Simulators/Emulators

Back in the early 70s, I did a computer science degree and was taught that a simulator was a program and an emulator was a microprogram, both to execute the instruction set of another computer, but at a different level. There is another class of simulation I have been considering lately. For machines like my ICT 1301, which I would guess has about ten thousand gates, it would be possible to write a program which does a gate level simulation on a fast machine like my 2GHz Mac. You could even simulate the signals in the machine, hook up a simulated oscilloscope and look at the waveforms. The slow rise times and overshooting might not be possible to show of course, but maybe even this could be added. You could even simulate logic faults for educational purposes and show how they used to be tracked down via the console, the logic diagrams and an oscilloscope. Now that really would be a historical/educational tool. Or am I just dreaming? Could I OCR the old line printer listings of the interconnection lists and use them to build the simulator? Simulating the audio output (which is pulsed on most conditional branch instructions) is another issue I am thinking about. Modern computers can obviously make the sounds, but how do I convert machine needs? Roger.