Gadgets by Small: Mac Emulation on Atari ST
The Atari ST was known for its somewhat unique ability to emulate a variety of different computers.
The first emulators that appeared were PC emulators that let you run DOS programs and the first of these was pc-ditto. It was rather slow, but it did work. Eventually hardware PC emulators appeared, which were either boards that you installed in the computer or in one case, an external device that was attached to the ACSI port. I wrote more about that PC emulators here:
There was also an Atari 8-bit emulator, called ST XFormer. The first version was rather simple and could really only run BASIC programs and some other simple things at about 20% of the speed, but XFormer II was more powerful, emulating most of an Atari 8-bit at about 40% of the speed. Its author, Derek Mihoka, would go on to create GEMulator, the first Atari ST emulator for the PC. But that is a topic for a different post.
Perhaps more notably was the Atari ST’s ability to emulate the Macintosh. There were several Mac emulators of note, all of which were created by one man: David Small.