Darek Mihocka: Alive and Typing

Post by **ClockWise** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 2:07 am

Just posted on Emulators.com:

"Coming December 1 2009: Darek is alive and typing! New postings to the Darek's Secrets and NO EXECUTE! blogs."

Ambassador · Post by **Ambassador** » Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:37 pm

Great. Why doesn't he try doing something useful? (Ha-ha.)

Stephen Coates · Post by **Stephen Coates** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:15 am

I always found Darek's Secrets to be quite interesting.

Post by **ClockWise** » Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:16 am

I think you meant to say that you found Darek's dirty secrets very interesting.

Post by **ClockWise** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 7:07 am

Darek is back, baby!

He has written a very helpful guide to upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7:

http://emulators.com/xp_to_win7.htm

and the best part is that he will send you a FREE copy of Windows Vista (needed for the upgrade). Details of that offer are at the end of the post.

Jorpho · Post by **Jorpho** » Thu Dec 03, 2009 6:23 pm

Stephen Coates wrote:I always found Darek's Secrets to be quite interesting.

They could potentially be interesting if they were not so labyrinthine and opinionated.

Why on Earth is there so much endless fuss over doing in-place upgrades these days, anyway? Is it not undeniable that a clean install is always a much better choice?

Post by **ClockWise** » Sat Jan 02, 2010 6:56 am

Darek has finally posted his new "No Execute" column:

http://emulators.com/docs/nx29_bochs24.htm

It's a top ten list of tech stories related to emulation and home computing.

He writes about how "Windows 7 spanks Snow Leopard."

Were Mac users so disappointed with that upgrade?

Anyhow, Darek's list is fairly interesting reading. Actually, Darek's stuff is generally decent enough. A lot of tech writing these days is dreadful. I guess it has to be dreadful in order to sell copies or get pageviews. One has to go through a lot of "fluff" writing to find some interesting "technical" tech writing.

Post by **ClockWise** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 8:07 am

Coming soon, Thirty Tuesdays!

http://emulators.com/30tuesdays.htm

"A look back at 30 years of computers, software, and cool technology from 1980 to the present."

Post by **ClockWise** » Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:32 am

Four updates to Thirty Tuesdays:

http://emulators.com/30tuesdays.htm

Post by **ClockWise** » Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:20 am

Darek's latest Tuesday is all about Macintosh emulators!

"By summer of 2000 when my product was easily running Mac OS 8 and applications such as Photoshop faster than most real Macs, my SoftMac booth at Macworld New York and San Francisco was becoming one of the largest exhibits at the show, with Mac OS and Macintosh applications being demonstrated on Gateway laptops, Dell desktops..."

"Not a new concept, but contrary to even what most Mac users believe, I was not doing anything that hadn't similarly already been done in the 1980's. In fact, the one product that really paved the way for Macintosh emulation for all the rest of us that came later in the 1990's - Gemulator, SoftMac, vMac, Fusion, Basilisk II, SheepShaver, PearPC, Executor, etc. - was developed by well known Atari developer David Small and was called the Magic Sac:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n6 ... on_st.html

Read more:

http://emulators.com/30tuesdays.htm#SPECTRE_GCR

Post by **ClockWise** » Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:56 pm

Now that he's written about himself, Darek seems to have lost interest in his column.

Post by **ClockWise** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:36 pm

More "NO EXECUTE" has hit the web today.

http://emulators.com/docs/nx30_bochs245.htm

Here is some info about the "Unix hiding in Windows 7."

And coming up:

"...in future postings I will explain why I recently purchased not one but three PowerPC based Macintosh computers and will devote an entire posting to the PowerPC processor and the wonderful things it is capable of."

As you all remember, Darek demonstrated a PPC emulator for Windows back in 2001... long before SheepShaver was available for that platform. And Darek's emulation didn't require a ROM image. I hope that his new column includes a download of that version of SoftMac.

Ambassador · Post by **Ambassador** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 8:15 pm

some info about the "Unix hiding in Windows 7."

Wow, he just found out about this? This "Unix Compatibility" addon has existed since XP as an optional download.

Post by **ClockWise** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 3:37 am

A very large "No Execute" is online here:

http://emulators.com/docs/nx31_isca2010.htm

Darek went to France!

Darek contemplates QEMU!

Next week: Darek writes about PowerPC. Will he talk about his own PowerPC emulator? Stay tuned!

Fun Fact: Darek wanted to take over the development of PearPC: http://www.pearpc.net/viewtopic.php?p=47451

But he did not.

kataetheweirdo · Post by **kataetheweirdo** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 8:10 pm

http://emulators.com/docs/nx32_powerpc_g5.htm

The next issue of his No Execute column is here.

Fedora Linux drops PPC support and Darek complains about Sony dropping Linux support from the PS3.

Darek very briefly discusses about his PPC emulator (although that was a proof-of-concept-ish thing, but still...).

He does note his irony of convincing people not buying PowerMacs (due to their costs), but instead buy PCs (at the time he did this(1999), there were no PPC emulators at all).

COMING SOON: Darek discusses how QEMU could improve

Post by **ClockWise** » Sat Jul 17, 2010 6:37 am

Was hoping that Darek might deign to make more than a passing reference to SheepShaver in this column, but oh well. Maybe next time.

It is nice, I suppose, that Darek is interested in emulator development again. Playing with a new version of SoftMac would be interesting.

kataetheweirdo · Post by **kataetheweirdo** » Mon Jul 26, 2010 8:37 pm

http://emulators.com/docs/nx33_qemu_0125.htm
The QEMU saga continues.

Darek benchmarks the heck out of QEMU, but only does the x86 tests in order to compare it with VirtualPC and Bochs. He thinks the virtualization of x86 machines is utter crap in QEMU compared to Bochs.

Ambassador · Post by **Ambassador** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 1:43 am

Darek benchmarks the heck out of QEMU, but only does the x86 tests in order to compare it with VirtualPC and Bochs. He thinks the virtualization of x86 machines is utter crap in QEMU compared to Bochs.

That's just plain stupid. QEMU and Bochs are two seperate animals. Bochs is a full emulator whilst QEMU is a visualizer. QEMU as a result is much faster, while Bochs more accurately reproduces hardware.