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The Amiga computer can be used to emulate several other computer platforms, including legacy platforms such as the Commodore 64, and its contemporary rivals such as the IBM PC and the Macintosh.
MS-DOS compatibility was a major issue during the early years of the Amiga's lifespan in order to promote the machine as a serious business machine. In order to run the MS-DOS operating system, Commodore released the Sidecar for the Amiga 1000, basically an 8088 board in a closed case that connected to the side of the Amiga. Clever programming (a library named Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of doorways) made it possible to run PC software in an Amiga window without use of emulation. At the introduction of the Sidecar the crowd was stunned to see the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator running at full speed in an Amiga window on the Workbench.
Later the Sidecar was implemented on an expansion card named "Bridgeboard" and was released as the A2088XT for Amiga 2000+ models. Bridgeboard models based on the Intel 80286 and 80386 CPUs were later released by Commodore as the A2286 and A2386. The Bridgeboard card and the Janus library made the use of PC expansion cards and harddisk/floppydisk drives possible. Later third party cards also appeared for the Amiga 500 and Amiga 600 expansion slot such as the KCS Powerboard, and Vortex released full-length cards for the Amiga 2000+ based on the 80386 and 80486 CPUs called the Golden Gate.
Eventually, full-software emulators, such as PC-Task and PCx allowed Amigas to run MS-DOS programs, including Microsoft Windows, without additional hardware, at the costs of speed and compatibility.
Dutch Amiga Kolff Computer Supplies built a similar expansion for the A500. It was later improved so it could emulate VGA. It did not multitask however. [1]
When Commodore introduced the Amiga 1000 in July 1985 it also unexpectedly announced a software-based IBM PC emulator for it. The company demonstrated the emulator by booting IBM PC DOS and running Lotus 1-2-3 . [2] Some who attended the demonstration were skeptical that the emulator, while impressive technically, could run with acceptable performance. [3] The application, called Transformer, was indeed extremely slow; The 'Landmark' benchmark rated it as a 300 kHz 286, far slower than the 4.7 MHz of IBM's oldest and slowest PC. In addition, it would only run on Amigas using the 68000 microprocessor, and would not run if the Amiga had more than 512K of RAM.
PCTask is a software PC emulator emulating PC Intel hardware with 8088 processor and CGA graphic modes. The latest version of it (4.4) was capable to emulate an 80386 clocked at 12 MHz and features include support for up to 16 MiB RAM (15 MB extended) under MS-DOS, up to two floppy drives and 2 hard drives. The emulator could make use of hardfile devices and then it could handle multiple hard disk files and hard disk partitions. It supported high Density floppies and CD-ROM if the Amiga hardware had mounted those devices.
The graphics mode available were MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA and SVGA emulating Hercules graphic cards with 512 KiB to 2 MiB RAM, and up to 256 colors on Amiga AGA machines, and could make use of Amiga graphic boards (e.g. Cybergraphics, EGS Spectrum, Picasso).
Parallel, Serial and PC speaker emulation, and mouse support, including serial mouse emulation were also granted.
If the Amiga hardware is fast enough (68060 or PPC) and has enough RAM, there could be also the possibility to run multiple PC-Task processes on the same machine, run MS-DOS applications in an Amiga window on a public screen (e.g. on Amiga Workbench GUI).
PCTask could also transfer files between Amiga side and the emulated MS-DOS machine; it could make use of GoldenGate bridge cards which allow the Amiga equipped with expansion slots to get complete control of its silent ISA slots and use PC-ISA cards. And latest version of it (4.4) could run even Microsoft Windows up to 95.
PcTask has an 8088/80286/80486 JITM (Just in Time Machine) capable to map all instructions of these processors, but require 4 megabytes extra of RAM for activating this feature.
Also introduced for the Amiga were two products, A-Max (both internal and external models) and the Emplant expansion card. Both allowed the Amiga to emulate an Apple Macintosh and run the classic Mac OS. It required an Apple Macintosh ROM image, or actual ROMs in the case of A-Max, which needed to be obtained from a real Macintosh. The user needed to own the real Macintosh or Mac ROMs to legally run the emulator.
