21 Oct
1998
21 Oct
'98
7:08 a.m.
At 02:58 PM 10/21/98 -0400, Bill Yakowenko wrote:
Prediction: 100 years from now, pick any random business, and
dig into their computer system. You will find that at least
some of their software is "legacy code" running under an emulator
for some long-forgotten machine.
Today's Alpha/MIPS/PPC Windows machines contain an x86 emulation
in ROM, used at boot-time to jump into and init the start-up ROMs of
Wintel-market add-on cards for video, networking, etc. DEC/Compaq
gives away an Intel emulator called FX!32 for Alpha boxes that can
run Windows x86 binaries as-is. PPC Macs have of course shipped
with 680x0 emulators from the start.
- John