I am awed by the code writing ability of those emulator authors but wonder if the energy isn't misdirected now.
Very capable Mac and IBM-compatibles can be had cheaply,and for some years the monitors have been the same. So simply put the "other" computers under or over countertop and use a switchbox for the monitor.You can hardly hope to emulate a Pentium 3 800 mhz on the Amiga but you can buy one for $50 or less ,same with a nice 233-333 iMac.
Indeed a second machine is very cheap, but sometimes emulation is better choise, especially for some obscure machines like the Atari ST. I used to have Atari MegaSTE for some time and it was rubbish. It came with Black&White monitor on which the games didn't work, because they needed color monitor, the hard disk was small (easily solvable), but the transfer of files to it was pain. I am glad that I got rid of it pretty fast. Now with emulation I simply download Atari files to my Amiga hard disk, and run them under Hatari, plus when I need to take screenshot, I simply grab the window/screen contents. I also used to have PC before, but it was mostly sitting idle, wasting electricity, or leeching files off edonkey, while for some games it's better under emulation, sharing the same monitor, hard drive, Joystick, Audio Speakers and desktop, where all Amiga stuff is located.
Pros are that I don't need monitor/Keyboard/Joystick/Audio Speakers switch/es, I simply press Amiga+M and have the Atari or PC, or the others computers experience, if they aren't on Windows in the Workbench. Cons are that the current highend Amigas aren't that fast so you can't expect that fast emulated machines as well, but for most previous to 1991th year retroplatforms the A1 is okay.
