Re: HP15c LE emulator with unlimited number of activations Message #7 Posted by Christoph Giesselink on 17 Jan 2013, 12:44 p.m., in response to message #5 by Mike Morrow
Quote:
Emulation = Slow + Energy Inefficient + Buggy.
Sorry as emulator developer I couldn't agree. ;-)
- Slow
Sorry, show me a real HP48 that is faster than a HP48 emulated on Emu48 using a PC as host (even if the PC is 10 or more years old).
- Energy Inefficient
I mainly agree, but you might also compare a LED driven HP35 from 1972 with a hardware like DM-15CC emulating a HP35. I'm mostly sure that the emulation would be more energy efficient than the real device.
- Buggy
Of course an emulator is also only software, so it couldn't be, from definition, bug free. 2nd, every description is incomplete. So the description of the original calculator hardware is also incomplete. In many situations a developer use undocumented features. When you ask why, you get answered like "I tested my solution and it works properly. For a documented way I had to spend much more time at development. Further my solution is faster". So the emulator developer must have a look behind the official documentation.
For Emu48 I wrote many test programs for analysing the behavior on non documented situations. Anyway, an emulator cannot emulate the original hardware into it's finest detail, if so you have the original hardware and not an emulation. So an emulator in real world is full of compromises.
Finally, every solution must be payable. It's a big difference if I spend hours of my free time on my personal projects like Emu28, Emu42, Emu48 and Emu71 and a company which have to earn money with their products.
But I agree, sometimes it would be better that companies in general would have a closer look to their products before selling them, than deliver products in poor quality. On the other side, what is better, a product with poor quality or getting nothing comparable?
Your choice. :)
|