4 ms·

We had PC emulators on the 68000 based Atari ST in the 80s. No extra hardware needed, but very slow! And I'm sure that emulators was a thing from the very first

We had PC emulators on the 68000 based Atari ST in the 80s. No extra hardware needed, but very slow! And I'm sure that emulators was a thing from the very first computers.

pjmlp 2y ago
Amigas as well, that is how some of my friends would do their assignments on high school.
wkat4242 2y ago
Yeah and one of the reasons was that every byte had to be reversed due to the endianness. So it was never going to be anything but slow. There were pc addon boards for this reason for both Amiga and Atari but they were expensive as they were basically a whole pc on a board.
- rob74 2y ago
  I had one of these in my Amiga 500: https://www.edsa.uk/blog/the-kcs-power-pc-board https://www.edsa.uk/blog/the-kcs-power-pc-board (this was before the PowerPC CPUs appeared on the market, so the name wasn't as confusing as it sounds today). In addition to being a PC board, it also doubled as a memory expansion and RTC when you were using the host Amiga system.
- bobmcnamara 2y ago
  Mine had an 8086 too!
alxlaz 2y ago
Some systems also had expansion cards with an x86 processor on them. A more recent example would be Sun's SunPC and SunPCI cards -- you plugged these in a SBus or PCI slot, and ran x86 code on a real x86 processor. IIRC that's actually what the AT&T Unix PC did, too, but I'm not sure (I never owned one).
- sanxiyn 2y ago
  See "DOS-73 Technical Reference" on the linked page for details. Yes, DOS-73 expansion cards had 8086 CPUs.
- mschaef 2y ago
  Sun also briefly made a 386 based workstation. It didn't do well, but it could run DOS via V86 in a window on an otherwise Sun desktop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i
jasomill 2y ago
The ST was at least a cost-effective way to emulate a PC very slowly. Not so much for SoftPC for VMS, which cost as much as an entry-level ST for the software alone: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/catalog/Digital_US_Software_Price_List_19950403.pdf#page=161 http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/catalog/Digital_U... But hey, MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 would have at least both fit comfortably on a single TK50 cartridge or 9-track open-reel tape, so at least you weren't stuck in front of the console swapping floppies waiting for the products to install.

We had PC emulators on the 68000 based Atari ST in the 80s. No extra hardware needed, but very slow! And I'm sure that emulators was a thing from the very first computers.

pjmlp 2y ago

Amigas as well, that is how some of my friends would do their assignments on high school.

wkat4242 2y ago

Yeah and one of the reasons was that every byte had to be reversed due to the endianness. So it was never going to be anything but slow. There were pc addon boards for this reason for both Amiga and Atari but they were expensive as they were basically a whole pc on a board.

rob74 2y ago
I had one of these in my Amiga 500: https://www.edsa.uk/blog/the-kcs-power-pc-board https://www.edsa.uk/blog/the-kcs-power-pc-board (this was before the PowerPC CPUs appeared on the market, so the name wasn't as confusing as it sounds today). In addition to being a PC board, it also doubled as a memory expansion and RTC when you were using the host Amiga system.
bobmcnamara 2y ago
Mine had an 8086 too!

alxlaz 2y ago

Some systems also had expansion cards with an x86 processor on them. A more recent example would be Sun's SunPC and SunPCI cards -- you plugged these in a SBus or PCI slot, and ran x86 code on a real x86 processor. IIRC that's actually what the AT&T Unix PC did, too, but I'm not sure (I never owned one).

sanxiyn 2y ago
See "DOS-73 Technical Reference" on the linked page for details. Yes, DOS-73 expansion cards had 8086 CPUs.
mschaef 2y ago
Sun also briefly made a 386 based workstation. It didn't do well, but it could run DOS via V86 in a window on an otherwise Sun desktop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun386i

jasomill 2y ago

The ST was at least a cost-effective way to emulate a PC very slowly. Not so much for SoftPC for VMS, which cost as much as an entry-level ST for the software alone: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/catalog/Digital_US_Software_Price_List_19950403.pdf#page=161 http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/catalog/Digital_U... But hey, MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 would have at least both fit comfortably on a single TK50 cartridge or 9-track open-reel tape, so at least you weren't stuck in front of the console swapping floppies waiting for the products to install.