| From: | Steffen Haeuser |
| Date: | 06 Dec 99 at 21:00:23 |
| Subject: | [warpup] Offtopic, 68K emulation |
owner-warpup-list@haage-partner.com wrote :
Hi!
ow> Here are the questions
ow> 1. Will Haage & Partner provide this emulator for Phase5 G4 boards?
I would say this depends on P5 licensing the H&P Emulator. Currently they only
seem to be interested in a QNX+UAE solution... and i doubt P5 will invest
the money to put much optimizing or extending work into it.
but maybe someone of H&P can answer more fully to this question, if these
Boards will be supported or not ? But i doubt there will be a different
answer...
If you consider getting this Board, ask yourselves: Will a G4 Board be worth
it if it runs Amiga Applications only very sluggish ? In this case a more
compatible G3 Board might be more worth it.
ow> 2. Is the emulator 100 % stable and compatible enough to run current
ow> applications including OS 3.5?
I do not have OS3.5 installed yet (it just arrived today...), but with the old
Beta of the Emulator i have i did not yet find a application to crash. Even
hardware-hacking demos and games worked. Even Ambermoon worked (after applying
the patch for 040/060 compatibility at least), imagine this !!!
I don't think there will be any major problems, due to the fact the Emulator
is - if i remember right - in Testing since over a year. It is VERY compatible.
ow> 3. Will it need WarpUP to run? (which means to force every user to
ow> run under WarpUP, that's no problem but.. what about all the
ow> applications unavailable for WarpUP but PowerUP which don't run under the
ow> ppclib emulation?
Of course only WarpUP applications and PowerUP applications running under the
ppclib emulation will work. The Emulator and WarpUP "need each other" on a
PPC-only Board (A PPC Kernel like WarpUP would not run without a 68k Emulator,
and PPC Applications - including the emulator - won't work without WarpUP).
But i think ppclib stuff will die soon enough, anyways (is it not already dead
? :) ) or at least people still coding with it will do it in a ppclib
Emulation compatible way (they surely don't want to limit the field of
potential customers).
Actually it should not be too hard work to adapt those few applications still
using PowerUP to WarpUP. In most cases PowerUP apps are done with EGCS, so
often a simple recompile with EGCS-WarpUP should be enough (if not a lot of
PowerUP-specific functions are used).
ow> 4. Does the emulator emulate different 68k family processors, say
ow> 060s x times faster so I can run a 060-optimized programs or will only
ow> emulate a "raw" 68k?
It emulates a 68040. Full FPU Emulation is provided, BTW.
ow> 5. It would be nice to know of programs already tested with it...
Pagestream 3
Breathless
Ambermoon
different rtgmaster programs
a lot of tools
Some Scene Demos
GoldEd
StormC
...
I have to admit though, that on a 150 MHz
604e there is no way a 68k Emulation can beat the 060 present on the <=233 MHz
PPC+060
Board. Especially with no Backside Cache being on the current Phase 5 Boards.
This will be much different on a G3/G4 machine. If firms like P5 license this
Emulation, that is. But altogether i have still some doubts if P5 will realize
this project anyways.
I think Sam can provide much more details and probably a bigger list of
programs. But well... i myselves did not find a program which runs on a real
040, but not on the Emulation yet.
Steffen Haeuser