Emulation or the real thing?

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <aaron_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Tue Oct 20 17:30:46 1998

On Tue, 20 Oct 1998, Tony Duell wrote:

I try not to think of myself as a "kitsch" collector; that is, collecting
machines just because of the neat-o lights and yumy clicking noises. But
that stuff is important. There are Z80 emulators, sure, but half of the
experience of using a Kaypro is un-latching that cool wedge keyboard and
watching that grainy green display. And speaking of displays, what about
the Osborne display? I remember my best friend's dad calling Compuserve
with that little screen! The whole fun of having Atari 8-bits was all the
easy hardware projects in Antic magazine; it was like one of those
"500-in-one" electronics kits, but with a computer! Now that I'm in
adolescence #2, I'm going back and building them all again (only now my
solder joints don't look like arc welds). You can't do that with an
emulator! And there's no emulator for that nifty Cadnetix circuit-design
workstation I got last year, either.

Emulators can be handy for preserving software and learning how to use a
new system (I've been running the PDP-11 emulator simultaneously with a
web browser book-marked to RT-11 help sites), but like Tony said, they
will never replace the joy of discovery and the pride that comes with
fixing and maintaining the original machines.

Just my $.02,

Aaron
Received on Tue Oct 20 1998 - 17:30:46 BST