So the standalone will basically be an Amiga with non of the expansion slots. What is the benefit of this hardware emulation over much cheaper faster software emulation ?
Just trying to work out the point of the standalone
latency and timing, it's the only point of using an fpga for emulation rather than a program running on a general purpose computer.
The gates in an fpga are dedicated to a particular job, so they can monitor your joystick inputs and run code and display video simultaneously. An emulator on a general purpose computer multiplexes all it's gates, so it will be doing different tasks at different times.
Some LCD TV upscalers have terrible latency too, so you should compare it to an Amiga on a CRT. If you can't tell the difference (and some people cannot) then you don't need to spend the extra money.
There is also the cool factor, but agai
n if you don't feel that then it's not for you.
Some people hate emulators running on a general purpose computer for not being authentic, for other reasons than timing and latency, which is more of a religious thing. Using FPGA for emulation is no real different, if the original hardware had analogue quirks (like undocumented behaviour changed based on temperature) then an FPGA is going to be just as bad at emulating that as software on a general purpose computer.
