Re: So, what do you think? real IIgs or emulated IIgs?

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2000 21:40:58 +0100, Pim Blokland <appletalk@at.at>
wrote:

>So now there's Bernie, an 
>emulator with 13.9375 MB of RAM instead of 8 MB. So what? Don't be 
>afraid to view GS emulators as the next generation!

Ah, but don't you see the problem here?  If someone writes a program
that requires more than 8 MB of memory, it will only run under Bernie
at present.  No other IIgs emulator that I'm aware of currently
supports more the 8 MB in the emulated IIgs.

This means that I won't be able to run that program as I don't have a
machine that can run Bernie.

There is a difference between the software evolution caused by new
hardware releases and the software evolution that might occur by added
features in an emulator because there was only ever one new piece of
hardware but there are several different emulators.  If each emualtor
ends up doing its own "upgrades" then when you write a new program,
what emulator's features do you take advantage of?  You'll end up
alienating a bunch of people unless you keep to the base standard
which is currently what a real IIgs can do.

This can be circumvented if all the emulator authors get together and
agree to what new features to add and how to implement them.
Hopefully they will also implement them in such a way that real
hardware could be made to work that way just in case someone gets real
ambitious and designs and new machine.

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