Anyone try an Amiga Emulator?

[W1GUH]

Looking at <linque>this one (http://www.amigaforever.com/). Also going to search for a free one.

Anybody do anything like this? I'd LOVE to run some of my old Amiga software - I really miss that machine. An emulator would be a LOT easier than hauling out my "real" one, and will be faster.

[W5GA]

No emulators, but I used to have a 500.

[W1GUH]

So did I and I miss it.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

The Mac that runs the Motorola CPU, even the PowerPC ones, run the best emulators.
The reason is that the Amiga used the 68000 CPU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000_family
The PowerPC is RISC CPU that is designed to fetch from a repository the 68000 instruction set as needed.
It takes a bit of work to make a Mac act like an Amiga but once it is set up it is an Amiga on steroids!
Everything works as it should.

[NQ6U]

Hello.

The Mac that runs the Motorola CPU, even the PowerPC ones, run the best emulators.
The reason is that the Amiga used the 68000 CPU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000_family
The PowerPC is RISC CPU that is designed to fetch from a repository the 68000 instruction set as needed.

I don't think that's true, Rudy. If you recall, in the early days of the PPC Mac, apps were generally released as "Fat Binaries," meaning they had two versions of the compiled code--one for 68xxx processor and another for the PPC. If a PPC had a repository of the 68k instruction set, that wouldn't have been necessary.

[n6hcm]

I don't think that's true, Rudy. If you recall, in the early days of the PPC Mac, apps were generally released as "Fat Binaries," meaning they had two versions of the compiled code

exactly right. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary#Apple.27s_Fat_Binary)both versions of the code in the same file. users didn't have to worry about having the right version because a fat binary was always the right type.

[NQ6U]

exactly right. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary#Apple.27s_Fat_Binary)both versions of the code in the same file. users didn't have to worry about having the right version because a fat binary was always the right type.

The forked file structure of apps on the "Classic" Mac OS allowed both binaries to use the same resource fork, so that the Fat Binary code was only only marginally larger than it would have been otherwise. There was an emulation scheme worked into the OS at the time and IBM designed the processor bus to match up with the 68k so Apple only had to rewrite a portion of the low-level OS code but as far as I know, there was no 68k instruction set built into the PPC chips. It seems unlikely since they were designed by different, competing companies--Motorola for the 68k and IBM for the PPC. Moto was brought in during the process of Apple making the switch to PPC and eventually began to manufacture them under license but they had no influence on the original chip design.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

This is correct.
As I pointed out, the POWERPC needs a repository to make this work, it is not on the chip.
But, as was pointed out, a fat file only has a bit more than a native file.
However we are talking about an emulator, so there is always going to be a repository.
The advantage a POWERPC has is that there is far less intervention than an Intel or AMD chip.
In short, the emulators for Amiga that run on POWERPC run much faster than on an Intel box everything else being equal.
That being the case a used Mac laptop makes an ideal Amiga box.
Used Macs with the POWERPC chips are going for cheap, one reason why I have taken to rebuilding the battery packs.
An iMac flushed of everything Mac and running Unix makes a good SCADA box for field use, only a Toughbook is better and only becuse the hardware is more rugged.
But I feel that having more than one OS on a machine is an advantage.
If you like Amiga, go for it!
Use some old hardware and get cracking, experiment!

[NQ6U]

Yah know, Rudy, I could make absolutely no sense whatsoever out of your last post.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

I had to dig up the software that turns an iBook into an Amiga.
First, it is not an emulator, I was wrong on that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
Second, although it works best with the Motorola CPU (and clones) it does not alter the way the CPU handles calls, the CPU is built to handle the code with little trouble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_virtualization
The Mac runs Amiga OS-4.
Since I am not clear if this is freeware or not I will not post a link.