CompuServe Messages

The 486DX processor emulation itself is software only. However, we have all of the necessary hardware on the EMPLANT board to handle all of the standard low level timers and interrupts found in everyday PC machines. The heart is software. People are always misinformed about the speed at which things can be accomplished with software, often times basing their speculations on previous accomplishments…and where no previous accomplishments have taken place…well, then 'that is impossible' is the common cry. SoftPC for the Macintosh is written in 'C'. It is a 80286/7 emulation that also has to deal with the MAC's multitasking. It is 16.7 times faster than PCTask for the Amiga when ran under EMPLANT's MAC emulation. 16.7 times faster is a significant difference, and SoftPC's code (although decent for 'C') is no match for two people who have spent their entire lives working only in assembly language. The bottom line is that by using single instruction translation, we are achieving twice the speed that SoftPC Pro is… and with our code transcription (converting 80486 code into 680×0 code), we get a tremendous increase (often times we are running faster than 66Mhz 80486 speeds on a 33Mhz 040)..which is causing a big problem with certain applications (like games). This emulation will NOT be well suited for game use because of this.