Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!fauern!faui43.informatik.uni-erlangen.de!csbrod From: csbrod@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations Subject: Re: Amiga Emulator for the ST. Sounds Bogus. Message-ID: <1991Mar12.132854.20124@informatik.uni-erlangen.de> Date: 12 Mar 91 13:28:54 GMT References: <91070.090306JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> <3047@mtecv2.mty.itesm.mx> <1991Mar12.022622.25956@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> Organization: CSD., University of Erlangen, Germany Lines: 42 rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes: > Without wishing to start a computer war, a friend of mine has an >Amiga emulator for his Atari 1040ST. It is a commercial package, thats been >around since 1987, released by Metacomco. The manual states that it >runs around 7 times faster than a real amiga, disk drive i/o is much faster, > ^^^ >but the whole thing slows down when it comes to emulating the specialised >chips (some of them not all). It requires the atari blitter to be installed, >which runs approx 40 times faster than the amigas blitter which somewhat > ^^^^ >compensates for the lack of those amiga chips. It also requires an amiga >drive, which has to be attached as the second drive on the atari. The whole thing is a fake. I disassembled the startup program way back in 1987 when I tried to make it run on my ST. It only prints some kind of message (if I recall it right, something like 'You need a blitter to run this') and exits. It doesn't check for a blitter, or course, nor does it do anything else that might seem useful. Seems like someone trying to fool us under the hood of Metacomco's name. >This sounds too unreal considering a 25mhz 68030 only runs 9 times >faster than a 7mhz 68000. For the ST's blitter to run 40 times >faster than the Amiga's it would need a clock speed of over 100mhz. The ST blitter is faster in some operations than the Amiga's blitter, but certainly not 40 times faster. Likewise, the ST's CPU is slightly faster than those in standard Amigas, as we all know, but that's about 10%, not 700%. >The ST disk i/o being faster than the Amiga's DMA driven disk seems >suspect too(especially when running the fast file system). ST disk I/O really is faster, even if you're using FFS. At least this is true when comparing my Mega ST with a friend's A2000. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Claus Brod, Am Felsenkeller 2, Things. Take. Time. D-8772 Marktheidenfeld, West Germany (Piet Hein) csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de ----------------------------------------------------------------------