ST emulators on Milan

[PeterS]

I asked this many years ago on the Mint list.

Do any of the ST emulators run on the Milan ?

I know this might not make sense but most ST games will not run on the Milan and it would be rather cool to have ST games running in an emulator.

[mikro]

Well, obviously Hatari will :-) But awfully slow. I have been thinking for years to accept the challenge to use m68k native features and emulate "only" the rest but it has many quirks which may make the task impossible. Plus there's the question of feasibility of such plan (target audience = users of the real thing ONLY), on the other hand it would open the Pandora box for porting Amiga, MacOS etc emulators.

[ctirad]

The Aranym users would definitely profit from that too.

[christos]

The Aranym users would definitely profit from that too.

No they really wouldn't. It's not that hard to have the host system launch hatari from within Aranym and use that. Beekey and Beepi have this feature.

[ThorstenOtto]

The Aranym users would definitely profit from that too.

Aranym is mainly intended to run clean programs, and not any demos/games that use lot of hardware tricks, so that does not make much sense. And it only emulates a '040 cpu, so any programs that have problems with that will most likely don't work, anyway.

[PeterS]

So presumably aranym will run clean (GEM) programs in much the same way that the Milan will only run clean (GEM) progs.

Does Hatari run games well ? It might make a suitable way to run games that aren't so clean on the Milan and aranym.

[christos]

So presumably aranym will run clean (GEM) programs in much the same way that the Milan will only run clean (GEM) progs.

Does Hatari run games well ? It might make a suitable way to run games that aren't so clean on the Milan and aranym.

Hatari runs games very well but it needs a 2GHz cpu to emulate an STE. It's not really the best option for a Milan. Funnily enough you will probably need a port of those ST emulators that run on Amiga. Compatibility is terrible but the codebase should be much simpler in order to follow and make use of any common features of Milan (or any clone) and the ST and improve on it.

[Estrayk]

maybe someone can take a look for port this one:
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/nino/stonx.html

[vido]

Hatari runs games very well but it needs a 2GHz cpu to emulate an STE. It's not really the best option for a Milan. Funnily enough you will probably need a port of those ST emulators that run on Amiga. Compatibility is terrible but the codebase should be much simpler in order to follow and make use of any common features of Milan (or any clone) and the ST and improve on it.

An old version of hatari (v0.54 or something like that) runs on the FireBee quite ok regarding the fact it was not optimised at all. With some optimisations it could be possible to be usefull in some cases. Milan has faster graphics and with that fact maybe it would be usable in some cases as well.

[ctirad]

Aranym is mainly intended to run clean programs, and not any demos/games that use lot of hardware tricks, so that does not make much sense.

The MIlan is exactly the same case. That's why the ST emulator to run the ST games and demos is needed.

Unfortunately, the real 68040 and, I'm afraid, 68060 too, is too slow to run any pure software ST CPU+hardware emulator at usable speed. Thus porting any existing emulator does not make much sense. On the other side there is an awesome NeoGeo emulator from Anima, that uses clever MMU code to run original NeoGeo 68000 code directly on the Falcon's 68030 CPU "sanboxed" and all the NeoGeo HW is emulated during exceptions. I believe, that with this approcah the reasonably fast ST emulator would be doable maybe even on the 030.

[PeterS]

Aranym is mainly intended to run clean programs, and not any demos/games that use lot of hardware tricks, so that does not make much sense.

The MIlan is exactly the same case. That's why the ST emulator to run the ST games and demos is needed.

Unfortunately, the real 68040 and, I'm afraid, 68060 too, is too slow to run any pure software ST CPU+hardware emulator at usable speed.

If the CPU emulation was left out and the 68060 left to it's do it's own thing it would be a lot quicker. OK, not every ST specific app would work but a lot would.

[mikro]

The Aranym users would definitely profit from that too.

Aranym is mainly intended to run clean programs, and not any demos/games that use lot of hardware tricks, so that does not make much sense. And it only emulates a '040 cpu, so any programs that have problems with that will most likely don't work, anyway.

I think what Ctirad meant was that if I coded a "native" Hatari for m68k, you could run such Hatari in Aranym and have fun too.

[mikro]

Aranym is mainly intended to run clean programs, and not any demos/games that use lot of hardware tricks, so that does not make much sense.

The MIlan is exactly the same case. That's why the ST emulator to run the ST games and demos is needed.

Unfortunately, the real 68040 and, I'm afraid, 68060 too, is too slow to run any pure software ST CPU+hardware emulator at usable speed.

If the CPU emulation was left out and the 68060 left to it's do it's own thing it would be a lot quicker. OK, not every ST specific app would work but a lot would.

Well, the question is what exactly would you run then? Obviously not ST games/demos so that leaves only CPU-agnostic software (perhaps already targeting fast 030/040/060) and that I can already run on my Falcon so I don't need to code it. ;)

On the other hand, you can approach an Amiga emulator with same idea in mind...

[joska]

Well, the question is what exactly would you run then? Obviously not ST games/demos so that leaves only CPU-agnostic software (perhaps already targeting fast 030/040/060) and that I can already run on my Falcon so I don't need to code it.

You could run a large number of the Falcon/HD-fixed games with such an emulator. And also software that writes directly to screen, like DEGAS and ProText.

[PeterS]

Is there any benefit in addressing the 68000 v 68060 differences outside the emulator ?

So the emulator creates the ST specific hardware and the CPU differences are fixed elsewhere.

[mikro]

Well, the question is what exactly would you run then? Obviously not ST games/demos so that leaves only CPU-agnostic software (perhaps already targeting fast 030/040/060) and that I can already run on my Falcon so I don't need to code it. ;)

You could run a large number of the Falcon/HD-fixed games with such an emulator. And also software that writes directly to screen, like DEGAS and ProText.

But I want to target real hardware, frankly I don't really care whether it fixes something for Milan/Hades users, I want something from which benefits the whole community. And running Falcon games on Falcon, well, I can do that right now. :-)

Ironically, having an emulator which runs modern (read: not using the chipset that much) Amiga software is much easier than an emulator running old ST games. :)

[ctirad]

But I want to target real hardware, frankly I don't really care whether it fixes something for Milan/Hades users, I want something from which benefits the whole community.

A GFX equipped TTs, PAK030, Falcons(030/040/060) with NOVA, Eclipse, Radeon or SV and Firebee are not real enough to you?

Ironically, having an emulator which runs modern (read: not using the chipset that much) Amiga software is much easier than an emulator running old ST games.

This is probably true, but the thread topic is emulation of the ST hardware on the higher end Atari/TOS machines.

[mikro]

A GFX equipped TTs, PAK030, Falcons(030/040/060) with NOVA, Eclipse, Radeon or SV and Firebee are not real enough to you?

But this would require far more 'system friendly' approach. My idea was to actually abuse Falcon hardware as much as possible -- that means HBL/Timer-B interrupts, VBL and so on. So this wouldn't have to be emulated. Ditto for overscan -> Videl abuse.

So the 060 CPU power would go to all the tiny details like precise 68000 timing, not emulating IKBD, SDMA or bit planes. And of course, use the PMMU as much as possible.

But to be honest, it's just an idea, leaving out a lot of important details (like how to handle self modifying code, disabling cache might kill all the horsepower available).

[shoggoth]

If one settles for a semi-virtualised 68000 (virtualise Supervisor, emulate stack frame format etc), and non-cycle accuracy, one can probably make a fairly useful emulator even though some stuff will fail on it.

[PeterS]

Being able to run any ST low res game would be a good start

I was never a big gamer but it's ironic that the one machine that can't run ST games is a clone.