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Emulators Beta Releases

 (updated by Darek Mihocka on March 18 2015)

The beta releases provided on this page are current bleeding-edge builds of our products which have not undergone the same level of testing as past formal releases. It is recommended that before running beta releases that you back up any existing emulation files, such as ROM image files, floppy disk and hard disk virtual disk files, and settings files.

The tenth generation of our 680x0 emulation products Gemulator and SoftMac is now under development.  Gemulator version 1.0 was first released at the 1992 Glendale Atari Fair. For the version 10.0 releases, high priority issues are being addressed, including:

• Touch support for Surface Pro tablets.
• Video resolution fixes and support for screen rotation and dynamic resolution updates.
• Support for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
• Support for EmuTOS (the open source Atari TOS ROM clone).
• Faster performance optimized for Intel's latest "Broadwell" CPU micro-architecture.

From the functionality point of video, the 10.0 releases should be as compatible as earlier releases. The same disk images and ROM files supported by previous releases should continue to work.

Gemulator betas require a valid set of Atari ST, Atari Mega ST, Atari STE, Atari Mega STE, Atari TT, or Mac Plus ROMs. SoftMac betas require a valid set of Mac Plus, Mac SE, Mac SE/30, Mac II, Mac IIx, Mac IIcx, Mac IIci, Mac LC, Mac LC II ROMs, Mac Quadra (any), Mac LC (any 3 digit model), Mac Centris (any), or similar Macintosh ROMs. Fusion PC betas will require a 512K or 1M Macintosh ROM image file.

When sending beta feedback in order to avoid our usual spam filter. We welcome as detailed information as possible, including attached screen shots. Please, please, PLEASE, also make sure to include this information in your email:

• The type of processor your PC uses (Intel Pentium, Intel Core / Core 2, Intel Centrino, AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, AMD Turion, unknown).
• If you own a 64-bit capable processor such as Athlon64 or Core 2, your host operating system's operating mode (32-bit or 64-bit).
• The rated clock speed of your PC, and whether you generally run in power saving / battery mode, or high performance mode.
• For future 64-bit releases, your preferred OS: Windows Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux (specify which distribution).
• Do you own an Intel based Macintosh, and if so, do you use Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware Fusion, or none of them?
• What you want to emulate: Atari 800, Atari ST, Atari TT, classic Apple Macintosh (Mac OS 8 and earlier), Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows, Linux
• Would you be interested in running the new Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" on your Windows PC?
• Would you be interested in running classic Apple Macintosh (Mac OS 8 and earlier) on your Intel based Macintosh?

It would also be very much appreciated if anyone is willing to help out with writing new online documentation for Gemulator and SoftMac, developing official test cases and benchmarks, or helping out with the porting effort to Linux and Mac OS X.

Stay tuned for official version 10.0 beta announcement in 2015.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated. You will help change the future of emulation.

And if there are three things in particular that you can provide, it is BENCHMARKS BENCHMARKS BENCHMARKS! Please install other past Atari ST and Macintosh emulators and compare the speeds of Gemulator and SoftMac with these past emulators. Use a stopwatch to time "real world wall clock" timings of such things as how long something takes to boot up or do some complex operation. Use canned benchmarking utilities and send screen shots of the results. Help us pinpoint what is slow and what is fast. Gemulator and SoftMac need to end up being absolutely the fastest Atari ST and Macintosh emulators on the planet.

Why go through all this trouble? The death of the 32-bit Pentium 4 and its replacement with new multi-core 64-bit processors such as the Intel Core 2 and the AMD Athlon64 represents a complete change in the way that microprocessors operate and in the way that software needs to be designed and written. Emulators are a terrific test case to use for learning the new tricks of the multi-core 64-bit world. But also, emulation itself can be used to analyze existing software in order to find bugs and performance bottlenecks thanks to the power of an emulator to trace and record every single operation. Emulation is not a toy for running old video games on. It is a powerful tool. And your help in beta testing Gemulator 9.0 and SoftMac 9.0 is but a small stepping stone.

The design work has already started on the 10th generation of these products, which is a bottom-up redesign to target multi-core 64-bit CPUs such as the Intel Core 2 found in today's PCs and Macs, and the PowerPC in the Playstation 3 and PowerMac G5. The design goal is to have a portable C-based emulation framework built with GCC that can emulate Atari, Macintosh, and PC virtual machines on 64-bit x64 and PowerPC host machines. The design changes being made in the Gemulator 9.0 and SoftMac 9.0 emulators serve as proofs of concept of the many design ideas being mulled about for that new emulation framework. So while these betas may look very similar to our earlier product releases, they're not under the hood. Your beta testing and benchmarking will help to prove or disprove these ideas.

