulation

Bochs is a PC emulator written by Kevin Lawton that runs under MacOS, Win32 (you may ask: why bother!?" But there are a few reasons why you might want to do this), different flavors of Unix, and BeOS.  It is decidedly rough around the edges, but compatible enough that you can run some flavours of Linux, Windows 95 or Windows NT on the emulated PC.  Details -- and an answer to the "why bother?" question -- at http://www.bochs.com/. Being an open source project, there are a number of variants based on the code, as well, including the commercial WinTel emulator for Mac OS X and a free Bochs port for OS X. Reviews of both suggest that performance is just this side of terrible.

Bochs, according to its developers, is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Version 1.4.1 of Bochs is able to emulate a 386, 486 or Pentium CPU. (Expect 386-class performance, though.)

Bochs 2.0, released in Dec. 2002 and about twice as fast as version 1.4.1, can emulate MMX instructions, SSE/SSE2, and even AMD x86-64 instructions if you turn on the appropriate configure options. Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, Windows 95, DOS, Windows NT 4, etc. -- some users even report successfully installing Windows XP!

We've reviewed the features and limitations of MacBochs and several other PC emulators for the Mac in a separate article.

There are numerous other Windows and/or DOS compatibility efforts, as well. "Wine" is a notable example. (It is, in fact, the technology behind Corel's port of the Windows version of PHOTO-PAINT to Linux.) See our report on Linux in 2002 for details on other Wine and WineX-based projects, including Transgaming's (rather successful) efforts to run Windows games under Linux, the Lindows operating system and the CrossOver Plugin from CodeWeavers, designed to allow Linux-based browsers to directly load Windows plugins for viewing content in QuickTime and Shockwave Director formats. With this plugin, Linux users also gain the ability to view MS Office files, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

As well, see www.winehq.com/others.html or http://www.sr71.net/slashdot/thinkpad/linux-desktop/windows for more info on these and other Windows emulation efforts.

Mac Emulation

Basilisk II (reviewed in detail elsewhere on this site) is a Mac II emulator with a difference: it supports networking and the Internet. Like Fusion 3.0, it is freely downloadable, although you'll have to track down a suitable Mac ROM file.  Recommended.

All currently available Mac emulators have an important limitation: they only emulate Macs based on the now-obsolete 680x0 family of processors, not the newer G3 series of CPUs. However, the authors of Fusion, Gemulator/SoftMac and Basilisk II all say they working on PowerPC emulation.

In fact, the world's first public demonstration of a PowerPC Mac emulator for Windows was made at the Emulators, Inc. booth at MACWORLD 2000 NEW YORK. At the July, 2000 event, President and Chief Architect of Emulators (www.emulators.com), Darek Mihocka, demonstrated an intended PowerPC emulator for Windows dubbed SOFTMAC 2000 PROFESSIONAL to standing room only crowds. Unfortunately, the company subsequently announced in Sept. 2000 announced that it had discontinued development of its PowerPC emulator, saying that it might consider reviving the project in a year or so, but that performance issues and market realities made the project unfeasible at the time. Mihocka worried that the need for a 1GHz Pentium III or better to deliver the kind of performance that would allow acceptable emulation speeds made the market simply too small to consider a viable business strategy. (Ironically, almost any new machine on the market is now far faster than this -- in retrospect, it would have been an ideal time to begin development.)

Mihocka also made several more announcements concerning future emulator releases:

• Starting with the free giveaway of FUSION PC 3.0 at MACWORLD, the company says it has decided to make the current and all future releases of FUSION absolutely FREE, both via its bundling with SOFTMAC 2000 on CD-ROM, and via the Internet. The full featured free release of FUSION PC 3.0 will be made to the web at the emulators.com web site on July 31st.
• Prior to the project's discontinuation, Mihocka had stated that a free public beta release of SOFTMAC 2000 PROFESSIONAL would be posted to the Emulators site when ready. SOFTMAC 2000 PROFESSIONAL, he claimed, would be the first release in a series of planned Power Macintosh emulator releases for Microsoft Windows, an effort the company named "9X on 9X". With Apple's upcoming release of MAC OS X in the year 2001, Emulators, Inc. planned to have emulator releases running both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on Windows 9x (Windows 95 and higher) and NT/2000, thus the "9x on 9x" name. Added Mihocka, "Due to our anticipated release of SOFTMAC 2000 PROFESSIONAL months in advance of Apple's release of Mac OS X, the first release of SOFTMAC 2000 PROFESSIONAL will only be tested to work with Mac OS versions up to 9 (currently 9.0.4). A second release sometime in 2001 which we're calling SOFTMAC X will be released to support Mac OS X. The release of that product will be of course dependent on Apple finally shipping Mac OS X as planned in 2001." Sadly, it seems these plans are now shelved.

Sooner or later, we expect to see PowerMac emulators, with improved Mac and iMac software and hardware compatibility. But don't hold your breath....

Currently, the Mac-on-Linux emulation environment is the only one we've seen capable of running Mac OS 9.2.2. It's in development for a number of Linux-based platforms, including the forthcoming AmigaOne. It doesn't currently support Mac OS X, but the developers say they are working on this. Slashdot has details....

• http://amigaone.homeip.net/images/snapshot2.gif
• http://amigaone.homeip.net/images/snapshot4.gif

And speaking of...

Amiga Emulation

www.amithlon.com is the home of AmigaOS XL for x86, released in the fall of 2001 by HAAGE & PARTNER Computer GmbH. This commercial package includes two emulator systems: Amithlon and AmigaXL for QNX.

AMIthlon - Touted as the fastest Amiga ever, the company says you can insert the CD-ROM, switch on your PC and boot into the fastest Amiga ever. There is no complicated and boring installation. Opening windows on the Workbench is so fast that you can barely watch it anymore.

AmigaXL for QNX - The most functional Amiga ever

The host operating system for AmigaXL is QNX 6.1, from Ontario-based QNX. It is included in the package. QNX has many similarities with the AmigaOS. Features that QNX provides can directly be used within the emulated Amiga. This includes network functionality and multimedia features. QNX applications like the web browser Opera® can be started directly from the AmigaOS screen. One can say both operating systems work together seamlessly.

AmigaOS XL for x86 includes Amithlon, AmigaXL for QNX, Kickstart, Workbench 3.9, QNX 6.1, Picasso96 v3 and a lot of third party licences.

• Website
• Press Release

We recently came across an interesting utility called Disk2FDI. It claims to be the world's first program to allow Amiga-formatted disks to be read on a standard PC. It requires two drives and can also write Atari ST disks and IMG files from PC disks. Read more about it at www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi/

PostScript Emulation

GhostScript is a free Postscript interpreter.

For Further Reading:

• Sharing files between Macs and PCs. Includes reviews of Fusion and Gemulator.
• PC to Mac and Back
• Separating Java from the Jive
• www.classicgaming.com/emunews - Emulation News. Now closed down, but still worth a look.
• If you are interested in programming or emulators in general, don't miss http://www.emuunlim.com, where you can find links and information about virtually every legal emulator now or formerly in existence.
• See also: http://forums.delphiforums.com/MacEmulation/start -- Useful info for those interested in Mac emulation.
• A list of Macintosh software titles found to be compatible with Basilisk II is here.
• www.macwindows.com covers the Mac and PC emulation scene in detail.

Although technically not an emulator, the Mac simulation page at Yaromat.com's site is brilliant. If you have access to a Windows PC, don't be alarmed when Want to be an Apple? pretends to remove all the Windows system files and "boot" the Mac OS. It's all in fun, and it's very well done.

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