Emulation or the real thing?

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