Executor 2.0/executorv2.0.iso/pc/dos/extra/docs/maillist/text/archive.96/text0914.txt

Text File | 1996-07-25 | 5.4 KB | 113 lines

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From: Clifford T. Matthews <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,demon.ip.support.win95,comp.emulators.mac.executor,comp.emulators.misc,comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine,comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Mac on PC
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Date: 20 Feb 1996 17:06:05 -0700
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Thank you, Stu, for coming to ARDI's defense.  There are a few fine
points that I'd like to make, but your basic argument is correct --
what we are doing is much more ambitious than what Insignia has done.

>>>>> "Stuart" == Stuart Friedman <[e-mail]> writes:
In article <4gcjo3$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Stuart Friedman ) writes:


    Stuart> In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
    Stuart> (Bonzo) writes:
    >>  Executor is beyond a joke. Just read the list of non-supported
    Stuart> features.

    >> [* * * *]

    >> One real whiz bang program. What a joke. Imagine SoftWindows
    >> only being able to run Windows 1.0 programs, and thats about
    >> what you get with executor.
    >>  -- Talk about cheeze whiz!

    Stuart> Imagine the problems that Insignia would have had if,
    Stuart> Microsoft not only would not talk to them, threatened to
    Stuart> sue them,

For the record, Apple has never threatened to sue us.  They were very
litiguous back when we started, so we have been SQUEAKY clean in our
clean-room engineering from day one.

    Stuart> and forced them to write their own
    Stuart> implementation of Windows from scratch.  You will note
    Stuart> that the two programs which have tried this (WINE and W I)
    Stuart> have had serious problems as well.

    Stuart> In many respects trying to run 68040 code on a x86 is the
    Stuart> equivalent of writing a '486 emulator for the '286.  It is
    Stuart> much more difficult emulation.

Comparing an emulator for architecture X on Y to any other two
architectures is generally overbroad.  However, our 68k emulator runs
faster on an Pentium than Apple's does on a PPC601 running at the same
MHz.  The fact that we have to do byte swapping while Apple's PPC 68k
emulator doesn't and that the PPC has more general purpose registerss
than the 68k, while the Pentium has fewer both makes our task more
difficult.  More details can be found in ftp://ftp.ardi.com/pub/SynPaper

    Stuart> Obviously, we would all like the ability to run beta
    Stuart> versions of Copeland on our x86 machines, but the program
    Stuart> is still developing.  I am sure that if Apple granted
    Stuart> Cliff several licenses he could put his development
    Stuart> program into Warp drive, but everything he has do is being
    Stuart> done by clean room only engineering (unlike the big
    Stuart> fellas, there is no dirty team).  With Apple's litigation
    Stuart> history, everything has to then be triple checked legally
    Stuart> before it gets out the door.  Remember that if Apple nails
    Stuart> him on one point he could be in big trouble.

Although I founded ARDI, much of the heavy duty engineering has been
done by Mat Hostetter, and of late I don't even come in second --
Cotton Seed has done more touch coding than I have in the last couple
of years.  In general it's much better to credit ARDI (A Class C
Delaware Corporation) than to credit me.  Over the years we've had
many employees, all of whom have contributed to Executor.  I tend to
get more credit than I deserve because I'm often ARDI's spokesperson
on the net, although much of our recent success is more due to Melissa
Algeo, our Webmistress (and tech. support guru, and documentation
writer -- everyone at ARDI wears multiple hats).

Although I was annoyed by Apple's previous lawsuits of DRI and
Microsoft/HP, we would be putting the same exacting amount of care
into our clean room development even if Apple hadn't sued those other
companies.  The difference between ARDI and some of the other groups
of individuals/small companies that have created Mac emulators in the
past is that we fully plan on selling ours on a large scale.  As such
we can't be dependent on any Apple code, since it's hard to sell a
hundred thousand or more copies of an emulator when the end user has
to scratch up ROMs or ROM images themselves.  This has made
development slower than we'd like, but we're honored that we have
about 3,500 customers even though Executor 2 is in pre-beta (Executor 1
was a very limited release).

    Stuart> Stu

Again, thanks Stu.

--Cliff
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