Executor Betas
ARDI
DOS | Win 3.1/NT/95 | Linux | OS/2 | NeXT
[This review was originally printed in Reign of Toads #4 (Summer 1995). Naturally, much of the information is outdated by now, but with that in mind I think this early evaluation--along with a 1.99p6 Addendum I wrote, and the current review of Executor 2--will yield a more satisfying discussion of this interesting emulator... At least I hope so. --Ed.]
Executor/DOS 1.2-1.99k
Cross-platform compatibility remains sort of a sticking point for the young world of computer operating systems --something I
personally encounter almost every time I want to bring my DOS
files over to some Mac-based service bureau. The usual reaction
is a glassy-eyed stare, sometimes culminating in a low "duuuuuhhh..."
or perhaps a thin trickle of drool blotting up some Machead's
nice paisley shirt. (God forbid I ask a tricky question like,
"What fonts are resident on your output device?") This
is mainly due to the built-in ignorance factor created by interface
allegience (and, if I may dis the Mac crowd again, the unfortunate
tendency for an idiot-proof interface to create idiot-like users).
Anyhow, since no one else knew anything, I've had to become adept
at porting data from PC to Mac to Amiga and back again, but it's
never easy, and often is the time I envision some swell way to
end my travails. Enter Executor, a solid Macintosh file transfer
utility for DOS, Linux, and NeXTstep platforms that reliably reads
and writes high-density Mac floppies... not to mention hard drives
and CD-ROMs. And--oh yeah--it's a Mac emulator, too. Sorta.
The folks at ARDI make no bones about the experimental nature
of their software. Disclaimers abound in their packaging and documentation.
They recommend purchasing Executor only if: "You want your
PC to be able to read and write Macintosh formatted 1.4Mb floppies
or You want to explore the 'bleeding' edge of Macintosh Emulation..."
The emulation features of Executor are described as "more
of a novelty than a replacement for a Macintosh"--which is
right on the money. Some Mac stuff runs and much doesn't. Unlike,
say, the various Amiga Mac emulators (AMax, Emplant, Shapeshifter)
which require actual Mac ROMs and actual Mac system disks--and
have the advantage of the Amiga's Motorola processor--Executor's
emulation is entirely software-based and requires no additional
hardware or software to function. Unfortunately, since they are
winging the emulation from scratch, plenty of weird bugs and sudden
system crashes occur.
The good features, however, outweigh the problems: You can,
in fact, read and write Mac HD floppies. You can partition
off part of your plain old PC hard drive and store Mac files as
if they were on a Mac hard drive. You can run some
software... Compact Pro, Stuff-It (especially useful for dearchiving
files pulled off the Internet or archiving large PC files for
your Mac friends)... some users have even had luck with PageMaker
and Microsoft Word. But it's a crap shoot, and you should be aware
of it. There is also no AppleTalk, no sound, no serial or printer
port access, and no System 7 support. While Executor can read
and write floppies, it can't format them, nor can it handle the
old 800k Mac disks. On the positive side, if you purchase ARDI's
black-and-white 1.2 release, you are eligible to get the full-color
2.0 release at a discount when it is finally released. And you
can pick up experimental releases (as we go to press, they are
up to verison 1.99k) from their ftp site.
The documentation is a bit on the technical side, with many areas
left vague or unexplained; and the file manipulation utility,
HFS_Xfer (oboy, how un-Mac-like), is cranky to say the
least; so if you're a bit of a computerphobe or otherwise uninclined
to wrestle with a less-than-intuitive emulator, you might want
to rethink your decision to purchase Executor. But it works...
which is the crux of it. And the things that do work, work
well. I personally use it quite a bit to compress huge PC files
in CompactPro format and segment them across several Mac floppies--something
that's insanely useful to me because I don't have a Syquest drive
and nobody else has what I have--a Bernoulli drive... but, on
the recreational tip, Spiro's fave program BlissPaint (see review)
functions strangely when it functions at all... but I'm basically
pleased to have Executor on my system and eagerly await a more
stable release.
Demo versions of Executor (limited to 10 minutes of use per session)
for all platforms are available from the ARDI website... If you're a cross-platform traveller like myself, Executor is quite useful, even given its limitations, and it certainly is "novel" (and even efficient)
to run a few Mac apps on the old clone. --K.S.
[Since the text above was written, ARDI has been hard at work improving their baby (which task, by the way, they have been at for about a decade--yikes).]
Executor 1.99p6
The major improvement here is an actual desktop: a Finder clone called the Browser. Yes, now you may click and drag to your heart's content--opening folders, viewing icons in large and small sizes, changing the desktop wallpaper, etcetera. It's a nice change from HFS_Xfer, though still a bit wonky (long icon filenames in a window collide with their next door neighbors, resized windows revert to standardized dimensions upon closing). Instead of a drop-down hotlist, there is a band across the top which can be switched to display storage devices, favored applications, etc. An extree-nice functionality is the Get Info box which, unlike the "real" Get Info, allows you to change the attributes in a file's resource fork--very handy for convincing many cantankerous Mac programs that a PC .tif file really is a TIFF file (hint: Creator MACB, File Type TIFF--case sensitive). It's no genius-level interface (I doubt they have time for that right now), but it quite suffices.
Other Stuff:
- Though I haven't been doing too much beta-testing of actual, serious, high-octane Mac applications, I can tell you that with 1.99p6, it is true: you can run Adobe Photoshop 3.0--sort of. Not that it screams or anything on my 486DX66, but it sodding well runs, which is astonishing enough. I mean, you're probably not going to be creating multi-layered 15MB files for 4-color output, but you can successfully load up a file, run a filter or two, and save the little feller. What do you people want?
- I'm not sure what version of Executor began to support this, but you can now actually format Mac floppies. That is, as long as they aren't PC-formatted floppies--meaning the disk should be either blank and unformatted or a Mac-formatted disk to begin with.
- With each successive version (excepting a couple of "Bleeding Edge" updates clearly denoted as experimental) the general reduction in number of fatal crashes has been impressive. You still can't run a lot of Mac apps, though.
- Have I mentioned the coolness of communicating with an external Mac storage device via Executor? No, I have not. This was true of earlier versions, but now that I actually have an ASPI-compatible SCSI controller in my rig I can testify, brother: you can read Mac CD-ROMs with your PC/SCSI CD-ROM drive and it is a good thing. I nabbed some nice background textures from a Mac CD by opening the PICT files with NIH Image--a taxpayer-funded (NIH = National Institute of Health) FREE paint program that seems to work flawlessly with Executor--and saved them to my C: drive as .TIF files. Sweet.
- Though I have not actually tested this, you can now print directly to a PostScript printer on a parallel port from Mac applications (such as Microsoft Word). Nice.
- When Executor 2.0--ARDI's long-anticipated big league debut--is released (sometime Real Soon Now), it will be on a CD-ROM crammed with extras (such as shareware/freeware known to work with Executor) and free to owners of 1.2. (Hint: this would be a good reason to buy it now before the price increases.)
Conclusion:
I'm certainly rooting for these boys (local boys at that) to get 2.0 in shape to stupefy and frighten the world before emulating the MacOS seems like a really silly thing to do. ARDI's quixotic 10 year quest to create a virtual Mac from little more than blood, sweat and tears (and a nifty synthetic CPU) is a fascinating concept--and I really do use Executor quite a bit for little "Gee, I wish I had a Mac right now" tasks--but every now and then I find myself wondering if they are all completely insane. Godspeed, ARDI. --K.S.
last update 10-24-96 03:30:40
Reign of Toads PO Box 40498 Albuquerque NM 87196-0498 USA
info@rtoads.com