Emulators, Inc

(updated June 2, 2010)

Emulators, Inc. (also known as Emulators.com and formerly known as Branch Always Software) was founded in 1989 by Darek Mihocka and Ignac Kolenko. The two had previously collaborated on Xformer, an Atari emulator for the Amiga. The company's early focus was on developing and marketing Xformer and other Amiga products.

• ST Xformer 1.0, an Atari 8-bit emulator for the Amiga, was released in January 1987.
• ST Xformer 2.0, an Atari 800, Apple II, and Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga, was released in July 1988. The Commodore and Apple II emulation was dropped from later releases. The final version of ST Xformer, 2.55, was made freeware in 1989. The source code of the emulator was later made public.
• Gemulator 1.0, an Atari ST emulator for the PC, was released in September 1992. This emulator is still in development.
• PC Xformer, a port of ST Xformer to the PC, was released in June 1994. The final version of this software was released in 2000. It has since been made freeware.

(information about the above titles has been gleaned from archive.org)

Today, Emulators, Inc. is known mostly as a developer of Macintosh emulators for Windows. The company's first release of a Mac emulator for that platform was Gemulator 98 (released in late 1997), which included a classic Macintosh emulation (a 68000 processor) along with its familiar Atari emulation. Unlike current releases of Gemulator, this version required that a ROM card be installed on the host machine.

Gemulator PRO (released in early 1999) emulated up to a 68040 Macintosh in Windows. At that time the emulator (with the required ROM card) retailed online for $149.95. To have an actual ROM BIOS installed on the card cost extra - from $20 for a 128K 68000 ROM from a black and white Macintosh Plus to $150 for a ROM from a color Macintosh IIci.

Gemulator PRO was soon superseded by Gemulator 99, a CD-ROM package that included both Gemulator PRO and SoftMac, a version of Gemulator's Macintosh emulation component that did not require the use of a ROM board. The two emulators would later split into separate retail products. Gemulator, like SoftMac, later dropped the requirement of a ROM board.

In 2000 the Emulators, Inc. stable of emulators grew to include Fusion, a DOS-based Macintosh emulator, which the company purchased from competitor Microcode Solutions.

The company made waves in 2001 by promoting a PowerPC emulator,¹⁾, a product that was not delivered.

SoftMac and Gemulator remained under active development until about 2003, when Emulators, Inc. entered into a period of relative inactivity.

Emulators, Inc. released new beta versions of Gemulator and SoftMac in 2007 and 2008. In 2008 the Gemulator source code (minus its Macintosh emulation component) was released publicly. Mihocka has also contributed to the Bochs emulator.

• http://www.emulators.com/