Author: Yves Gablin (freeway.rd.francetelecom.fr)
Date: 09-07-2001 10:47
I don't think anyone actually cared to try and go the deepest possible. But it is interesting ;-)
The first time I ever thought about the subject was upon viewing the "ST in Netscape in Linux in VMWare in NT" image on http://www.atari-st.lovely.net/
Unfortunately, this atari emulator seems to be dead (and not downloadable), and not very efficient anyway. So probably this is the deepest you can go with it.
But all hope is not gone. There *is* ONE win32 emulator that can run, and run almost perfect, in Wine for Linux:
The STew Atari emulator can run in Wine without the smallest part of the real Windows! And this emulator is a good one. So, to summarize, you can run (I repeat I actually did it and played ST games):
STew IN Wine IN Linux.
Can you go further? I guess you can. Since STew uses DirectX, I guess Wine relies on OpenGL (remember: I don't have Windows, nor DirectX, and it works). Because OpenGL is independant of the hardware, I guess you could run Linux in a virtual Machine (they usually don't support 3D acceleration, as far as I know), e.g. VMWare in Windows (or Mac?)
In the other side of the emulation string, you surely can run any emulator for Atari, e.g. ZX81.
So what would we achieve? This (not tried but realistic):
ZX81 IN STew IN Wine IN Linux IN VMWare IN Windows.
Impressing, isn't it? You think that's the end of it? What about that:<XYZ-emulator-for-DOS> IN PCDitto IN STew IN Wine IN Linux IN VMWare IN Windows!
The feasability of it depends on two things:
- Is PCDitto able to run under STew? (probably yes)
- Are emulators for DOS clean? (depends... probably not the ST emulators)
Someone would have to try...
Please note however, that STew is OK in Wine with a Rage128(16Mram) and a PII350. But without 3D acceleration, you'd better have a very powerfull processor, a 1.5GHz maybe.
Yves.
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