>Which begs the question, outside of just for sh*ts and giggles, why would you want to run an emulator inside an emulator? Why not the right port of DOSBox for the host system?

My primary OS is AmigaOS 3.9. I run it on a P4/2400 under WinUAE for performance reasons. If you have your system set up to boot straight into an emulator such as WinUAE, it is annoying to have to switch back to Windows to load DOSBox. Plus, I do coding for the Amiga community, many of them are running real Amigas.

>Sure, the fastest PPC accelerator I know of is only 233mhz

Well, the AmigaOne is faster than that.

>Also, and I'm not sure how much this would effect DOSBox, most games I've found that have both PC & Amiga versions run better & with lower requirements on the Amiga than they do on the PC. As an example, Ultima VI ran alot smoother on my stock A2000 (7mhz w/1 meg memory,) than it did on my 486 system (25mhz w/16 meg memory.) Up until the last couple of years, my A4000 (25mhz w/18 meg memory + Picasso IV graphics card,) has outperformed any PC I had. The first PC I had that did better was my first P4 system (1.8ghz w/512 meg memory.) The only reason I used my PCs more was because they had more support, and it is a lot cheaper to upgrade than my Amiga. Of course, there isn't much more upgrading I can do with my Amiga. After around 1993 or so (not sure of the exact year,) they pretty much stopped porting games over to the Amiga. I remember how upset I got when I discovered that X-Wing didn't have (and never would have,) an Amiga version.

>I've never been all that clear on why the disparity between the 2 systems. What did the Amiga have that allowed it to run rings around the PC? If the source code was altered to be Amiga specific (take advantage of whatever this was,) would DOSBox actually run better & more efficiently on the Amiga than it does on the PC? Unless an Amiga programmer decides to really work with DOSBox, the world may never know Sad

Primarily the custom chips. Also (although this applies more to applications than to games) the operating system is much more efficient than eg. Windows.

>I don't think they have to provide sources accessible, they just have to
make them somehow accessible on demand. Ie. you contact the author
and ask him about it, then he has to mail/upload them.

>And what if they don't? Which has been the case with at least the 68K port.

>Which means they must either ship binaries and sources together, or must supply a written offer for the source code. If you got such a written offer yourself, you may forward it.

There is no offer of sources in any of the documentation of the ports.

>In the age of the web, putting binaries and source into the same download seems stupid

Hmm, why? I would have thought it made more sense now than before, since we don't have to worry as much about what will fit on a floppy? For software up to a few Mb in size it seems better to include both in the same package. It will avoid all the problems we have been discussing. Giving a URL (nearly all of which go dead eventually) or written offer for a limited time means that the source will inevitably be lost. eg. the programmer might die, or the site is shut down, etc. I think the GPL is very weak in this area, this is one of the main reasons I don't use the GPL for my own software.

Surely at least it is reasonable to require that when a binary package is released to a file repository such as Aminet, that the source package is also released there?

FeedingDragon wrote:

Freddo wrote:

It's also the slowest platform where the fastest CPU is a 50mhz 68060. Porting DOSBox to such platform doesn't really make much sense. Unless you enjoy a lot of stuttering, of course.

With a PPC excelerator card, Amiga's can get much faster than 50mhz. Those usually come with a PPC processor that is much faster

True, but then it's not a 68k program anymore 😀

FeedingDragon wrote:

After around 1993 or so (not sure of the exact year,) they pretty much stopped porting games over to the Amiga. I remember how upset I got when I discovered that X-Wing didn't have (and never would have,) an Amiga version.

Ah, yes. Sad times. My Amiga 1200 continued to be my main computer until until I got my hands on Windows 2000 Pro, tho.

Actually the PPC line of processors are based on the 68k line. It is the processor line that MAC computers moved too when they moved away from the 68k line themselves. I'm not a tech, but I understand that the processor commands are very simular. Sort of like a grandchild to the 68000 chip. Not quite as close a relationship as, say, the 80386 & 80486. More like the 8088 & the Pentium chip.

As for the AmigaOne computers. I've never considered them Amigas myself. You cannot run Amiga software on them natively for one thing (the OS comes with an Amiga 'emulator' packaged with it.) From what I've seen, it's basically a PC/MAC hybrid with a specially designed OS. If it had chipsets that were at least compatable with the Amiga chipsets in hardware instead of using software emulation only for them, I'd feel differently about it. Sort of like the AGA chipset was an advancement but was compatable with the ECS chipset. They didn't do it that way though, which was a mistake IMHO, and prevents them from being true Amigas. ***sorry, rant over***

Anyways, back on topic... If the DOSBox code was converted to take advantage of the special Amiga chipset design, then it should work just fine for the really old games on a standard (25-50 mhz,) Amiga. Though most of those will have Amiga ports already. If the code is also set up to take advantage of a PPC, if present, then it should work just fine with the middling older software as well.

