========================================================================= (C) 1993 by Atari Corporation, GEnie, and the Atari Roundtables. May be reprinted only with this notice intact. The Atari Roundtables on GEnie are *official* information services of Atari Corporation. To sign up for GEnie service, call (with modem) 800-638-8369. Upon connection type HHH (RETURN after that). Wait for the U#= prompt.Type XTX99437,GENIE and press [RETURN]. The system will prompt you for your information. ========================================================================== Wednesday Night Real Time Conference August 18, 1993 Host - Brian H. Harvey Guest Speaker - Darek Mihocka BRANCH ALWAYS SOFTWARE <[Host] BRIAN.H> On behalf of the Atari ST Roundtable, I welcome all of you to this BRANCH ALWAYS SOFTWARE Round Table Conference. Tonight I would like to welcome Darek Mihocka to the ATARI ST RTC! Welcome Darek, do you have a few words to begin this evening RTC? Thank you for coming to the BraSoft Gemulator RTC. I'm Darek Mihocka of Branch Always Software and the creator of Gemulator, ST Xformer, and Quick ST. Gemulator 3.0 is an Atari ST emulator that runs on DOS, Windows, and OS/2 based PCs, and emulates virtually 100% of the Atari ST: the 68000 chip, 4096 color graphics, sound, 300-9600 baud modem port, printer port, mouse, keyboard and numeric keypad, real time clock, floppy disk controller, hard disk controller, MFP chip, and TOS. Gemulator can run Calamus SL, Pagestream, Pha$ar, GFA Basic, etc. and most other Atari ST software. Gemulator is an alternative to buying a real Atari computer and it also provides enhancements over a real ST, such as higher disk capacity, a larger memory limit, and much better graphics. So if you're curious about Gemulator, now is the time to ask me. Gemulator 3.0 goes on sale in about 2 weeks and will also be shown and sold at the Glendale show next month. After this CO you can also download file #29642 with more information, or write to us at: Branch Always Software 14150 NE 20th St. #302 Bellevue, WA 98007 to receive a newsletter with Gemulator 3.0 info. But everybody feel free to ask me questions about it now! <[Host] BRIAN.H> First question, Darek, PMC is not the sole distributor for your product anymore? Who should dealers contact? PMC handled most North American distribution of Gemulator for the 11 months it has been on the market so far. But I've just recently picked up additional dealers like Toad Computers, Rising Star, Floppy Wizard, Xanth, and others who will all be carrying Gemulator 3.0. Dealers interested in carrying should contact me directly now. Until the Glendale show (one month from today) most of the dealers I just mentioned will have an introductory price on Gemulator 3.0 for $199 (including TOS 2.06 ROMs). <[Host] BRIAN.H> What are you doing to get other developers to have their products GEMULATOR compatible? Last summer and again this summer I'm doing a product swap with many Atari ST developers. I give them a Gemulator and they give me the latest copies of their software. This has been one way that Gemulator's compatibility has been made very high. About 20 developers, including DMC, Gribnif, Codehead, Fair Dinkum, Dave Beckemeyer and others have participated in this. By Glendale I will have a newer compatibility list of software. The one I uploaded has about 70 programs listed currently, but that is by far not a complete list of compatible ST software. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks Darek! Up next to the podium is Doug Hodson. GO Doug! Is GEMULATOR compat with DOS 6.0 and Double Space? Yes on DOS 6 and yes on Double Space. You can store ST files on a double spaced or "stacked" drive. You can't perform direct sector I/O to a stacked drive, but almost no ST software does this anyway. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Next in line to the mike is T.Jones. Come on down and ask away! How much hard disk space does Gemulator 3.0 require? And how about ICD drivers (your press release only mentions SUPRA and HDX)? Gemulator requires 1.3 meg of hard disk space, plus any hard disk space you use to store your ST files of course. Gemulator can access your C: D: E: and F: hard disk partitions giving you total online storage of up to 128 meg. The press release mentioned the Supra and HDX drives. I just haven't recently tested with the Supra driver, so that's why I didn't include it. Any driver, whether Supra or HDX will work equally fine. