Mini vMac 3 Forum

Background

I haven't used a Mac with a 68000 processor since 1994, so I wondered if I was only saying that an emulated Mac Plus was faster because I wanted that, or whether it was true. My configuration isn't static, but my emulated system and host are currently...

Emulated System
Mac Plus (Mini vMac for Windows 3.1.3) running Mac OS System 7.5.3 in CrossOver 12.0 with a Motorola 68000 CPU, 4 MB RAM, and two floppy disks (no hard drive)

Host
Mid-2010 Mac Mini with 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 RAM, and a 320 GB internal hard drive, running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leoopard)

The Test
Run Apple Personal Diagnostics 1.1.3 to compare my (emulated) system to a real Macintosh Plus

The Verdict (My emulated system relative to a Macintosh Plus)
Math: Integer 12.15 x faster, Complex Functions 9.58 x faster, Floating Point Without FPU 10.60 x faster and With FPU Not Applicable
Hard Drive: Not Applicable (since my emulated system doesn't have a hard drive)
CPU Speed: Memory 22.96 x faster and Processor 7.55 x faster
Video: 10.22 x faster

That is faster; from a performance perspective, I have A Better Mac Plus! As my configuration changes, benchmarks are moving targets, but I invite others to post results here.

CrossOver is about running Windows software on other platforms, but I may run the same tests 1) using Mini vMac for Mac to see how Windows and Mac versions compare, and 2) using a Windows computer.

Lawrence Surges wrote:

CrossOver is about running Windows software on other platforms, but
I may run the same tests 1) using Mini vMac for Mac to see how
Windows and Mac versions compare, and 2) using a Windows computer.

That sounds like an interesting benchmark 😊 . Be sure to post the results here.

...I may run the same tests 1) using Mini vMac for Mac to see how
Windows and Mac versions compare....

I've run Apple Personal Diagnostics within Mini vMac for Mac, and the numbers are comparable, but I'd say that the Windows version running within CrossOver is actually faster than the OS X version running directly on the Mac. Of course slight changes occur if I'm running more or fewer programs on the host Mac. Results (relative to a real Mac Plus) are:

Math - Integer 12.16 x faster, Complex Functions 9.59 x faster, Floating Point Without FPU 10.60 x faster, Floating Point With FPU N/A
Hard Drive - N/A
CPU Speed - Memory 22.94 x faster, Processor 7.55 x faster
Video - 9.79 x faster

There may be differences between the Windows and Mac versions of the emulator, but it's safe to say that running the WIndows version within CrossOver is a worthy alternative to running the native OS X version of Mini vMac.

Nearly a year later, my mid-2010 Mac Mini has been upgraded to OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) running CrossOver 13.0. Versions of Mini vMac (for Windows), System 7.5.3 and Apple Personal Diagnostics are unchanged.

I usually have many programs running on my Mac, which may slow it, but as I quit some, its performance improves, and benchmark figures generally rise to equal those recorded in December 2012. However, video performance is lower, at 9.79 - coincidentally exactly what was previously achieved last year with a native Mac version of Mini vMac.

After I quit more apps, leaving nothing but cloud services running, I ran the tests again, and the figure rose to 10.11, still slightly lower than last year's Windows result. Mavericks is a newer, but less mature, version of OS X than Snow Leopard, so I wonder if its performance will increase as minor updates are issued.

Has anyone tried running Mini vMac for Windows using CrossOver for Linux?