Technology evolution is part of the ecosystem. Face it, in a few years your watch will have more speed and power than the fastest Amiga ever built and will be able to emulate it perfectly.
I remember the days of boast 'You'll never be able to emulate an Amiga because of the custom chips and hardware, blah, blah, blah' and it was quite humbling to see UAE the first time.
Actually, I had a friend who was a die hard Mac fan and he showed me MacUAE with quite the smug look on his face. I was quite surprised when I first saw it but it was inevitable.
I know many people here don't like emulators but I think they serve some great functions:
-They are a low cost, low maintenance way to relive your memories without the need to purchase new 'used' hardware which can be expensive and space consuming.
-It allows someone who would have never purchased an Amiga when they were new to have the opportunity to experience what it was really like. Granted, the experience isn't 100% accurate as saying sitting down in front of an Amiga 3000 but its still very close.
-Hardware will only continue to dry up and prices will soar so only the die hard collectors will be inclined to invest in keeping their collections functioning.
-Emulators allow people to experiment with the hardware in ways that could never be achieved in real life. Having 32 meg of Chip Memory, much faster drive access, etc...
Toni has done such a fantastic job with WinUAE that he really deserves a great deal of credit. My only wish list addition would be for WinUAE to emulate the MMU of an 030 for AMIX but its a minor detail. However, Toni is amazing...
Cheers!
-P
