OK, shifting my focus here, from the hardware forum for my posts on this topic..
For those who have not caught my earlier thread, I am going to start develoment on an Amiga emulator. It's a hobby project which means a couple of things:
1. No guarantees whatsoever are likely to be given as to fitness of purpose, etc, etc.
2. It will develop as fast or as slow as it needs to be in order for other things in my life to get proper attention.
3. It will be totally FREE and come with a licence likely very similar to the one with AROS, Mozilla, etc.
The Spec:
It is my intention to emulate every model of Amiga that was officially released in the UK. I intend to do so "cycle exact" and allowing 'naughty' applications to "hit the hardware" (they won't be, of course, but they'll never know - trust me!). I also intend to allow those so inclined to tweak at will with relative speeds, functionality of chips, and so on, such that they can make "Super 1200" "Custom A500" and so on configurations if they wish.. up to and including running the emulator at the highest speed their system allows a high priority thread to run at.
OK, so what WON'T it do? It won't run on Windows 9x (That is 95, 98, 98 SE & ME so we are clear). It probably won't run on NT4 and below either, but I'll see. Why? Mostly because I use and develop for NT5 (2000 & XP) but also because 9x is simply unstable anyway, attempting to develop a complex 'low level' emulator that runs on it seems like a really difficult job and risky proposition for the system. It also will be targetted at x86 chips, obviously. I intend to implement any optimizations for such things as MMX, SSE, 3Dnow! and so on, that I can, so faster, newer processors will be worth having. But it ought, when finished, to run on any machine you were able to get 2000/XP onto. It also WILL NOT BE AN OPERATING SYSTEM REPLACEMENT. You will need a (presumably!) legal copy of an NT5 based OS to run it. I MAY develop a port for 9x when I am satisfied with the NT version, but don't count on it.. and you really would be well advised to either get NT or switch families altogether, e.g. OS X (which is very good, but which I do not currently target).
Right.. so you read all the disclaimers and still think you might be interested? In fact you think you'd like to help perhaps, but don't know how? This bit is for you:
I welcome any constructive comments and criticisms.
I am more than happy to set up a small team, so long as we can contact each other reasonably easily. Within Europe is fine, outside of Europe and I have to wonder about feasibility, but I won't ignore it out of hand (sorry yanks!).
If you feel you want to support financially (well, you MIGHT!!) hold fire, because at present there are no costs associated with it, e.g. hosting, it is purely my hobby. I really do program for fun as well as work.
OK, so are not a coder, you are interested and you now know that you cannot help me with cash (well, you can if you really want, but it is not needed!) so is there anything else you could do to help me? Sure, read on some more...
I am not much of artist. Buttons, loadscreens, that kind of thing I can certainly use help on, though probably not until quite late into the project. Although being there at the start has a lot of merit.
Once off the ground, it will need testing, preferrably on every possible harware/software combination. So people prepared to simply download, install and then attempt to 'break' it can also be very helpful.
Finally, encouragement, if in fact this is something you do want to see happen, should not be underestimated. Especially as regards any feature you feel strongly about, lest it get overlooked.
Well, after that mini-essay I feel as though I have said every that needs to be.. I am however undoubtedly wrong.. so please, let me know! :¬)
John
edit: turned on email notification, since it seems sensible.
