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by TMWNN·6y ago·view on hn ↗
>I was an early adopter of PPC and OSX, I’m not gonna sit there trying to get work done via the old-cpu emulation again.

The lowest spec of the very first PowerPC Macs (the 6100) was faster than any 68K Mac, including emulated software.

The first Intel Mac Mini was faster than the G5 Mac Pro.

EDIT: Sorry, I misremembered; 68K emulation did impose a performance penalty versus contemporary 68K Macs. PowerPC-native performance was definitely faster than any 68K Mac, and developers were very good about releasing fat binaries.

1 comments
I’m glad you did the edit. I was about to tell you a story about comparing my Mac LCII with an upgraded 68030-40 and my PPC 6100/60 running emulated software.
Yeah- you were generally standing still at best. The nice thing though is that as your apps (and OS) updated, you were continually getting 'free' speed boosts.
I went backwards theoretically. The 6100/60 emulated a 68K at about the speed of 68030-25. But by the time I upgraded in early 1995, the software I cared about was native.

I had been using SoftPC to run compilers for school. I bought the DOS Compatibility Card for my 6100 and that was a dream machine.

I have a Performa 6115/CD sitting under a desk- I should fire it up and see if it still works. Was my main machine for a long while.