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Nice question. Ok, up next is Tim. <[Tim@TWP] P-DIRECT2> I was just wondering... does ANSITerm work on the Gemulator? It does quite a number of 'illegal' things, but it works just fine on the Falcon, amazingly enough. I've never tried ANSITerm so I can't say for sure, but I can verify that Flash, Interlink, Stealth, and the VT52 emulator accessory all do work right up to 9600 baud. It doesn't matter that a program does "illegal" thing. Gemulator emulates the ST hardware, it is not just a TOS emulator. So you can run programs that access hardware directly, or write to screen memory directly etc. Gemulator takes those "hardware peeks and pokes" and converts them to real hardware accesses on your PC. A lot of programs might not run on the Falcon due to hardware differences and differences between the 68000 and 68030. But Gemulator emulates the 68000 chip giving you maximum compatibility. <[Tim@TWP] P-DIRECT2> Thanks. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Next in line to the mike is Ed from Vancouver, CANADA. Come on down and ask away Ed! <[Ed] E.MUI> Does Gemulator require any special partition of it's own or can you use the IBM hd just as if it was an ST hd? Also the max baud rate is 9600? Why can't it go faster? Gemulator _does_ not require its own partition. Since MS-DOS and GEMDOS format disks the same way, you can freely put ST files on any ST floppy or hard disk partition smaller than 32 megabytes. Beyond 32 megabyte partitions, MS-DOS and GEMDOS do use different formats, so Gemulator provides a feature called "virtual partitions" to allow you to use 32 megabytes of any hard disk partition, large or small. Thus the 128 megabytes of possible storage: 4 partitions * 32 meg = 128. As for the baud rate, how much higher would you like to go? 19200 is about the standard max on PCs. <[Ed] E.MUI> Recently I've heard about Geneva, will that work as well on the Gemulator? Yes, Gribnif is one of the developers that provided us with their software. I have the Geneva beta up and running no problem. In the Gemulator newsletter you'll see a screen dump of Geneva. <[Ed] E.MUI> May I get a copy of the newsletter? Sure. After the CO just email me your mailing address. <[Ed] E.MUI> Ok, thanks a lot and I can't wait to see the Gemulator. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks Ed. I liked those questions! Next we have the honour of having Charles Smeton to ask a thought provoking question or two. Please speak Charles! Darek, you just sort of touched on my question. FAX operation requires 19200 baud. This is a hardware thing that can't be changed in the FAX Modem. I've personally tested XMODEM transfers at 9600 baud. 19200 is definitely possible on a PC, and I'll need to test that out with a null modem cable since I don't have a 19200 baud modem. So don't take the fact that I said "300-9600" as meaning it won't do 19200, I just haven't tried it. I'll let you know in a few days when I get a chance to do that. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Go again Charles! The PC BIOS supports 9600 directly, 19200 requires some hardware fiddling... Any V.42bis type of Modem should auto baud up to 19200, even a 2400 with V.42bis.. Hardware fiddling is what Gemulator does. We should talk about a product swap. Sounds good.I have another question... Any chance of a Hybrid between a Gemulator and Spectre ? Dave Small and I had a long discussion about that at the Glendale show last year. Apparently he decided against it and as you may have seen has been posting messages on the Gemulator topic here on GEnie making sure SPectre doesn't even RUN on Gemulator. I don't know why Dave would want to prevent his customers from running Spectre, but I am abiding by his wishes and Gemulator is crippled in the sense that you cannot run Spectre on it. I do allow you to run other Mac emulators like Magic Sac, and Dave hasn't had a cow about that. OK, one last question... How about porting NT to the Atari hardware -- that would even out do Gemulator. <[Host] BRIAN.H> hehe. Comment Darek? I guess. For what purpose though? A PC is cheaper than an ST, so if you need an NT platform, it's cheaper to just use a PC. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks Charles. Me again. This goes along with Charles hybrid question. Are there any other products planned for BAS? What about Amiga emulation? What about your own MAC emulator? If you've been reading the previous newsletters, you will know that I am working on an emulator for the PC to emulate something other than an ST. That's still in the works but not ready for prime time, so that's all I'll say for now. Maybe at next year's Glendale show (probably sooner) I"ll have a working product to demo. