Xanxi's emulation on the amiga thread

[Xanxi]

Do you know about Mame for 68060?

It launches from a simple interface.

Here is a great CAPCOM classic, Strider

The rendering is perfect but the game plays really really slow on a 68060@50 MHz + RTG.
We really need now a 68060 core FPGA accelerator with at least 4 time the power (200 MHz at minimum), for the sake of the classics (no PPC thanks).

 

[arnljot]

I remember I used to have PPC Uae on my Amiga4k. So that I could play titles that weren't playing well on AGA machines or 060.

It was my first real "feel good" emulation experience, much like WHDLoad, that allowed me to play games, and come back fast to the WB, no Reboot or loading involved

 

[cosmicfrog]

yay emulators emulating emulators

 

[Countraven]

In the past I have tried MorphOS port of Mame on my 1200 under MorphOS PowerUP. It was a good and playable expierence, howevwer I want to try Mame under AmigaOS... Perhaps a version that would also use the PPC would be interesting, but I do not know if such a version exists.

 

[Xanxi]

I have found a Mac Atari ST emulator, that is not fooled by the Shapeshifter emulation. With a 68060, every Mac software just see a big 68040 CPU thanks to Shapeshifter. But this one is aware that the CPU is not what is expected and just give an error message.
Unfortunately, i have no 68040 machine to give it a try.

 

[NovaCoder]

How about using an Amiga to emulate a PC?

DosBox AGA

:blased:

 

[Xanxi]

How about using an Amiga to emulate a PC?

DosBox AGA

:blased:

Well for comparison with your new DOSBox AGA, we can use MIPS version 1.20 for DOS.

On PCTask v4.4 (68060@50MHz+Z2RTG+MSDOS 5):

On Commodore A2386sx@25MHz + MSDOS5:

I will add the screenshot from the A2386sx with 486SLC2@50MHz add-on later.

 

[NovaCoder]

When I get the 68k dynamic core working properly, I reckon that DosBox AGA will kick PC Task's bottom

It's a shame that it's so hard to find talented 68k assembler coders these day :help:

 

[Xanxi]

There is one more way to emulate an Amiga on an Amiga.

Use Shapeshifter, then UAE 0.6 for Mac 68k.

Surprinsingly, it is faster than UAE for 68k Amiga.

 

[hseiken]

Computers With Identity Crisis'. Film at 11.

 

[Xanxi]

I always got an error message when trying to launch a game from an ADF file with MacUAE 68k, but i have managed to launch Obsession demo from an Amiga Dream cover disk (french magazine). It's working but bot smooth enough to be barely playable.

 

[Xanxi]

I have also attempted to use the other CPU present in my A2000, the Intel 386sx@25MHz from my bridgeboard.
There is an old version of Nesticle that runs in MSDOS.

However, Super Mario Bros is very slow (3 FPS, see on the right, just on the title screen). This is a good excuse to fit my 486SLC2 upgrade again despite the massive heat it causes.

 

[Xanxi]

Pursuing my attempts to emulate computers/consoles in my A2000 with the Commodore A2386, i have tested Gemulator for MSDOS.
This Atari ST emulator seems to need the GEM ROM on an ISA board.
I don't have the board but would like to, as i still have an available ISA slot inside this A2000.
If you own one or know something about, please contact me.

Here is how the ROM card looks like:

 

[salaxi54]

@Xanxi: I admire your effort in gathering your emulation experiences in one place! Most DOS ST emulators would actually require a little more horsepower than the 386, usually a 486 would be just about enough, but you can still try some other emulators and see what happens.
Have a look at TosBox http://www.oocities.org/tosbox/ and STonX http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/nino/stonx.html (which has a DOS port by the way). At least they don't require a ROM card.
Keep up the good work!

 

[Xanxi]

Thanks dude
Tosbox looks interesting and i'm going to give it a try.


Today i would like to review the 4 ways to play Wolfenstein 3D on my A2000.
I remember when i tried this game in 1992 or 1993 on a friend 's PC who lived close to our high school. I have always find this game much more interesting than Doom.

There are 4 ways to revice it on my A2000.

Number 1:
Use the Amiga version. There is a port by Mariusz Naumowicz on aminet http://aminet.net/package/game/shoot/AWolf3D
There is no sound unfortunately, not even the PC beeper.

