bloodline wrote:
No, the Hardware was well documented, though obviously many of the bugs in the Amiga chipset were not well documented... The "feeling" problem is 99% psychological, based on a perceived difference between doing something "in Software" and doing it "in Hardware", the fact that Emulations use modern display and audio devices and thus lack the inherent flaws in the older devices... and the lack of "ritual" required to get the Emulation running.
That is certainly one of my big problems with it. The last time I checked, E-UAE was not really on par with WinUAE, so you also have to have a Windows license to run WinUAE.
To get me to do a real switch to Emulation and have it feel like a real Amiga what would be needed is:
*Hide the PC POST. This can be done on many motherboards. My MSI board official supports this functionality.
*Have real 9 pin joysticks. Catweasal already supports this, but I believe it is only under Windows. It does also give the ability to read real Amiga floppies while it is at it.
*Get Windows out of the equation. I don't want to have both Amiga Inc. AND MS getting in my way when I want to play with my toys. Things like, I don't want to have to "Activate" my Amiga with MS.
*Boot directly into UAE. Easy, no problem.
*A clean way to select configurations. This is certainly doable, but it is just not there right now. Personally if all the other pieces came together, I would consider making myself an external button/LCD screen that would let me toggle between configurations/boot options so that I never had to see the PC side. I wouldn't think that it would be unrealistic to write an app that runs in Workbench that will manage the configuration files.
There is nothing technical that prevents an x86/emulation system from being indistinguishable from a 'real Amiga' (one might even say from BEING a 'real Amiga'). It's just that no one has done it, and I don't see anyone indicating that they are moving in that direction.