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks Darek. Up again is T.Jones. Go! Your press release states that there are 8 ROM sockets on the card. Are these in addition to the sockets used by the included TOS 2.06 ROMs? 8 ROM sockets on each card. TOS 2.06 occupies 2 of those, leaving 6 more sockets free for other ROMs. This can be a 6-chip set of TOS 1.0, TOS 1.2, or TOS 1.4, or 3 2-chip sets. You can also plug in up to 4 Gemulator cards into your PC for a total of 32 ROM sockets. Gemulator will detect them automatically and give you a menu of ROMs that it detected. Then you simply pick from the menu and it boots up using that TOS version. This allows you to VERY easily switch from running TOS 2.06 to some other version for software that doesn't' run on TOS 2.06. Wow! That's really versatility! With the Gemulator currently running on Intel hardware, are you giving any thought to a version which will run on the upcoming PowerPC RISC chip? That all depends on whether PowerPC machines will have similar slots to regular PCs. From what I just read in this month's issue of BYTE, it's looking like the PowerPC will emulate the 486 and so I can envision a PowerPC based PC that has regular PC style slots and offers full 486 compatibility. But that's up to Apple and IBM and Motorola to decide. <[Host] BRIAN.H> anymore T.J.? Also, are you going to do 68030 TOS code emulation? At the moment probably not. There isn't really any 68030 specific software out there, and the 68030 TOS (like TOS 3.06 or TOS 4.02) doesn't really provide anything that you don't get using TOS 2.06 and MultiTOS/Geneva. (actually, if you want 3-D dialog boxes like on the Falcon, just use Geneva on your ST) Thanks for all the good information. I'm excited about the Gemulator and I don't even have a PC but I'm going to go see TOAD tomorrow! Good. Toad does have a beta of Gemulator 3.0 that you may be able to look at. They'll have the real product in about 2 weeks. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks. You even asked questions that other in the line were going to ask! Thus real good questions [grin]. Up next is Doug Hodson again. Go Doug! Does the Gemulator support higher resolutions than a standard ST? Yes. Because the PC's VGA card supports 640x480 color graphics standard, Gemulator lets you take advantage of that. So in addition to 320x200, 640x200, and 640x400, Gemulator lets you do 640x480 in color and monochrome. IF you have a VESA compatible SuperVGA card, you can also do 800x600 mono and color. That's twice the resolution of regular ST monochrome and 7 times the resolution of ST 16 color mode. It makes for really kick butt desktop publishing, and is fully supported by Pagestream and Calamus SL. Most other GEM based software also supports 800x600. Thats all, thanks. <[Host] BRIAN.H> What is your vision of the future of Atari ST(E)/ Falcon? Can it be a positive future? I know I hope it is. You must have hope in it to sell an ATARI emulator Well certainly there are still a lot of developers out there putting out some very nice software. That's why I'm working with developers to make sure their software can be certified as Gemulator compatible. But Gemulator on a PC is an Atari ST clone, so I am competing with Atari in the area of hardware. You can buy an ST, or an STE, or Mega ST, or TT, or a Falcon, or a "gemulated" PC. It's just another hardware platform. Since we are up to almost 600 Gemulator users already, I believe this already exceeds the number of Falcons out there and is catching up closely to the number of TTs. So in the future I would hope that people will treat a PC with Gemulator as just another model of the Atari ST. With such wide availability of PCs and their cheaper and cheaper prices, it's an economically good decision to buy an ST clone. And the more of these there are out there, the larger a market Atari developers will have to sell to. Atari themselves have not done such a great job of expanding the market and is on their way to choking their own market by never having machines ready or available. So, the future for Atari the company may not be so bright (has it ever been) but that's no reason people can't be using Atari software 10 or 20 years from now on a PC. <[Host] BRIAN.H> I would like to know what changes are planned for the future for GEMULATOR? I know you are just releasing version 3.0, however I am really interested in its future. You mention a few thing already but what else? Well, as I add more and more features that emulate more chips and ports of the ST, it raises the compatibility of Gemulator. Right now the big gaps are joystick port support and MIDI port support. You'll probably see those in a future release. I'm also always working on speeding up the emulator and improving its limits. Already it double's the ST's 4 meg RAM limit to 8 (EIGHT), doubles the floppy disk capacity to 1.44 meg, double the screen resolution, but those can all be pushed more. 1024x768 is something I'd like to support in the future, especially if people start writing more and more software for the Falcon's and TT's higher graphics modes. So those are a few things. But a lot of features I add to Gemulator are as a result of existing Gemulator users giving me suggestions or ideas to improve it, so who knows. As an example, people hated the fact that when you ran Gemulator 2.1 you had to always specify the TOS version and the amount of ST RAM you'd like to emulate. So I automated that in the form of an INI file and preset settings. You can now literally turn on your PC and a minute later have the Atari ST desktop (or an program) running on the screen without any typing on your part. So it's like turning on a real ST! <[Host] BRIAN.H> Thanks. Ok, Offy will take his turn at questioning Darek about GEMulator. Go Offy! How do you use things like Spectre GCR, digitizers, and scanner carts? You don't. As I explained Gemulator specifically prevents you from running Sprectre as per the wishes of Dave Small. But other than cartridge ROMs, you can't plug in non-ROM cartridges like digitizers. That could be a possibility for a future version but would require additions to the card. Possibly a higher priced version of Gemulator. Ok. In realistic figures, what PC is required to emulate my Mega STE in 16Mhz/cache mode, cycle for cycle? The emulation works such that for every 3 clock cycles of the 486 you emulate 1 clock cycles of the ST. So to emulate an 8 Mhz ST, you need a 25 Mhz 486 or 486SX. To emulate a 16 Mhz Mega STE you need a 50 Mhz 486. The 3:1 ratio is a good rule of thumb. On the 386, which is a slower chip, it is a 5:1 ratio. So a 40 Mhz 386 is roughly equivalent to a 25 Mhz 486SX, meaning it emulates roughly an 8 Mhz ST. Finally, how are you handling the sound of a normal ST or STE? Do you utilize the Soundblasters, etc to at least provide the true sound of the ST machines? Yes, actually any AdLib compatible card (and the Sound Blaster is a clone of the AdLib) will work. Gemulator emulates the 3 voices of sound of the ST and Mega ST. It does not emulate the stereo sound of the STE, but that's a possibility on the Sound Blaster Pro for a future version. Let me just add that when buying Gemulator, a lot of ST dealers now also sell PCs and will even allow you to trade in an ST for a PC. Those of you who read ST Informer have probably seen the ads from Rising Star about that. Last I heard, they sell a 33 Mhz 486 with Gemulator and a 200 meg drive for about $1500, less if you trade in an ST. So check around, keep the 3:1 and 5:1 formulas in your head and buy yourself a good system. <[Host] BRIAN.H> OK, Offy, anymore? What feedback do you get from ST or STE owners that have switched to PC and purchased a GEMulator to get back to the feel of a real computer? Do they miss the features that you are still working on implementing? MIDI, stereo sound, etc? <[Host] BRIAN.H> good question! Joystick support and MIDI are the big ones. I know last year at the Glendale show there were a lot of musicians interested and asking about MIDI, but at the time there were more urgent issues like improving the hard disk support and graphics. Not many requests for stereo sound yet, but if more really cool stereo sound programs come out then that's a possibility. It's surprising, but a lot of Gemulator users buy it to run some specific program. Perhaps they keep all their records in a specific database, or do all their desktop publishing in Calamus and don't want to start from scratch when they buy a PC. I myself use Gemulator all the time when I'm on the modem because for 6 years I've used FLASH and have yet to find anything half as decent on the PC. I"m doing this RTC right now in FLASH and can't imagine doing it in WinTerm or Procomm or anything like that. That's one of the reasons I added modem support. