Emulation scene on real A1200 accellerated: what can they realistically do?

[guybrush]

I've been looking at FPGA MiSTer more and more, and while I would not use it for an Amiga, since I have one, I can see the advantage of having old computer and console run from a single small box.


So I started to look at potentially emulate old computers on the Amiga; and found some emulators. Before giving it a try I fired up WinUAE and gave it a spin, using a profile that mimic my A1200 with a Blizzard 030/50 and 32 MB of RAM, and the performances of almost every emulator are horrible.


Tried MSX, C64, Spectrum and few others and it really run sluggish, to the point where it is not usable. I assume this is because I am running an emulator inside an emulator, so I expect it to run much better on the real machine.


Although I am curious to know if anyone here have done any testing on Amiga hardware to see what can you reasonably emulate on them. Given that it will never be as good and as fast as a MiSTer or other FPGA implementation, but I am curious to see what can be emulated on the Amiga at an acceptable speed, and decide if I should just forget about it or if there is any chance to run old computers and console on the Amiga.


I will be posting my findings once I finish to set everything up, but if you have data to share, I would like to see it, especially if your configuration is close to mine

[Heywood]

It's been a very long time but I do remember running Apple 2000 (Apple 2 emulator written in 020 assembly) https://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/Apple2000v13 very easily on my A500 with a VXL30 back in the day.

It's been more than 20 years since I had that particular A500 and I have real Apple 2s now but I imagine it's something that should be something easy to run.

[NovaCoder]

I have a MiSTer and love it

Not actually an emulator, but scummvm AGA is perfectly usable on a real 030 1200...

[Marce]

the Amiga A1200 + 030/50 can run perfectly these emulators at full speed:

zxam ( spectrum 48k)

AMIMSX (msx 1 and 2)

AMimastergear (sega master system and game gear)

EmuCPC (amstrad 64k and 128k)

Shape shifter and Fusion (Mac 68k)

start with these because all other emulators to run at full speed > are for the 040/060

[acidbottle]

Yeah, many emulators will need better than 030, I tried many on real hardware and expect no better through winuae.

A few emulators recently got updated though, like the NES one, that may run better now on 030, though 040 seems to be the min requirement for most.

On the whole, I largely avoid cross emulation or emulators on Amiga, just too many bugs still and now spoilt for choice with amazing pc emulators.

[guybrush]

Thanks for your feedback. So from what I read; MSX, ZX Spectrum, Mac, master system and CPC should work full speed on a 1200 with 030/50.

I will get the appropriate emulators set up on my CF card then, and give them a try on real hardware.
Does the BBC emu work at full speed? What about the Oric or the Dragon ? Also is Dos feasible on the Amiga? Looking to emulate old applications that work in dos text mode ( they used to run on 286)

[Minuous]

AmiTRS-80 should run at full speed on your system too.

[mark_k]

A PC emulator like PC-Task should work OK (like a 286 PC maybe).

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by mark_k

A PC emulator like PC-Task should work OK (like a 286 PC maybe).

On an 030/50?

I doubt that...

[saimon69]

Confirm Novacoder: i remember i tried to run Wolfenstein 3D in PC task in my A1200/EC030/40Mhz and was like 5 FPS in stamp size

[Marce]

pc emulation on a 020 or 030 which are idem cpus is very slow
I do not recommend it
the program topbench report 80286 speed at 7-10 mhz
*****************************************
but on a 040/40 mhz or a 060/50mhz the PC speed in PCX or PCTASK is something around a 486 at 14 or 16mhz

Id say such emulation is somehow usable, lot of DOS programs and DOS games works fine there at full speed
but not usable to run 3d game like Wolfenstein or doom

and of course without soundblaster emulation, something that was promised in PCX but never implemented

[guybrush]

So, I tried PC task, and the benchmark in DOS was showing a 4 MHz baby AT as machine. Not sure what is the problem but it seems to not go faster than that



I tried also Shapeshifter; which goes pretty fast at 256 color mode using the MMU library driver, although I can't get it to show colors; no matter what mode I pick, it show in greyscale. How do you turn on the colors in Shapeshifter?

[Falcon_11]

Originally Posted by guybrush

How do you turn on the colors in Shapeshifter?

You need setup a right color screenmode in shapeshifter settings window and then change the colors mode in the macOS screen resolution settings.

[AmyMor]

In addition to those mentioned perfect from the AMI-MasterGear / Msx / GameBoy series
A-NesPro, Frodo and Magic64 also become very good with an rtg system.

[khph_re]

Even my 040 warpengine with Picasso iv couldn't manage full C64 speed.

You can also emulate from the Mac side, i used to write documents for uni using soft windows.

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Falcon_11

You need setup a right color screenmode in shapeshifter settings window and then change the colors mode in the macOS screen resolution settings.

That did the trick; thanks Not sure why System7 set itself in greyscale instead of color by default but it was easy enough to change it in the preferences.

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by khph_re

Even my 040 warpengine with Picasso iv couldn't manage full C64 speed.

You can also emulate from the Mac side, i used to write documents for uni using soft windows.

C64 seems out of the question with my current hardware; tried few emulators and they all run super slow. Not a big deal since I have a C64, but it is so strange to see the Amiga struggling to emulate a 1 MHz computer.


Spectrum seems to be in the same ballpark, but got an emulator that run pretty fast. Didn't try to load anything but basic at startup so can't stay how fast it is but I will try that later.



Planning to get some numbers this weekend, both on WinUAE and on the real hardware

[redblade]

Used to run A/Nes / DarkNES on my A1200 Viper MKII 030@28MHZ with 8Mb Fast, They both ran P.O.W, Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid Snake and SMB ok. Using the emulators on standard A1200 was sluggish but it was 14mhz with 2MB Ram, so I wasn't expecting too much.

I didn't have much luck running MAME 68030 version as I wanted to see what the emulation would be like or how it dealt with 68k based games. I'm interested to hear peoples experience with MAME games.

I also remember running PCTask to Run some MS-DOS Cellular software so it was ok although I never got round to building the Parallel port Programmer maybe now with sites like winworldpc.com I will try the CAD applications.

[Pollock]

with an 030 @50mhz, you aren't gonna be able to emulate much. That is, you will be able to emulate anything really, just not at the speed you want.

ZXAM runs nearly full grunt, depends on the game, but not always playable.

C64 emulation, wont run full belt, will run roughly 60%-75% speed.

Most everything else worth emulating will run like a dogs breakfast, as will MAME. To run good emulation, you need at least an 040, preferably an 060, or Vampire. With an 060 and V1200 i run emulation for the following, ZX Spectrum, C64, Amstrad CPC, Oric, Dragon 32, BBC, Master System, Megadrive, NES, and they all run fine with everything turned up. not much help to you i know, sorry.

TLDR : Get an 060 and upwards, if you wanna emulate everything bang on.

[Falcon_11]

Originally Posted by guybrush

That did the trick; thanks Not sure why System7 set itself in greyscale instead of color by default but it was easy enough to change it in the preferences.

Your welcome, System7 is with shapeshifter emulátor always in greyscale by default, maybe for sure only.