sunPC cards: was: [rescue] Re: Ultra 10

[Greg]

> > Wabi is (was?) a software-only Windows emulator much like Wine, it
> > can't make use of the processor on the SunPC card.
> 
> Not quite.
> 
> WABI let you LOAD your copy of Windows 3.1 onto your sparc.

Yes, for the code it didn't emulate (lots of the extra DLL's and whatnot).
But the common MS-Windows calls are handle directly in the native
instruction set which is why it did a fairly good job on decent SPARC
processors, the non-application CPU-intensive stuff was handled natively. It
was targetted for the Classic and LX but the processors in those machines
just weren't up to it.  But on an Ultra 1 programs like Quicken for Windows
(which I used for several years on Wabi) ran very nicely.

> It could be sped up considerable (IIRC) by the presence of a SunPC card
>  and the appropriate software.

Not any version of Wabi that Sun sold.  I've got 'em all, all the way up to 
Wabi 2.2e.  What Wabi _would_ do with the SunPC card is launch a SunPC
instance when Wabi needed to run a DOS application (a la the MS-DOS icon
in Windows).  But that's as close as those two products ever got.

-greg