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Up next is DMJ owner and operator, Damien (Splat!). Go Damien! <[Splat!] DMJ> I just joined the conference, Darek, so if I ask something that's already been covered, please forgive me. What's the GEMulator's current compatibility with GEM programs? Glad you could join us Damien. Not including software that uses MIDI ports or the joystick or is timing dependent (typically copy protection schemes), Gemulator should run 100% of your GEM programs, whether they use "legal" TOS/GEM calls or whether they access hardware directly. Talk to me later about the product swap deal I have for developers like yourself. <[Host] BRIAN.H> anymore Damien? <[Splat!] DMJ> More questions in a bit, but for now, I assume anything that writes directly to the video hardware wouldn't run too well. no, no, that's not what I said. It's perfectly ok for a program to write to video hardware. Gemulator DOES NOT emulate TOS. It just runs the TOS ROMs as straight 68000 code, just like any other program. It traps all accesses to hardware and converts them to PC hardware references. So you can peek and poke to screen memory, to the hard disk controller, sound chip, whatever. Gemulator takes care of all that. <[Splat!] DMJ> After doing some Windows programming myself, I've gained a new appreciation for TOS and I can imagine how much trouble GEMulator must have been to put together. About how much does the card & software cost? First, Gemulator is not a Windows specific program, so you can run it just fine from DOS. The card with emulation software and TOS 2.06 ROMs has a list price of $229 although the street price is $199 at most of the mail order Atari dealers. See file #29642 in the ST library for a list of dealers. <[Splat!] DMJ> Thanks, that's all for now... but if I get a chance I've got a few more, for later. Ask now. The RTC will be over soon! <[Splat!] DMJ> There's more people waiting to ask questions, I don't want to shut them out. <[Host] BRIAN.H> up next is Doug from ... Rising Star. Go Doug. How long before MIDI support? Whenever I get to it. I don't know when the next Gemulator after Gemulator 3.0 will be, and I don't like to set expectations by giving dates. That's Atari's practise, and it's bad. I have released 4 versions of Gemulator in 11 months, so probably not too long into the future. <[Host] BRIAN.H> anymore Doug? Understand, just was thinking of a PC/ST portables. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Have the planned audience for your product been smaller or larger than expected? Also, has BRANCH ALWAYS SOFTWARE been a success in your opinion? That is, Darek did you believe you would be where you are today? (The two questions tie together.) Well, the potential audience is each and every single Atari ST user out there. 600 is obviously not all of them. But about 18 months ago when I first started demoing Gemulator at shows, I figured I'd do well if I sold 100 units. All of the original pricing was based on the cost manufacturing and shipping 100 Gemulator boards. That's why originally I was talking about a $300 or $400 emulator. But as you know, the more hardware you make the cheaper it gets, and when over 200 advance orders for Gemulator came in before it even shipped, I knew that was a good sign! 600 is more than I expected by this point, and with all the new dealers signing on to sell it, I have no doubt it will sell thousands of units over the next few years. That definitely makes me happy! I have no regrets about what I did 18 months ago, which was to sell off the Quick ST product to Codehead. Codehead has made some nice improvements to it and at $229 instead of $24.95, I can't complain about the profit margin on Gemulator either. <[Host] BRIAN.H> Glad to hear it Darek! If it helps ATARI developers, it helps all of us. Last question of the night, Darek, what is the upgrade policy for owners of older versions of GEMULATOR? It's a very inexpensive upgrade. $30 from any earlier version if you upgrade by September 3. By that date we'll already start shipping the product to dealers and be shipping the upgrades. After September 3 the upgrade cost will be $60 and you may have to wait as I"ll be headed for Glendale. So the sooner you upgrade the sooner you get to use 800x600 graphics, sound, modem, and all the other new cool features! <[Host] BRIAN.H> We're drawing to a close for the formal portion of the BRANCH ALWAYS SOFTWARE RTC. Before I put the room into Frenzy Mode, do you have any closing words, Darek? Well, I just want to thank everyone for coming! Email me if you have any questions. Don't be afraid to ask. Thanks. <[Host] BRIAN.H> I wish to thank you Darek for making it here tonight. I also wish to thank all the attendees for their questions and patience. In frenzy mode ...now! End of Formal RTC **************************************************************************** Be sure to stop by on Wednesday, Aug. 25th for our next RTC with Bob Luneski of Oregon Research Associates. Bob will discuss the exciting new disk doubler DATAlite. Setting a new standard for transparent real time disk compression on the Atari, be sure to attend for the chance to take one home as a DOOR PRIZE! For more information, type "ST" and go to CATegory 33, TOPic 16. Your host will be Brian Harvey. See you then.