Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Steve Nickolas Newsgroups: comp.emulators.apple2 Subject: Re: The MoDapple Thread was Re: An emulator concept... Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2016 10:26:22 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <29100fc9-6ad3-4cd3-9f93-d102f5a4c6ae@googlegroups.com> <57cfea87-f255-4e0a-835d-fe592ad60813@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="732593a72042d04ebfa50a78bfc7e51a"; logging-data="27438"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+WFR87j+wgbsFWvFDHkWYbaxIOn25/YzE=" User-Agent: Alpine 2.02 (BSF 1266 2009-07-14) In-Reply-To: <57cfea87-f255-4e0a-835d-fe592ad60813@googlegroups.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:TSFHuJEBAK9h1pMXbaSQZ1GEoME= X-X-Sender: nicci@frieza.hoshinet.org Xref: csiph.com comp.emulators.apple2:2146 On Mon, 21 Nov 2016, Ernie Soffronoff wrote: > On Saturday, November 19, 2016 at 2:47:41 PM UTC-5, Steve Nickolas wrote: >> >> I tended to get the feeling that maybe people thought I was trying to be a >> bit of an "attention whore", especially since other emulator authors don't >> write this many Usenet posts about their work. > > Ten years ago I think it would have been a little unseemly, but in 2016 > it's better here than inside Facebook, where at least it will be > discoverable for the next person who decides to recreate the wheel... I > hate having to have a Facebook account to keep up with the hobby. It > maybe could be on a blog, or just in release notes, but this sticks > around better, probably. Facebook is a TERRIBLE place for this kind of stuff. A blog may have been a better choice, but you do need to build up an audience for a blog ;) >> But I managed - and kept pushing forward even when I thought I had hit my >> limits - and you *see* the results, and it's not as voodoo as it might >> have seemed at first, at least to me. >> >> Basically, I just felt that both those who would be most interested in the >> project, and those who would be *most able to help*, would be here, and so >> I've posted here - a habit of mine that remains from much younger days. > > This, and 4AM's work, ARE voodoo -- so it's interesting to me to be able > to watch from the sidelines. 4AM's write-ups are great, but the Twitter > discussion is part of the documentation as well and I don't know how > easy that will be able to find down the road... I don't disagree, being that I've been a pretty big part of said discussion. ;) Really, emulation can be handled in one of a few ways. There's the "Black Box" method, where you just poke at a system, see what it does, and then copy it at a high level. This is how I usually have written my emulators. Then you have emulators which emulate a system chip by chip, and the connections between the chips - basically MoDapple taken to its logical extreme. Needless to say, the more precise the emulation, the more grunt power it will take. The very sloppy emulation of apl2em ran great on a 286/12. If you wanted comparable results from the much more accurate ApplePC, you needed a 386/25. Dapple, which was a bit more accurate than ApplePC in some regards, needed a 486/66 for full speed. MoDapple, which is a very brute-force and relatively low-level implementation (it's not down-to-the-chip, but it's a LOT closer), needs a lot more power: my Acer AspireOne, with a 1.6 GHz Atom, can't keep up, while it runs AppleWin just great. -uso.