Best AND fastest(!) Amiga to emulate a QL?

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Mark Swift
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Re: Best AND fastest(!) Amiga to emulate a QL?

Post by Mark Swift »

I hope this is not too far off topic...

The thing that originally killed my enthusiasm in developing QDOS Classic any further, was that it was developed to run on hardware that eventually became obsolete. And if you had a laptop, I couldn't see a reason why you would run it over QPC2 or Q-emulator.

The thing that rekindled my enthusiasm was seeing the Amiga hardware being emulated on multiple non-PC platforms.
I saw a way of running a QDOS system on any system that could emulate an Amiga. PCs and Macs yes, but also The Wii, Google TV, mobile phones, etc...

The thing that really brought this home to me was the ability to code on long plane journeys when going abroad for a holiday. There is no room for a laptop on that small tray table attached to the seat in-front. Little room for a tablet. But there's plenty of room for a mobile phone and foldable bluetooth keyboard.

...And because Amiga QDOS emulation runs natively, my phone is (an ARM emulating a 68000) not ( an ARM emulating (an x86 emulating a 68000)). So it runs fast.

There is little reason to run WinUAE on a PC in order to run an Amiga emulator running QDOS (although I still do).
However there are plenty of non-PC platforms where running an Amiga emulator is a great way to run QDOS.

In terms of the original question about what is the fastest Amiga, I'm not sure...
But an original Amiga comes with a lot of 1980s baggage including bulkiness and square pixels.
...Which is why my Amiga running QDOS is in my loft and my phone running QDOS is in my pocket.


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bwinkel67
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Re: Best AND fastest(!) Amiga to emulate a QL?

Post by bwinkel67 »

Mark Swift wrote: Sat Feb 01, 2025 2:07 pm In terms of the original question about what is the fastest Amiga, I'm not sure...
But an original Amiga comes with a lot of 1980s baggage including bulkiness and square pixels.
Yeah, that was a problem when running it on my A600 where the video image didn't take the full screen and in one mode wasn't 100% accurate. With emulators, one expects it to run within the OS and utilize some of its features, but then again, one also expects it to run slower than a stock QL. What you created, I think, was an OS replacement where the thing actually ran twice as fast on the slowest Amiga because it ran natively, but you lose the Amiga's Workbench. And to be clear, I think QDOS Classic was such a cool project. I remember when I first reviewed it, and not understanding it fully, I was puzzled that it ran faster than my QL on the Amiga 600.


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