Core parts of the new framework will be open sourced, which will allow others to do research relating to compiler optimizations, CPU architectures, and to improve the performance of not only Macintosh emulators but virtual machines in general such as Java. This in turn will mean that future software (having nothing to do with emulation) will be written better such that it runs faster and crashes less. And that will be a good thing for all computer users, whether Mac, Atari, Windows, or Linux.

Troubleshooting

Some things to keep in mind when running SoftMac and other emulators:

• If you are using Macintosh ROMs that do not boot, set the CPU setting to "Auto" and try again. If they still not boot please contact us and tell us what the ROM checksum is that you are using.
• For keyboards without a Windows menu key, press Ctrl+F11 or click on the Gemulator/SoftMac icon in the task bar to bring up the Gemulator/SoftMac main menu.
• Atari emulation modes may "capture" the Windows mouse point. Press F11 to get the pointer back.
• The Atari ST "blitter" can be enabled and disabed in the GEM desktop with TOS 1.6 and later, but is only visible in 68000 CPU mode.
• In general the 68000 is so fast that it is more efficient to disable the Atari ST blitter anyway.
• 256K Macintosh ROMs are not "32-bit clean" and are limited to seeing only 8 megabytes of RAM.
• 512K and 1M Macintosh ROMs are 32-bit clean and will support up to 1024 megabytes of RAM.
• Due to memory fragmentation caused by specific Windows system DLLs, the 512 and 1024 megabyte settings may not function on your specific PC. This memory fragmentation issue will be addresses in a future release.
• If you are having problems booting from a Mac OS CD-ROM, mount it as the SCSI 1 device, and boot from some other disk image or boot disk. Then run the Mac OS installer. If you need to create more disk space, use the MAKEDSK utility to create a larger Macintosh hard disk image, then install it as the SCSI 2 device.
• Mount boot CD-ROMs as SCSI device 1 through 7, not as SCSI 0.
• Disable the A/Rose system extension. This is for use with Mac co-processor boards which are not emulated.
• Disable the virtual memory option in Mac OS. This is a known bug which will be fixed in a later release.
• Disable the Mac's sound if you have sound related problems and report this to us.
• Install the latest ASPI 4.60 SCSI driver to correctly read Macintosh CD-ROMs on Windows NT and Windows 2000.
• Enable the Apple CD-ROM system extension if you wish to read CD-ROMs within the Mac OS
• Install the latest ATI RAGE PRO video drivers to avoid redraw problems caused by earlier ATI video drivers.
• To do a "clean" install of Gemulator or SoftMac, delete the files GEM2000.INI and SOFTMAC.INI in your Windows directory, and delete any *.PRM and MAC*.DAT files on your C: drive.
• Use the Path setting in ROM BIOS Setup dialog (formerly called First Time Setup) to specify a path where your ROM image files are.

SoftMac 9.0 ("SoftMac 2008"): The SoftMac 9.0 Beta 4 release is bundled with the Gemulator 9.0 Beta download below.

Notes for SoftMac 9.0 Beta 4:

• For use on 32-bit and 64-bit releases of Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows 2008.
• SoftMac 2008 is NOT supported on Windows 95/98, Windows Millennium, or earlier.
• Requires a Pentium M (a.k.a. "Centrino"), Pentium 4, Pentium D, Intel Core Duo, or Intel Core 2 based computer.
• Thanks to a tip from a beta tester, we have confirmed that SoftMac 9.0 Beta 2 does run on CrossOver 6 running on Mac OS X 10.4.10, allowing System 7 and Mac OS 8 to run on top of Mac OS X.
• You can run Auto Configure again to reset your settings and scan for ROMs. Most older SOFTMAC.INI settings files will read correctly, but you are best advised to simply reset your settings.
• Macintosh ROM image files can be named MAC.ROM and placed in either the same folder as your SOFTMAC9.EXE program, or in the directory specified during the Auto Configure process.
• SoftMac 9.0 supports all versions of Mac Plus, SE, Classic, II, LC, Centris, and Quadra ROMs.

To create a custom virtual machine profile, set the Mode selector to an existing profile then click the "+Clone" button to duplicate that virtual machine profile. A plus sign in the name will indicate that you are working on the duplicate. Edit the name of the new configuration in the Properties dialog box to give it a more descriptive name.