In 1988 the first Apple Mac emulator, A-Max, was released as an external device for any Amiga. It needed Mac ROMs to function, and could read Mac disks when used with a Mac floppy drive (Amiga floppy drives are unable to read Mac disks. Unlike Amiga disks Mac floppy disks spin at variable speeds, much like CD-ROM drives). It wasn't a particularly elegant solution, but it did provide an affordable and usable Mac experience.
ReadySoft, makers of A-Max, followed up with A-Max II in the early 1990s. A-Max II was contained on a Zorro-compatible card and allowed the user, again using actual Mac ROMs, to emulate a color Macintosh. In fact, an Amiga 3000 emulating a Mac via A-Max II was significantly faster than the first consumer color Mac, the LC.
Over time full-software virtualization was available, but a ROM image was still necessary. Example virtualization software include ShapeShifter (not to be confused with the third party preference pane ShapeShifter), later superseded by Basilisk II (both by the same programmer who conceived SheepShaver, Christian Bauer), Fusion and iFusion (the latter ran classic Mac OS by using a PowerPC "coprocessor" accelerator card).
Virtual machines provide equal or faster speed than a Macintosh with the same processor, especially with respect to the m68k series due to real Macs running in MMU trap mode, hampering performance. Also, immediately after the 68k to PowerPC transition in 1994, there was a dearth of native PowerPC Mac software: Amiga computers with 68060 CPUs running ShapeShifter or Fusion were able to run 68k Macintosh code faster than real Macs.
One should note that although Amigas were very successful at emulating Macintoshes, it was never considered to be a Macintosh clone as it could not use Mac OS as a primary operating system.
Modern Amigas like AmigaOne and Pegasos can emulate Macintosh Machines by using Basilisk II or Mac-on-Linux.
Various Commodore 64 emulators were produced for the Amiga. In 1988 Compute! reviewed ReadySoft's The 64 Emulator and Software Insight Systems' GO-64 and reported mixed results with both. Although the magazine used copies of the genuine 64 ROMs, it found that some software such as SpeedScript did not run, and both emulators' performance was inferior to the real computer. [4] Others included MagiC64 and A64.
There is an Amiga version of VICE, which emulates 8-bit commodore computers.
One Apple II emulator for the Amiga was Kevin Kralian's Apple 2000. Given that the Amiga's base 8 MHz |68000 CPU struggled to emulate the 1 MHz 6502, Apple 2000 was written in assembly language for the 68020+ CPU to actually be able to emulate an Apple II at full speed. It was revised a few times until v1.3 which was released in 1994. At the time it was released, people on the internet speculated it was part of the Emplant emulation solution, but in fact Apple 2000 was an independent project. A particularly interesting feature of the software was that it could run Apple II binaries extracted as independent program files, but also disk images which had been compressed with Dalton's Disk Disintegrator, a popular disk compression tool from the 1980s. While Apple 2000 was closed source at the time of its release, it was made open source under the MIT license in 2018.
Atari ST emulation on Amiga is very easy because the two machines share the same model of processor (68000) and more or less feature the same hardware characteristics.[ citation needed ]
In the past there were produced various software based Atari emulators for the Amiga such as Amtari, or Medusa emulator.
AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS can emulate Atari ST and Atari STE platforms by using Hatari free software emulator which was released under GPL.
PowerPC-equipped computers running AmigaOS 4 can run UAE to emulate a Motorola 68000-equipped Amiga. Original Kickstart 3.1 ROM images are included with AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4.
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These systems include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS.
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color GUI, using a version of Digital Research's GEM from February 1985. The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of RAM, was the first home computer with a cost-per-kilobyte of less than US$1.
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers.
The Amiga 600, also known as the A600, is a home computer introduced in March 1992. It is the final Amiga model based on the Motorola 68000 and the 1990 Amiga Enhanced Chip Set. A redesign of the Amiga 500 Plus, it adds the option of an internal hard disk drive and a PCMCIA port. Lacking a numeric keypad, the A600 is only slightly larger than an IBM PC keyboard, weighing approximately 6 pounds. It shipped with AmigaOS 2.0, which was considered more user-friendly than earlier versions of the operating system.
