From: mjbrown@lonestar.utsa.edu (Marc J. Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.games.video
Subject: ANOTHER emulator for the Amiga
Date: 9 Apr 92 05:39:31 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio

First there was the IBM software emulator.  Then the MAC software emulator.
Then one for Gameboy, C64, AtariST (so I've heard), and I've even heard
about one for the Lynx!  (Well, the Lynx is basically a portable Amiga
with scaling :).  Now, believe it or not, we have:  the AmigaDrive!!
MegaDrive (Genesis) emulator for the Amiga.

I got a whole 280 lines of text on this subject, but I thought I'd trim
the unnecessary details away and give an overall.  The AmigaDrive emulates
the Genesis/MegaDrive via software (no hardware), put simply.  Since the
Genesis has 6 voices, the software coders had to code the emulator to
split up two of the Amiga's 4 voices (but fortunately, the Genesis usually
uses synth sound, so the CPU isn't drowned that badly).  Aside from that,
the Amiga's set up to emulate the Genesis nicely... the resolution of the
Genesis matches the Amiga's lo-res display, and 64-colors on-screen is
pretty much standard for the Amiga.  How do you get the games then?  Hmm...
they mentioned a ROM-reader of sorts that you could either buy or build
yourself (they said they'd make the diagrams available freely).  $20, I
think.  After that, I think it was an option to either play the cart
directly or to save the roms onto disk/harddrive and play the games that
way.
Now it gets interesting :).  They're also doing a MegaCD emulator.  What's
the deal!?  It's not much different... except that they DO RECOMMEND HIGHLY
that you have an upper-Amiga, equipped with 25 Mhz and a math co-processor
(a-la A3000, heheh!)... remember, we're talking about 7.14 Mhz PLUS 12.5
Mhz PLUS scaling AND rotation!  The Amiga, like the IBM, has no hardware
specifically designed for scaling/rotation, but the Amiga does have
extra bits of hardware which apparently make the task much easier.  This
is not to say that you can't run MegaCD games on your A500, but it will
be SLOOOOOW... no, BEYOND SLOOOOW! :)
Oh yeah!  They also say they know how to check whether the MegaCD game
is Japanese, American, whatever, so the "locking out" problem won't be
a problem.
Interesting bit of info on that:  They say they're making it to where ANY
CD-player will be suitable for playing the MegaCD games, but that some
particular Philips design and another one from Goldstar (?) would work
best (and also the A570 CD-ROM drive).
Bare-bones hardware requirements?  An Amiga (an A1000 will have a cruddy
display because they use half-brite mode), and 1.5 megs (nothing you don't
already have :).

Release date is (so they say) May 1st (this year).
They're also planning to turn it into hardware so that slowdown (esp. for
MegaCD games) is not a concern, but that's a bit in the future.

And... they also want to make a hardware-based SNES emulator (software-based?
Come ON! :).  That shouldn't be too long from now either.  Comments?
Let's avoid flames this time; it's just FYI.

-- 
| "Happy, happy - Joy joy!"  "I always use your steenky old leetter!"       ///|
| "Optimism begets disappointment."  "MODs are 100% Amiga!!  So there."    /// |
| "Which do you want?  Fast graphics & sound... or fast spreadsheets?" \\\///  |
| -Maruku Buranu   (Marc Brown)   mjbrown@lonestar.utsa.edu             \XX/   |
Newsgroups: rec.games.video