History
Emulators, Inc. is a fairly old name in the Macintosh emulation field, and is clearly the dominant market force. Founded in 1987 by Microsoft employee Darek Mihocka with Ignac Kolenko - as Branch Always Software - the company began its rise to market dominance by developing Atari, Apple and Commodore emulators in the late 1980s.
Version 1.0 of Emulators Inc.'s staple Gemulator was released in 1992, as an Atari ST emulator for the Amiga. Support for emulating Macintosh computers in Windows was not added until 1997.
The original Gemulator Windows release required that a Macintosh ROM card be plugged into a free ISA slot to function. This annoyed many Fusion and vMac users who had long downloaded ROM dumps from illegal websites to power their emulator. This "problem" was corrected with the release of "Gemulator SoftMac" (later just "SoftMac") in 1999. This has not placated the SoftMac user base - a vast majority of participants in online emulation discussion boards are highly critical of SoftMac's stability and its inability to support sound and networking. Mihocka's defiant attitude towards online critics has solidified opposition to his company and products.
On May 23 2000, Emulators Inc. purchased "Fusion-PC" from their long time rivals at Microcode Solutions. At version 2.31 when purchased, it was modified and re-released in June 2000 as Fusion 3.0. Whereas the demo release of Fusion 2.31 by Microcode Solutions was limited (it was essentially a shareware program), the 3.0 release was not limited in any way. Though longtime users were critical of the move, it did give many hobbyists the chance to use the only emulator that rivals the free Basilisk II in terms of features and stability.
In the summer of 2000, Mihocka stated that his company would no longer be actively developing a version of SoftMac to emulate the PPC Macintosh. Though Mihocka has stated on numerous occasions that he has already achieved this feat (and demoed it at Comdex 2000), he says that such an emulator would be costly, and run slowly on current hardware.
To date (May, 2002) Emulators, Inc. has not released a PPC emulator, but comments by Mihocka have indicated that his company's position may have shifted, as high-end hardware has become more affordable in recent months.
Required Reading
Links
Emulators, Inc. Home
Files
System Specs (SoftMac)
Emulates: 68040
ROM Required: Yes - Almost all ROM images or use a ROM card
Memory: Unlimited (14 megs in demo)
Sound: Possible (not in demo)
MacOS Supported: 7.x - 8.1
Modem Support: Not Yet
Ethernet Support: No
Hard Drive size: Unlimited
Current Version: 8.02
Creator:Darek Mihocka
Price: See http://www.softmac2000.com/ for details.
Runs In: Windows
Screen Shots
