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Re: Competition for ARDI???
First, a service message. vorlon.mit.edu may be unavailable for short
periods of time for the installation of a new 4 GB hard drive.
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The product from Quix is very much like previous emulators like MAE, in
that it is both platform and Apple dependent. By using the PowerPC, Quix
has been able to sidestep the entire processor emulation problem. For 68k
and OS emulation, the product depends on a commercial version of System 7.1.
While this still leaves quite a bit of work to do, I think that it pales
in comparison to the work necessary to make Executor. Also, the Quix
product only runs on IBM PowerPC PReP systems, which are currently
very rare.
It is also interesting to note that Quix has a similar product called
'Daydream' that provides Mac emulation on black NeXTs. It consists of a
small (2" x 3") box which contains Apple ROMs, software, and Apple
System 7.1.
While these systems probably outperform Executor and are much more stable,
they are both on rare platforms that don't have the challenge that the
x86 presents, and are very Apple dependent. For those reasons, I doubt that
Quix will be a competitor in the x86 market.
--Jered
jered@mit.edu
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