The Apple IIe Card is a hardware emulation board, also referred to as compatibility card, which allows compatible Macintosh computers to run software designed for the Apple II series of computers. Released in March 1991 for use with the LC family, Apple targeted the card at its widely dominated educational market to ease the transition from Apple II-based classrooms, with thousands of entrenched educational software titles, to Macintosh-based classrooms.
The Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000 and its upgraded model Amiga 2500 with more processing speed, improved graphics, and a new revision of the operating system.
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in March 1987. It was introduced as a "big box" expandable variant of the Amiga 1000 but quickly redesigned to share most of its electronic components with the contemporary Amiga 500 for cost reduction. Expansion capabilities include two 3.5" drive bays and one 5.25" bay that could be used by a 5.25" floppy drive, a hard drive, or CD-ROM once they became available.
UAE is a computer emulator which emulates the hardware of Commodore International's Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License, UAE is free software.
Star Trek is the code name that was given to a secret prototype project, running a port of Macintosh System 7 and its applications on Intel-compatible x86 personal computers. The project, starting in February 1992, was conceived in collaboration between Apple Computer, who provided the majority of engineers, and Novell, who at the time was one of the leaders of cross-platform file-servers. The plan was that Novell would market the resulting OS as a challenge to Microsoft Windows, but the project was discontinued in 1993 and never released, although components were reused in other projects. The project was named after the Star Trek science fiction franchise with the slogan "To boldly go where no Mac has gone before".
vMac is an open source emulator for Mac OS on Windows, DOS, OS/2, NeXTSTEP, Linux, Unix, and other platforms. Although vMac has been abandoned, Mini vMac, an improved spinoff of vMac, is still actively developed. vMac and Mini vMac emulate a Macintosh Plus and can run Apple Macintosh System versions 1.1 to 7.5.5. vMac and Mini vMac support CPU emulation from Motorola 68000 to 68040, display output, sound, floppy disk insert, HFV image files, and more. Some vMac ports include extra features such as CD-ROM support, basic serial port (SCC) support, Gemulator ROM board support, and various performance improvements. Although the website is still in operation, most vMac development slowed to a halt in 1999, and no official releases have been made since. Many of the developer e-mail addresses listed on the website are not currently working.
Basilisk II is an emulator which emulates Apple Macintosh computers based on the Motorola 68000 series. The software is cross-platform and can be used on a variety of operating systems.
A Macintosh clone is a computer running the Mac OS operating system that was not produced by Apple Inc. The earliest Mac clones were based on emulators and reverse-engineered Macintosh ROMs. During Apple's short lived Mac OS 7 licensing program, authorized Mac clone makers were able to either purchase 100% compatible motherboards or build their own hardware using licensed Mac reference designs.
The Amiga is a family of home computers that were designed and sold by the Amiga Corporation from 1985 to 1994.
Amiga software is computer software engineered to run on the Amiga personal computer. Amiga software covers many applications, including productivity, digital art, games, commercial, freeware and hobbyist products. The market was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s but then dwindled. Most Amiga products were originally created directly for the Amiga computer, and were not ported from other platforms.
The Mac286 was an Intel 80286-based MS-DOS coprocessor expansion card for one of Apple Computer's first expandable Macintosh computers, the 1987 Macintosh II. It was developed by Phoenix Technologies under contract to Apple Computer and sold by AST Research in an effort to close the gap between the Macintosh and IBM PC computing worlds. AST also introduced the related Mac86 card for the Macintosh SE.
The Commodore A1060 Sidecar is an expansion hardware device developed by Commodore and released in 1986 for the Amiga 1000 computer. It features a complete PC XT-clone system mounted in an expansion case which connected to the expansion bus on the right side of the Amiga 1000 computer, sitting beside it similar to a motorcycle's sidecar, hence the name.
The Amiga 1200, or A1200, is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the United Kingdom and $599 in the United States.
Amiga Forever is an Amiga preservation, emulation and support package published by Cloanto, which allows Amiga software to run on non-Amiga hardware legally and without complex configuration.
Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single, non-technical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific, or engineering-oriented computers of the time, such as those running CP/M or the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business computers. Their most common uses were word processing, playing video games, and programming.
Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
