Nitros9 on Intel: (was) [Coco] COCO4 Emulator

James Jones jamesjones01 at mchsi.com
Sat May 6 08:13:23 EDT 2006


James Hrubik wrote:
> Strictly speaking, though, you cannot emulate a machine which does not 
> exist.  CC3s emulate CC2s (we just don't think of it that way) except 
> when running CC3-only software that requires the GIME, and they are 
> successor machines.  Tandy never made a CC4; ergo, you cannot emulate 
> one without actually making one first.

Arguably the proper term in that case is "simulator" rather than 
emulator, but it's the same piece of software, and once the hardware is 
built it magically becomes an emulator. The semantic distinction is 
irrelevant to me, or to anyone who actually sets out to design something 
that one might wish to call a "CoCo 4."

> That is why I made those comments.  Think about this : given a new 
> Taurus, how would you emulate an early Model T Ford?  Would you put a 
> dummy crank on the front, and a dummy fuel tank over the engine, and 
> dummy levers on the dash?  Do you really want to emulate the Model T, or 
> would you rather build a replica?  If you want to emulate the fun of 
> owning and driving a Model T, but have only a Taurus to work with, how 
> do you approach the problem?

Sorry, but I see no point to that attempt at an analogy. We're talking 
about computers (current or possible), and nobody's found a 
counterexample to the Church-Turing Thesis yet.

	James



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