The game is fast enough on my 68060 to play in 320*200 8bits (GVP Spectrum with Picasso96). No sound can make it a bit difficult to play because you don't hear immediatly someone firing at you.
I rate it 3,5/5.

Number 2:
Use PC Task v4.4.
PCTask allows VGA and sound through bc beeper emulation on my setup.
It launches the game on the same Picasso96 resolution than number 1.

Unfortunately, it is not smooth enough to be playable. This is too much for PCTask. I will rate it 2/5 (for the sound).


Number 3 et 4 are coming in my next post

---------- Post added at 13:37 ---------- Previous post was at 13:10 ----------

Number 3:
The Macintosh version with Shapeshifter 3.11.
As you know, Shapeshifter flies with a 68060. I run a Mac in 800*600 16 bits on a Picasso96 screen (still GVP Spectrum). However, the video speed is limited by the Z2 bus and is a bit slower than AGA, and lot slower than Z3 according to benchmarks.

The Mac version allows 4 resolutions from the original 320*200 up to 640*480, and full sound and music through Paula or AHI.

320*200 is fast and nice to play, but appears a bit small on my 800*600 screen. Larger resolutions are not smooth enough to enjoy. This would of course be way better on my A4000 with C64/3D that is retired in the closet.
Sound is perfect. The game seems a bit harder than PC counterpart, with more german soldiers at the same level of difficulty.
I rate it 4/5 on my A2000 (could be 4,5 or 5/5 on my A4000).


Number 4:
The MSDOS version on the Commodore A2386sx bridgeboard.
The is the plain A2386 @ 25 MHz, without the overheating 486SLC2@ 50 MHz add-on, and 8 MB of RAM. It comes with a SoundBlaster 16 for sound and music and a STB Nitro 64 2 MB (fastest ISA board available, which is the same as the Ateo Pixel64 for A1200 by the way).

Well, this is the real stuff. Full screen (320*200), perfect sound and music, fast and smooth scrolling.
I give it 5/5.

 

[amigean]

Very cool stuff - all of it. I also got to learn that bridgeboards take a life of their own with a dedicated graphics and sound card on the ISA bus - which is something I hadn't contemplated really until now.

anyone wants to sell a bridgeboard+gfx+sound bundle?

 

[Xanxi]

Thanks dude


Today i wan't to break the belief of some people about the Mac browsers. I have read many time that people would like an emulated mac inside their amiga in order to use a better browser than IBrowse.

This is absolutly false and i hereby prove it.

I have used IBrowse 2.4 on the Amiga side and ICab 2.9.9 on the MacOS side. ICab is supposed to be the more modern browser still available for system7 or MacOS8, and is CSS compatible. It is better than Netscape which is a bit unstable.

Here are a few pics of representative webpages:

1/ the Aminet webpage:

- Ibrowse displays it fast and perfect

- ICab displays it ok too but slowly:

2/ Google:

- IBrowse displays the page and is able to launch a search but it is amazingly yellow and the CSS is no good

- it looks a bit more like Google with iCab but it is slower:

3/ A complex webpage like www.apple.com:

- Not so bad with IBrowse, at least you can recognize Apple homepage and the pics are displayed.

- ICab causes the computer to freeze on several attempt: no good at all.

4/ A webpage with a lot of pictures like Mfilos' blog.

- Ibrowse is able to display the whole page including pictures.

- ICab causes the whole computer to reboot on several attempts to load the page. No good.



So, IBrowse is definitly better at surfing the web that a Mac 68k browser. Not to mention the fact that ICab and Netscape are not able any more to connect on GMail and similar services because of the lack of valid security certificates.

I'm confident that whenever the IBrowse guys will release a new version, it will be even better.

 

[storhemulen]

Actually, you don't need that ISA card for Gemulator, at least according to page below. You can use ROM image files.

http://www.emulators.com/gemul8r.htm

 

[StrongARM]

...GEMulator...

 

[Xanxi]

Oh you have dug out a thread so old, that pictures have all disappeared by now.

Interesting to see that i was at the time hoping for a FPGA 68k cpu able to give a kick to all these emulation softwares. It seems to have become real now with the Vampire 68080 and possibly the Pistorm although not FPGA. Need to install my PiStorm 1200 and try again everything.