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From: jnmoyne@lbl.gov (Jean-Noel MOYNE)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: ATARI EMUL (questions)
Message-ID: <7577@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 12 Oct 90 21:22:21 GMT
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Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
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References:<12464@chaph.usc.edu> <1990Oct12.045356.25884@hoss.unl.edu>


   Ok, let's talk a little about this ST emulator. This emulator was made 
to reach one goal: emulate the ST in Monochrome-hires mode, for the other 
modes: try to have something, but don't try much.

   In other words, the guy who made this progam just wanted to be able to 
run the "professional" programs (i.e. the utilities, well programmed, not 
using graphics hacks, etc ...) because on the ST like on the Amiga you 
have 2 sort of programs: the demos, games and music stuff which are trying 
to get the most of the machine, and the utilities and others which are 
trying to get the most of the machine, thru the operating system.

    If you have an Amiga, you don't need to have an ST for the games and 
for the music or demos ! But you may need the ST for nice MIDI programs 
(and even ...) for nice Word processing programs (sorry but it's true 
...), or even desktop publishing (sorry too, have you seen Calamus ?), or 
for some obscure program you need and that was never adapted to the Amiga,

   That's why this ST emulator is quite well runing in Hi-Res mode ... As 
for the color mode the only serious programs running in color mode are 
Drawing programs ... and you really don't need any ST drawing program on 
your Amiga !!!  ((-: And of course all the games and other demos are 
pushing ST's poor hardware to it's limits using bugs in it .. and there's 
no way an emulator could do that. I don't believe you'll be able to have 
'sprites in the border' on a Commodore 64 emulator (for the ex-C64 wizs 
who remember how to do it (-:))

     What's interesting however is that the new ST system, supporting 
68030 is finished and out now ! (they don't have any sort of 68030 card to 
try it now, but it's the first step (-:). I don't know but I bet you at 
least half of the programs on the ST won't run with a 020 or 030. 
Commodore had allways said don't use instructions that won't run on a 020, 
and there was still a lot programs that wouldn't run on it when the first 
cards came out. So now imagine the same thing on the ST where for years 
even the OS was using these forbidden instructions, and the use of the 
supervisor mode on the ST is much more stronger than on the Amiga.

    Anyway, just use the Hi-Res mode of the Atari ST Emulator, and just 
try to use civilized prgrams on it ! 

     JNM

--
These are my own ideas (not LBL's)
" Just make it!", BO in 'BO knows Unix'