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Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:10 am
by martyn_hill
Thanks! I guess that's Daniele, right?

Out of interest, is there any documentation for either the PPC or m68k versions of Q-Em? I couldn't find anything linked on your site...

What is the minimum RAM expansion needed to run either on the PB 190cs or 5300cs?

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 6:34 pm
by M68008
Yes, that's me.

Had to dig some 20+ year old emails to find some info: The latest 68K version required 8MB RAM. It should run on PowerPC under emulation, too, but about 8 times slower than the native version (however, I don't think I have a PowerPC version anymore).
The old Q-emulator 3 for 68K Macs is freely available at http://www.terdina.net/ql/mac/Q-emuLator3.sit
A manual should be inside the .sit archive

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 7:01 pm
by martyn_hill
Thanks Daniele

I did try to uncompress the SIT file on my Windows laptop (whilst still attempting to fix the 190cs and awaiting the 5200cs in the post), but the program I downloaded to read SIT files for Windows kept failing - I'll try another one.

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:15 pm
by martyn_hill
Ahh!

Found another version of StuffIt expander online that actually runs OK (v2010) and was able to decompress the 68k Q-Em SIT file and review the various readable files on my Windows laptop in preparation.

Once I get either the 190cs working again, or receive the 5300cs, I'll have a play.

Grazie, Daniele!

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 10:10 pm
by martyn_hill
Hi again Daniele

Thanks, I have successfully run QEmu on the PowerPC based 5300cs - sluggish, but a bit of fun! If you ever did happen to find the native PPC version of QEm, I'd love to try that too.

Meanwhile, the 190cs is completely dead (motherboard corroded in places from battery leakage, I reckon...) - pity, I remember playing with this laptop before it went in to storage many moons ago and would have been nice to see how QEm worked on a native 68k machine. Never mind.

Now, back to my 'other' projects...

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 6:19 am
by M68008
martyn_hill wrote:If you ever did happen to find the native PPC version of QEm, I'd love to try that too..
Hi Martyn,

I managed to update my old copy of the Basilisk II Mac emulator and with that access an image of my old Mac hard disk. I've found a version 2.2.1 of Q-emulator which should be the last that was available for PowerPC. I've tried to modify it to make it freeware, but I have no PPC to try it, so no warranties. If you want to give it a try, I uploaded the executable here: http://www.terdina.net/ql/mac/QemuLatorPPC.sit

Expand it and put it in the same folder as the 68K version, so it can find the ROMs.

Thanks,
Daniele

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 2:34 pm
by martyn_hill
Thank you Daniele!

I'll try it out this afternoon!

Re: QEmulator support for old MAC Powerbooks...

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 10:29 pm
by martyn_hill
Hi again Daniele

So, just to close the loop on this little excursion in to retro-QL-emulation ( :) ), I can confirm that the PPC version of Q-Em (v2.2.1) that you kindly dug-up for us runs nicely on the PowerBook 5300cs (100MHz 603e PPC) - and FAR quicker than v3.0.4, 68k version (as you said it would be.)

Whilst I think of some practical purpose for this latest QL platform in my collection, I thought to share some primitive speed comparisons for a simple SuperBasic 32k integer loop, printing each integer (at 0,0, so no scrolling):

BBQL : 573 sec.

Q-Em v3.0.4 (68k) @ 'Full Speed' : 2,034 sec !!!

Q-Em v2.2.1 (PPC) @ 'QL Speed' : 376 sec
Q-Em v2.2.1 (PPC) @ 'Full Speed' : 225 sec (2.5x faster than BBQL and 9x faster than the 68k Q-Em version)
Q-Em v2.2.1 (PPC) @ 'Gold Card Speed' : 223 sec.

(Minerva v1.97 in 640kB in each case, with Q-Em running with 50Hz interrupts and 'non-proportional' display throughout the tests.)

This PowerBook might prove a useful tool for my 10yr old son to develop some simple programming ideas in SuperBasic without the usual distractions available to him on his Windows laptop... Or am I kidding myself :)

Thank you!