Re: "Free" emulator?

[Alan Lehotsky <lehotsky at tiac dot net>]

At 10:29 -0600 1/24/00, William Gatliff wrote:
>Guys:
>
>
>So, here's a few questions:
>
>   1. Is there a gcc analogue in the emulator world?  In other words, is
>      it possible to provide a reasonably portable hardware emulation
>      architecture suitable for distribution in the same way that other
>      free tools are?  I'm thinking along the lines of a common base
>      hardware setup, with interchangable pods and firmware for the
>      architecture specific bits.


	GDB comes with some number of emulators for various architectures.
	I haven't tried to use any of them, so I have no idea if they're
	any good.

>   2. Would hard-core GNU users like to have an open emulator platform,
>      or would we prefer to continue to get these critical tools from
>      proprietary vendors?


	Gee, this is like asking:  "Would we like an ice-cream sundae, or
	do we prefer to have sharp sticks poked in our eyes?" :-)  I only
	have limited experience with vendor supplied emulators, but I
	haven't been terribly impressed with their utility.

	One of the best systems I ever worked with was called MIMIC.  It
	ran on the DecSystem 10 and if I recall, had emulators for PDP-8
	and PDP-11.  I did some fairly significant work using MIMIC to
	write PDP-8 device drivers for the RTS-8 operating system.  MIMIC
	was nice in that you could add code to simulate external devices
	(which was particularly handy because the device I was interfacing
	to was one-of-a-kind, and 3000 miles away from where I was doing
	the development!)

	My experience with Windows-based emulators has been painful.
	The user-interface was terrible and it was trivially easy to
	crash.

	So, yes, I'd like the ice-cream sundae, please...


>   3. What are other useful candidates for open development tools, i.e.
>      oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, etc.?
>   4. Would anyone be seriously interested in participating in such a
>      project?  How about anyone with emulator design experience?


	As a self-employed consultant, I'd be interested if it would help
	pay my bills.


	-- Al Lehotsky


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