A Report: "Why I Like Emulators"

From: A.R. Duell <ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Thu Jun 19 20:44:43 1997

>
> Due to massive amounts of caffeine & sleep deprivation, A.R. Duell said:
>
> >I really don't see the interest in emulators if the real hardware still
> >exists. I'd much rather have the real thing, and have all the fun of
> >maintaining it, than have a piece of software (probably without source)
> >running on a PC that I can't get spare chips for. Perhaps it's because I'm
> >a hardware hacker, but emulators seem to lack so much compared to the
> >phyusical machine.
>
> For me:
>
> Speed & functions, pure and simple. Altho I'm designing my CoCo3 benchmark
> to see just how many Mhz-like CoCo my P150+ makes, think about this scenario:

I think we're rather missing each other's points here. There's nothing at
all 'wrong' with using an emulator as an aid to writing software or
whatever to run on a classic computer. I know plenty of people who've used
the PDP11 emulator to do just that. And I used one of the PDP8 emulators
to try things on when I was rebuilding some bits of my 8/e.

But too many people (not on this list, thankfully :-)) seem to regard the
emualtor as a _replacement_ for preserving the hardware. This is what I
commenting on...

>
> This cycle takes me 10-20 minutes(depending on # of changes) on my real CoCo3:

On the ground that I have the world's slowest PC, I suspect my CoCo 3
would in fact be faster than the emulator. Add an 6809 In-circuit emulator
(no, I don't have one yet, but I'm looking...) and I _know_ it would be
faster.

> Also, I plan on getting a CD-RW (that's re-writable!) within the next two
> weeks, and I plan on archiving all my software on CD-R... cain't do that on
> a CoCo! ;^>

Give me one good reason why not? It should be _trivial_ to use a 5380 or
something like it to make a SCSI cartridge for the CoCo. Add an OS-9
device driver and you should be able to burn CDs....

>
> HTH,
> "Merch"

--
-tony
ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
Received on Thu Jun 19 1997 - 20:44:43 BST

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