SoftMac 9.0 creates 3 default virtual machine profiles: Macintosh Classic (68000), Mac II (68020), and Mac Quadra (68040). Up to 13 more profiles can be created. Click the "-" button to delete a profile.

SoftMac Online Documentation page

Beginner's Guide to running Mac OS 8 on Windows

Gemulator 9.0 ("Gemulator 2008"): The Gemulator 9.0 Beta 4 with SoftMac 9.0 Beta 4 is subject to this End User License Agreement:

The End User License Agreement is a legal agreement between you (the End User) and Emulators.com for the Gemulator product suite. By installing, copying, or using the Gemulator product, you agree to be bound by the full terms of the agreement.

Emulators.com grants the End User the non-transferable right to install and use the Gemulator product on the End User's computer.

Emulators.com expressly reserves to itself all other rights in the Gemulator product including, but not limited to, the right to reproduce and distribute the Gemulator software and hardware and the right to create derivative works based on the Gemulator product suite.

End User shall respect and not remove, obliterate, or cancel from view any copyright, trademark, confidentiality or other proprietary notice on the Gemulator software.

All copies of the Gemulator software in any form provided by Emulators.com or made by End User are the sole property of Emulators.com. End User shall not have any right, title, or interest to any such Gemulator software or copies thereof except as provided in this License.

Emulators.com shall not be liable for any costs, damages, fees, or other liability, nor for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages with respect to any claim by the End User or any third party on account of or arising from this License or use of (or inability to use) any portion of the Gemulator software.

Failure to comply with the terms and conditions of this License terminates all rights granted by Emulators.com to the End User.

If you agree with the above license agreement, click here to download Gemulator 9.0 Beta 4 (with SoftMac 9.0 Beta 4).

Notes for Gemulator 9.0 Beta 4:

• For use on Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Vista Service Pack 1, and the Windows 2008.
• Gemulator 2008 is NOT supported on Windows 95 or earlier. Use Gemulator 2000 for use on legacy Windows platforms.
• You can run Auto Configure again to reset your settings and scan for ROMs. Most existing GEM2000.INI settings files from Gemulator 2000 will read correctly, but you are best advised to simply reset your settings.
• Atari TOS image files should be named TOS.ROM, TOS.IMG, or MAGIC_PC.OS and placed either in the same folder as your GEMUL8R.EXE program, or in the directory specified during Auto Configure process.
• Gemulator 9.0 is now compatible with EmuTOS, the free Atari ST open source TOS alternative. However, only the 192K and 256K images are supported, with the CPU setting in "Auto" or "68000" modes only. The EmuTOS ROM image should be names something like ETOS.IMG or as one of the released filenames such as ETOS256US.IMG.
• Macintosh Plus ROM image files should be named MAC.ROM or MACPLUS.ROM and similarly placed in one of the two folders prior to the Auto Configure process.
• Gemulator 9.0 supports all versions of Atari ST, Atari STE, Atari Mega ST, Atari Mega STE, and Apple Macintosh Plus ROMs.
• Gemulator 9.0 will detect but may not properly run Atari TT, Atari Falcon, or Macintosh ROMs beyond the Macintosh Plus model.

• Gemulator 9.0 uses a redesigned version of the 68040 flags emulation code to eliminate use of the x86 "LAHF" instruction which is known to be slow on certain x86 hardware and emulation architectures. The technique now used is a variation of the lazy flags scheme described here which now allows for easier portability to 64-bit Windows.

• Gemulator 9.0 uses a redesigned guest-to-host memory translation scheme so as not to rely on host page fault exceptions. There technique now used is described here.

To create a custom virtual machine profile, set the Mode selector to an existing profile then click the "+Clone" button to duplicate that virtual machine profile. A plus sign in the name will indicate that you are working on the duplicate. Edit the name of the new configuration in the Properties dialog box to give it a more descriptive name.

Gemulator 9.0 creates 7 default virtual machine profiles: Atari 800 (6502), Atari 800XL (6502), Atari ST (68000), Atari STE (68030), Macintosh Classic (68000), Macintosh II (68020), and Macintosh Quadra (68040). Up to 9 more profiles can be created. Click the "-" button to delete a profile.

Read the Gemulator online documentation

Download Atari ST formatted disk images
(contains 80 meg Atari hard disk and 100 meg Atari ZIP disk images for use with Gemulator 5.0 and higher)

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