From: Ralph Corderoy To: Graeme Barnes - Red Squirrel , Matthew Bloch - riscose , Phil Blundell - rose , Julian Brown - ARMphetamine , Michael Dales - SWARM , Dave Gilbert - arcem , Chris O - Archie , Chris Rutter - sleeve , David Sharp - tARMac Subject: Nirvana for ARM/RISC OS Emulator? Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 12:59:31 +0100 Message-Id: <200104141159.MAA06413@inputplus.demon.co.uk> Hi, Apologies for writing to you all unsolicited. I hope you'll see why towards the end of this email. One Nirvana for an ARM/RISC OS Emulator. + Can work on top of various common Host OS, e.g. Linux, Win98. + Multiple graphics backends, X Windows System, MS DirectX, VNC's Remote Frame Buffer protocol, Linux Frame Buffer. + Multiple sounds backends. + Use ARM chip where present. + Or do dynamic translation to host CPU for some code. + Or emulate ARM. + Emulate different processors, ARM 2, ARM 3, ARM 610, etc. + Emulate different hardware, A305, R140, Risc PC, etc. + Allow SWIs to trap to natively compiled code, or allow RISC OS modules to be replaced by native versions. + Emulator debugger/monitor. Have I missed anything out? :-) An `emulator' like that outlined above would finally free those people still hanging on for new hardware, make a 32-bit RISC OS irrelevant, be a great debugging/learning environment for programming, allow legacy software to still be used, even let a Linux/x86 machine boot straight up into the emulator running on the Frame Buffer -- a pseudo Acorn machine! I see various emulators for ARM or ARM+RISC OS and all of them show a lot of personal time and hard work has gone into them. But I think the above is more effort than any individual is likely to achieve given we all have limited time. If one of the main RISC OS emulators was Open-Sourced (substitute your favourite term here) then others would have a chance to contribute. Wouldn't it be great for someone to gift a new backend or implement floppy access instead of each emulator implementing their own? A view I've opinionated elsewhere: Since Acorn ceased hardware production other smaller companies have licenced RISC OS and designed and manufactured their own ARM-processor machines. These have partially been bought by users wishing to support the RISC OS market but my view is that, despite this, the production of hardware intended to run RISC OS in a desktop machine is unviable and will cease. More main-stream machines, e.g. the x86-based PC and PowerPC-based Apple iMac, offer access to the latest commodity hardware, related drivers, and applications. Users are penalising themselves by avoiding moving to these platforms and the main reason seems to be the joy of RISC OS. An all-encompassing emulator would replace the use of ARM machines for many users and, given the low output of RISC OS Ltd, could even become the de facto version of RISC OS in use. I'd be interested to hear the views of anyone as to whether this is realisable. I don't have hours of spare time to make it happen. But I can see what I think are the possibilities and thought I should make some effort to not just let the opportunity pass. Please CC all recipients to widen the discussion. If you don't wish to be included further just mail the rest of us and we'll drop you off. Thanks for getting this far, Ralph.