19 Jun
1997
19 Jun
'97
4:44 p.m.
Due to massive amounts of caffeine & sleep deprivation, A.R. Duell said:
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...
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:
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(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill