68K Macintosh Emulators
Listed here are both Apple's own emulation systems and those produced
by third parties. There are no known emulators for PowerMac.
Last updated: Sun 17:30 12/29/1996.
Main List
- Executor
(DOS/NeXTStep/Linux & X) -- runs 68K Macintosh
executables under MS-DOS, NeXTStep, and Linux & X (all for
80x86 only, I believe) preliminary version is available.
This emulator is supposedly one of the fastest in existence
in terms of relative performance, particularly considering
that the 80x86 and 68K architectures use different byte-ordering.
It is made by ARDI, who have several papers available on their
site about the technology.
- MAE (UNIX & X) -- runs
68K Macintosh executables on UNIX & X machines. Currently this seems
to be restricted to SPARCs running Solaris and PA-RISC machines running
HP-UX. This product is made by Apple themselves, and is presumably
drawn from similar technology as the PowerMac OS 68K emulator (see below).
- PowerMac OS -- runs 68K Macintosh executables on the
PowerMac from
Apple.
It is fully integrated with the system (you
couldn't take it out if you tried ;-), and
supports a wide range of the old programs.
This line of emulators from Apple are distinguished in that
they emulate even the trickiest parts of the old 68K Macintoshes,
which in many cases had programs that directly accessed internal
data structures and hardware registers not in the published
interfaces. Even many low-level OS drivers can be run with emulated
code. Indeed, the PowerMac OS actually *relies* on this emulation
scheme, as some of it's components have never been converted to
PowrePC code. This probably qualifies it as the worlds first
OS that is simultaneously dual-architecture.
Some incompatibilities do exist, but this is far more
the exception than the rule.
erich@uruk.org
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