Classic Computers vs. Classic Computing

At 11:37 PM 9/13/01 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: I can understand the "hands-on" aspect, but here's another viewpoint. I'm an EE by degree and trade, programmer by hobby. Let me tell you, I thought I understood pretty well how the Sol worked, but in the process of writing an accurate emulator, I really learned how things work to a much greater degree than I had before. For some features I've spent hours analyzing schematics and writing test programs to stimulate certain conditions to see how the Sol really behaves so that I can try and duplicate it in the emulator. In the distant future I hope to write an emulator for the Wang 2200, the machine I learned to program on. I'm sure I'll have some fleeting kicks writing a few small programs for the machine, but what I'm really looking forward to is learning how the machine actually worked at a deep level. Stated another way, when I'm looking at a schematic, there are times when I can understand completely what the circuit does. There are other times when I get the general drift of it and just go on to other parts. However, if you are writing an emulator, you can't just gloss over the details. At some point you need to write a piece of code that says: "under these conditions, do these specific things". So I can't literally take a soldering iron to the emulator, but many of the same skills of reverse engineering and analysis that you certainly enjoy are also required to write an emulator. ----- Jim Battle == frustum(a)pacbell.net