On 16/03/2018 15:49, silverdr@wfmh.org.pl wrote: > It's becoming increasingly philosophical rather than technical I am saying that from the evidence available, emulation is not a narrow technical concept. Your attempts at trying to disprove that are philosphical. > Trying to show you (assuming most probably correctly that narrow boards made by CBM remain still "real thing" to you) that the argument you brought was in fact invalid. It's a commodore 64 because commodore took bits from the original commodore 64, replaced others and said the new one was also a commodore 64. This as far as I am concerned is good enough for me. > Both of which I fail to see in my example. I continue to say that, despite the obvious differences in implementation, both: > > http://www.mos6502.com/images/C64Internal/C64i_large.jpg > http://e4aws.silverdr.com/resources/romrep/250469a.jpg > > are the "real thing", and by extension > > https://ultimate64.com/Ultimate-64 > > as well. Which is like arguing that if Ship of Thesus is allowed to be called the Ship of Thesus even though it has had eveything replaced, then any ship made can also be called the Ship of Thesus. Like it or not, as soon as you are arguing about what the "real thing" is then you are making a philosophical argument. >> I leave it up to a dictionary. > Dictionary doesn't say anything about someone's right to slap a name on an emulation to make it real thing. I would expect something like" from wikipedia emulate definition "the adaptor is factory set to emulate a Hercules graphics board" Hercules is a registered trademark, you couldn't legally sell a Hercules graphics board as it would violate the trademark. You could only sell one that emulated a Hercules graphics board. You expect too much from a dictionary. > So why Ultimate is still emulation for you, while narrow board is not, if not for legal matters like "they had rights to put a name on it"? An Ultimate 64 is not made by commodore & the implementation is not based on any of the original chip layouts. Someone has observed the behaviour of the commodore 64 and written source code such that when it's loaded into the FPGA that the Ultimate 64 pretends to be a commodore 64. There is no lineage in any shape or form. If commodore were still around today and created an ASIC then there would be much less of a case to call it emulation. However there may still be justification for calling it emulation, but again that would be philosophical & we'd likely defer to the marketing department. Similarly to how we defer to Sony for PS1 games on a PS2 emulation being backward compatibility rather than emulation, even though it uses the same technical measures as emulators to achieve it. > You could say for example "because FPGAs are reprogrammable" and can be reprogrammed to "emulate" another computer. But this IMHO doesn't hold water either. FPGA is NOT a computer until it is programmed to be one. From wikipedia "A*computer*is a device that can beinstructed <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming>to carry out arbitrary sequences ofarithmetic <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic>orlogical <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra>operations automatically." The Ultimate 64 is device and when you load a fuse map you are instructing it to carry out arbitary sequences of arithmetic or logical operations automatically. Therefore is IS a computer no matter what fuse map has been loaded, because it has the potential to be instructed. If you load a fuse map that makes it pretend to be a commodore 64, zx spectrum or whatever then it's emulation. Put a fuse map on it that isn't pretending to be something else then it's not emulation. > You could say for another example "because this is not complete and/or 100% accurate". Whether it is emulation or not makes no difference whether it is 100% accurate. However people often mistake "FPGA is not emulation" to mean that it is 100% accurate, which people making the claim are relying on & want the misunderstanding. > There has to be *computer* first, before it can emulate another one. Unprogrammed logic device, no matter how complex, is not a computer and therefore is not capable to emulate another one. The Ultimate 64 qualifies as a computer whether it has a fuse map or not, the same as your PC is a computer even before the microcode has been loaded into the CPU. The CPU in your PC uses the same techniques to emulators as well (x86 opcodes are fetched and translated into RISC instructions and executed), but it's only Transmeta who ever called it emulation. Exceptions to rules do not disprove anything.Received on 2018-03-16 23:00:02
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