(particularly printers) when emulation is used. Some
may feel joy
when seeing an original IBM 1620 console typewriter work, but it
always struck me as something ready to fly apart at any moment
(particularly when returning the carriage).
That is part of the fun. Picking up all the little bits and figuring out
how to get them back together ;-)
On the other hand, an emulator can allow you to
emulate an exotic
peripheral that you might not even be able to find. It's a knife
that cuts both ways.
That depends on whether the priperhal has a sensible mapping to a normal
PC peripheral. For something like a printer, or a graphics display (even
a vecotr display), it does. But an interface to a real-world measuring
instrument probably doesn't. For example I have an interface on one of
my calculators that reads in 9 decades of BCD digits + exponet, sign, etc
infromation. Suppose I link that to a frequency counter. I doubt there's
any common PC peripheral that can measure the frequenct of a 10MHz signal
and gie 8 or 9 digits.
The other thing I make a lot of use of are TTL-level parallel interfaces.
Not printer prots, but things more akin to 'user ports'. Again there's
no common, unviersal, PC equivalent.
Again, pick your "PeeCee" carefully and you
can easily wind up with
something that not only is more reliable, but much quieter and less
'As reliable', maybe, but I doubt it could be 'more relaile' than many of
my classics
-tony