The only real issue is that the Amiga was designed specifically around emulating other machines. There were plans in place to set it up so that it could emulate any machine on the market. When the Amiga shop here in town was still open I watched as they ran modern (at the time,) software on an Amiga with better over all performance in the emulation that you got on the native machine. I have to say, it was a truly awesome (though extremely expensive,) sight to behold. The Emplant card, for example, with a chip installed into one of the myriad slots available, or with a disk you could purchase with a BIOS image & chip commands (80486 for example,) worked wonders, but cost around $500 (just for the basic card - none of the images/chips you needed to actually do anything with it.) Basically, the Amiga already has everything you need, without DOSBox, to do what you want (that is, play the older DOS games.) DOSBox would just make things a little easier (and a lot cheaper, for the most part.)

PCTask on a stock A4000, could emulate up to the 80286 easily, (80386 & 80486 with the right expansions.) Complete with soundblaster/adlib emulation, VGA video, mouse, HDD, floppy (3.5" normally, 5.25" if you have the rather rare 5.25" external drive - of if you have a Catweasel w/5.25" drive installed,) and just about anything else you could imagine. That is just a software emulator. Alternately, if you installed a bridgeboard (A2088, A2286, A2386, or A2486,) card, you could have absolutely true PC emulation (as you actually have a true 8088 - 80486 CPU on the bridgeboard,) and use true PC ISA cards for sound & video if you want (though you could get EGA through an ECS chipset or VGA through an AGA chipset if necessary.) Though, the HW angle is a moot point, the purpose of DOSBox was to run older DOS games without spending money on extra hardware 😀 Also, DOSBox costs a lot less than even the relatively inexpensive PCTask (when compared to a bridgeboard or Emplant card.) 😀 After all, DOSBox is a free download. You can't get much more inexpensive than that.

>Actually the PPC line of processors are based on the 68k line.

No, they are a clean break with that design. 68K is a CISC archiecture, PPC is RISC. Code is not compatible from one to the other.

>It is the processor line that MAC computers moved too when they moved away from the 68k line themselves.

Yes, that is correct.

>As for the AmigaOne computers. I've never considered them Amigas myself. You cannot run Amiga software on them natively for one thing (the OS comes with an Amiga 'emulator' packaged with it.)

Somebody should write an AmigaOne emulator, you can't buy them anymore 😀

If the software avoids banging the custom chips (ie. most modern Amiga applications) it generally is OS4 compatible.

>From what I've seen, it's basically a PC/MAC hybrid with a specially designed OS.

Actually, a generic PPC box with an "anti-piracy" chip, basically.

>If it had chipsets that were at least compatable with the Amiga chipsets in hardware instead of using software emulation only for them, I'd feel differently about it. Sort of like the AGA chipset was an advancement but was compatable with the ECS chipset. They didn't do it that way though, which was a mistake IMHO, and prevents them from being true Amigas.

>I suggested to Bill McEwen that they make an Amiga 5000 ages ago, he was not interested unfortunately. But I think the operating system is the killer feature, the AGA chips are pretty slow by modern standards. I can't believe they have made an OS (3.9) that only requires 3Mb RAM to run, it's full-featured, user-friendly and fast. I can't believe it's not more popular, what's not to like?

>Anyways, back on topic... If the DOSBox code was converted to take advantage of the special Amiga chipset design, then it should work just fine for the really old games on a standard (25-50 mhz,) Amiga. Though most of those will have Amiga ports already. If the code is also set up to take advantage of a PPC, if present, then it should work just fine with the middling older software as well.

There's no Amiga version of Alleycat 🙁 I don't think 25MHz would cut it, certainly not without a rewrite in assembly language. CPU emulation has to be done by a CPU, custom chips aren't useful for that.

>When the Amiga shop here in town was still open I watched as they ran modern (at the time,) software on an Amiga with better over all performance in the emulation that you got on the native machine. I have to say, it was a truly awesome (though extremely expensive,) sight to behold.

Yes, you can emulate a 680x0 Mac at approximately native speed on a 680x0 Amiga, because the CPU doesn't need to be emulated. I assume you can do likewise for a PPC Mac on a PPC Amiga, I haven't looked into that.

>PCTask on a stock A4000, could emulate up to the 80286 easily, (80386 & 80486 with the right expansions.) Complete with soundblaster/adlib emulation, VGA video, mouse, HDD, floppy (3.5" normally, 5.25" if you have the rather rare 5.25" external drive - of if you have a Catweasel w/5.25" drive installed,) and just about anything else you could imagine. That is just a software emulator.

Yes, slowly.

>Alternately, if you installed a bridgeboard (A2088, A2286, A2386, or A2486,) card, you could have absolutely true PC emulation (as you actually have a true 8088 - 80486 CPU on the bridgeboard,) and use true PC ISA cards for sound & video if you want (though you could get EGA through an ECS chipset or VGA through an AGA chipset if necessary.)

Yes, you are correct.

>Though, the HW angle is a moot point, the purpose of DOSBox was to run older DOS games without spending money on extra hardware Happy Also, DOSBox costs a lot less than even the relatively inexpensive PCTask (when compared to a bridgeboard or Emplant card.) Happy After all, DOSBox is a free download. You can't get much more inexpensive than that.

PC-Task is not as compatible for games as DOSBox is. I wanna play Round 42 on my Amiga 😀