Just I grabbed the Xmas opportunity and organised a meeting with friends, you know typical stuff like beer, bs food and retro consoles. Just our conversation went to FPGAs vs Emulators, as we had a MIST there and one guy brought his DE2 , quite a beast btw.
Well, the winner is ... EMULATORS! Believe it not, the "emulation" on the FPGA (cores) is not better than an emulator that is running on a pc.
Just compare the Hatari (Windows) or Steem SSE (windows) with the core on the MIST, well some guy demonstrated the MIST's AtariST high speed and an high-mono screen mode, some limited I can say as the Hatari (1.8.0) can even have 040, high speed (from 32Mhz to FastForward pressing Alt+X) and better VDI resolutions up to 16 colors.
In addition the Hatari can read MSA and STX images and play ALL of the ST Demos, something that is impossible on MIST (ST core) now!
Some examples:
Apple2 emulator (AppleWin) vs the Apple2 emul on MIST , just limited to a format of disk images that I never bothered to convert all of my .dsk images to .nib
C64, WinVICE 64 that supports a hell of peripherals like Carts and 4 drives like 1541, 1581 vs a core that just loads PRG.
ZX Spectrum, Fuse (what else!) has a jawdrop features incl. divide vs the ZX Spectrum core that just loads TAP (tape images , not even TZX) with REAL TAPE speed!!
NES, MESS vs a core that is not compatible 100% with the NES.
ZX81, EightyOne vs the core that can only run standalone programs (dot P) not even full tape images.
Amiga, WinUAE with PPC support vs the current core that just matured to support AGA, with some issues and just 68020 the maximum CPU can handle.
Just my mate Jake told me the FPGAs are nice because its a instant turn-on / run the core / play, well that's correct, but at the same time my wii can have a hell of emulators too! Also, what my friend Jake forgot to tell me is that he TRIED 3 different monitors till to find one that is compatible with all of the cores! LOL now.
I know there is some FPGA called FPGAarcade, a bit pricey I think and with limited availability , but you can have a 060 , seems useful only for Amiga core, but I bet it will have its limitations like the other FPGA devices there.
Well, the winner is ... EMULATORS! Believe it not, the "emulation" on the FPGA (cores) is not better than an emulator that is running on a pc.
Just compare the Hatari (Windows) or Steem SSE (windows) with the core on the MIST, well some guy demonstrated the MIST's AtariST high speed and an high-mono screen mode, some limited I can say as the Hatari (1.8.0) can even have 040, high speed (from 32Mhz to FastForward pressing Alt+X) and better VDI resolutions up to 16 colors.
In addition the Hatari can read MSA and STX images and play ALL of the ST Demos, something that is impossible on MIST (ST core) now!
Some examples:
Apple2 emulator (AppleWin) vs the Apple2 emul on MIST , just limited to a format of disk images that I never bothered to convert all of my .dsk images to .nib
C64, WinVICE 64 that supports a hell of peripherals like Carts and 4 drives like 1541, 1581 vs a core that just loads PRG.
ZX Spectrum, Fuse (what else!) has a jawdrop features incl. divide vs the ZX Spectrum core that just loads TAP (tape images , not even TZX) with REAL TAPE speed!!
NES, MESS vs a core that is not compatible 100% with the NES.
ZX81, EightyOne vs the core that can only run standalone programs (dot P) not even full tape images.
Amiga, WinUAE with PPC support vs the current core that just matured to support AGA, with some issues and just 68020 the maximum CPU can handle.
Just my mate Jake told me the FPGAs are nice because its a instant turn-on / run the core / play, well that's correct, but at the same time my wii can have a hell of emulators too! Also, what my friend Jake forgot to tell me is that he TRIED 3 different monitors till to find one that is compatible with all of the cores! LOL now.
I know there is some FPGA called FPGAarcade, a bit pricey I think and with limited availability , but you can have a 060 , seems useful only for Amiga core, but I bet it will have its limitations like the other FPGA devices there.
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