This is actual hardware. Yes simple arm cores can pretty faithfully emulate much of this. But that’s emulation. These are bespoke devices, built from actual old chips. Offering a level of comparability and predictability emulation can’t always achieve. It isn’t for everyone.
Adrian Black ended up with a non functioning unit sent to him by a viewer that bought one. The seller rather than pay for postage for the broken one to be sent back to China just told them to keep it and sent them a replacement instead. Adrian ends up troubleshooting and fixing it but you can get a pretty good look at everything going on inside and some of the old chips involved.
The M6117C also isn’t the original and not that old. Also the 8MB of RAM aren’t true to the original.
I’m not sure. I occasionally use emulation. And I think it’s fine. Unless you’re a speed runner and need everything to be exact to the frame timing, you won’t notice. Certainly not for a desktop UI like the Win 3.11 on the photo. I guess it depends on the use-case.
Something like a FPGA or an ESP32 can also be repaired, replaced, programmed and most of the things a CPU or different architecture can do. And if the emulation layer doesn’t have too many flaws, it’ll be pretty realistic. Not exactly the same thing, but I think it’ll do for practically any use-case. And it comes with other benefits.
I think you’re allowed to do it just for the sake of it. But I often see people using an original SNES because “emulation is shit” and then they proceed to connect it to the TV set in their livingroom, which isn’t even close to the original experience because it adds lots of latency and doesn’t have interlacing and the colors are different than on a CRT, too. I think that’s just having strong opinions despite being uneducated. And I think I’m equally as well off with my Raspberry Pi and Emulationstation. (Which can also run DOS games.)
In the end everyone is entitled to their opinion. But this also isn’t the original (You can get an old Laptop… I have one with an 486.) But this isn’t the original but a replica. And it’s debatable (in my opinion) whether it’s the CPU architecture that does the realism, or other factors. I think for realism, you’d need a black and white liquid crystal display, a NiMH battery that degrades fast if you don’t charge it right and half the amount of RAM at most. And maybe just a floppy drive. The CPU is something you wouldn’t notice with the current state of technology.
Agreed. I think most prominently competitive gaming; development where you need to assure it later on actually works as intended on the target platform; and business stuff where parties are obliged by contract to guarantee something works flawlessly and keeps running that way - are good examples.
That laptop doesn’t look to me like it was intended to do any of that, so that’s maybe why I’m being a bit negative here. It’s cool and a nice idea, though…
(And we already have ARM-based retro machines, FPGA clones if popular processors available. So there is no need for them to do the exact same thing.)
This is cool but not for $200. That’s way overpriced for something this underpowered.
Right? Surely you could translate it to run on a $1 esp32?
This is actual hardware. Yes simple arm cores can pretty faithfully emulate much of this. But that’s emulation. These are bespoke devices, built from actual old chips. Offering a level of comparability and predictability emulation can’t always achieve. It isn’t for everyone.
Adrian Black ended up with a non functioning unit sent to him by a viewer that bought one. The seller rather than pay for postage for the broken one to be sent back to China just told them to keep it and sent them a replacement instead. Adrian ends up troubleshooting and fixing it but you can get a pretty good look at everything going on inside and some of the old chips involved.
The M6117C also isn’t the original and not that old. Also the 8MB of RAM aren’t true to the original.
I’m not sure. I occasionally use emulation. And I think it’s fine. Unless you’re a speed runner and need everything to be exact to the frame timing, you won’t notice. Certainly not for a desktop UI like the Win 3.11 on the photo. I guess it depends on the use-case.
Something like a FPGA or an ESP32 can also be repaired, replaced, programmed and most of the things a CPU or different architecture can do. And if the emulation layer doesn’t have too many flaws, it’ll be pretty realistic. Not exactly the same thing, but I think it’ll do for practically any use-case. And it comes with other benefits.
I think you’re allowed to do it just for the sake of it. But I often see people using an original SNES because “emulation is shit” and then they proceed to connect it to the TV set in their livingroom, which isn’t even close to the original experience because it adds lots of latency and doesn’t have interlacing and the colors are different than on a CRT, too. I think that’s just having strong opinions despite being uneducated. And I think I’m equally as well off with my Raspberry Pi and Emulationstation. (Which can also run DOS games.)
In the end everyone is entitled to their opinion. But this also isn’t the original (You can get an old Laptop… I have one with an 486.) But this isn’t the original but a replica. And it’s debatable (in my opinion) whether it’s the CPU architecture that does the realism, or other factors. I think for realism, you’d need a black and white liquid crystal display, a NiMH battery that degrades fast if you don’t charge it right and half the amount of RAM at most. And maybe just a floppy drive. The CPU is something you wouldn’t notice with the current state of technology.
It is actual compatible hardware though. And the opl chips etc are no longer made.
For myself emulation and FPGA are fine. But for speed running or any other number of things, actual hardware are important.
Agreed. I think most prominently competitive gaming; development where you need to assure it later on actually works as intended on the target platform; and business stuff where parties are obliged by contract to guarantee something works flawlessly and keeps running that way - are good examples.
That laptop doesn’t look to me like it was intended to do any of that, so that’s maybe why I’m being a bit negative here. It’s cool and a nice idea, though…
(And we already have ARM-based retro machines, FPGA clones if popular processors available. So there is no need for them to do the exact same thing.)
Companies are actually willing to pay a lot of money for legacy hardware.
Maybe, but this doesn’t seem to be a product made for businesses. It looks like a product designed for hobbyists.