Just discovered the PearPC project on Sourceforge, then found this quick review via Slashdot: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7085
While the emulator is very much in its infancy, I can't wait to have all three major OS's and every major browser running on my test box ...sweeeet.
At the moment it appears pretty unstable and the processing power of the emulated mac is approx. 1/5 of the host But who cares, it exists now, and can only get better!
This is good... I can't believe how long it took for use to finally get a working PPC emulator. I mean, it's not like the processor architecture is that extremely young, having gone through five generations at the moment.
This is good... I can't believe how long it took for use to finally get a working PPC emulator. I mean, it's not like the processor architecture is that extremely young, having gone through five generations at the moment.
Aaah Liorean, how did I know you'd be the first to respond with some sort of pro-mac "What took you so long?" comment
It is good though, but the idea of paying for 2 OS's is a little bothersome...
Aaah Liorean, how did I know you'd be the first to respond with some sort of pro-mac "What took you so long?" comment
It is good though, but the idea of paying for 2 OS's is a little bothersome...
I would say it's pro-PPC, and not pro-Mac... After all, Amiga, AIX and Linux (to mention the most common ones) also run on the PPC processor family. It was in fact not so much a "That took you so long?" comments as a comment on the problem of getting an inferior processor design (x86) to be able to emulate the much more efficient architecture of the RISC based PPC. And now don't go and claim x86 isn't inferior. It is. For the same clock frequencies, the PPC blows the x86 systems far away, both inefficient Intels and the much more efficient AMDs, because of bad descisions made by Intel back in the olden days. The x86 systems are still ridden with the very problems that Apple moved to the PPC family from the 68k processor family to get rid of. However, that has very little to do with Mac at all.
It's not a CISC vs RISC issue either though, the pre-PPC Motorola 68k chips had the same advantage over their contemporary x86 counterparts. The x86 instruction set is simply inefficient, that's why Intel tried to ditch it with the Itanium but they neglected to build in the old x86 instruction set for transition purposes so AMD got a chance to make sure we're stuck with that instruction set for a long time to come.
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You're right in part about it not being a RISC versus CISC issue. The issue lies not in the instruction set used, but rather in the associated processor structuring. (I.e. 68k used CISC-style adressing, while PPC uses RISC-style addressing as seen in for example the Power, MIPS, UltraSparc, Alpha or Itanium families. Which affects both memory handling and perifernalia handling.)
In fact, the x86 are practically RISC nowadays if you look at their internal workings. They translate CISC instructions to internal microinstructions that are very RISC-like, especially Intel. AMD on the other hand have gained much in their superior FPU and branch prediction, but are closer to the original CISC.
(It can also be noted that the RISC 68k family had a more extensive instruction set than the CISC x86...)
wooo! x86 all the way! ... I do plan on getting myself a Mac to experiment with within a year though, I find them sort of inigmatic. I haven't really ever had much experience with one.
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wooo! x86 all the way! ... I do plan on getting myself a Mac to experiment with within a year though, I find them sort of inigmatic. I haven't really ever had much experience with one.
I find them like a little complex video game, neat little play commands like back in mortal kombat:
When booting up, press down the mouse, all media will eject before startup
Zap the pram, zap the fram, force system manager starts -- all that fun stuff. Besides, it's prettier to look at than a green layout with a blue sky
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OS X Panther on x86!
...sweeeet.
But who cares, it exists now, and can only get better!
