Emulation or the real thing?

From: D. Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue Oct 20 17:13:18 1998

> I prefer the original systems... The tactile response from an IBM PC
> keyboard, the design elegance of an Atari 800, the iterative building of a
> screen dump on a HP-85.... this list goes on and on...

Sometimes emulation is nice too. Otherwise you have to live with the design
elegance of the IBM PC and the tactile response from an Atari 800 keyboard.
(Actually the 800 is nice but the 400, XL, and XE machines have lousy key-
boards.)

But seriously, my view is that emulation has its place. I don't have the
space for original hardware, so emulation lets me play with stuff I otherwise
wouldn't be able to use. Sometimes it can improve on the original system by
giving better debugging or snapshot saving or being faster.

But I want to stress that emulation can only be a good *imitation* of the
original hardware, and a lot of the nuances of using the hardware are totally
missing from emulation. Often, emulation is a *bad* imitation of the hardware.
So don't throw hardware away just because it can be emulated!

-- Derek
Received on Tue Oct 20 1998 - 17:13:18 BST