Subject: Re: MOL on Amiga/APUS again.....
From: Gianluca (icjtqr@tin.it)
Date: Wed Dec 20 2000 - 12:57:04 MST
On Wed, 20 Dec 2000, you wrote:
> Quoting Gianluca <icjtqr@tin.it>:
> > Nahhhh. Dont'worry about asking things. MOL requires only a PowerPC
> > based machine, an X Server Running, and a "New World ROM" file. RS/6000,
> > APUS,
> > Amiga, PReP, CHRP machines can run MOL easily (more or less...)
> > Obviously a PowerMac is all above (and maybe more... ;) )
> Umm. Doesn't MoL depend on the Mac IO controller chip? (Paddington on the G3 B/W
> systems, for example) Far as I know, MacOS depends heavily on this chip for most
> of its functionality, and without it, MacOS can't do anything. I think you need
> an actual Mac, because of the necessity of having that chip available to do some
> of MacOS's dirty work.
Yep. You are right. You wrote "MacOS depends heavily on this chip for most of
its functionality..."
But MoL it's a MacIntosh Emulator. Completely software based. Heard of MAME? or
Basilisk or ShapeShifter? Every Emulator, catch every call to low-level i/o
chips and redirect evrything on a higher level. So it needs so much horsepower
to emulate something relativly simpler.
Try to think about a PowerComputing Apple Clone (quite different from a real
Mac...) running MacOS...
The main advantages are if you are not emulating the opcode on the host
processor as MoL. It doesn't waste CPU time to translate PowerPC Opcodes,
because it is running on a PowerPC CPU System. It is like WinEmu for Linux
Intel Based, or ArmEmu for Archimedes ARM Based RISCOS..or Emulating a 68k Mac
on a 68k based Amiga (only the access to i/o chips are wrapped into AmigaOS
System...Sometimes better than MacOS counterparts...).
The main part is NOT emulating the PROCESSOR ITSELF, but only the chips
addressing and operation. (Simpler than an entire system, anyway...)
Have you ever heard of Alpha Processors? I saw a Emulated MacOS (Basilisk)
faster than a fastest G4 on earth... running 68k software...
Imagine if AlphaCPU can obtain the same speed from emulating the RISC PowerPC...
Regards,
Gianluca
-- IBM IntelliStation MPRO Dual CPU PentiumIII (Katmai) 512k-L2Cache 768MB RAM / UW-SCSI Dual Controller Adaptec AIC-7xxx SCSI-2 Fast Controller PCI UDMA EIDE/FastATA Dual Controller ...and other delights... ;-)ALL POWERED by Linux Red-Hat 7.0
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