Yes, I know it may be a silly idea, but I don't know, it came to my mind, and there's so much out there in the internet, someone may have made one.
Do you know any?
Is there an emulator of a non-existent system?
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I seem to recall a fictional computer system was created for a programming book or something, and people made "emulators" for it...can't remember any other details, though.
- BMF
RuSteD LOgIc
RuSteD LOgIc
Technically, most emulators emulate a non-existent system (with 100% accuracy, even), since they aren't fully accurate. 
kyuusaku, did you mean how games are "emulating" the game world that doesn't exist anywhere?
EDIT: clarified humor.
kyuusaku, did you mean how games are "emulating" the game world that doesn't exist anywhere?
EDIT: clarified humor.
Last edited by blargg on Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
I bet chip designers emulate new designs that don't yet exist.
Also, once the original systems are all gone, emulators of such systems will be left emulating something that doesn't exist as well.
One topical example of emulators that emulate non-existent systems are some game music players, where the environment the code+data run in is somewhat different than on the system it's based on. I imagine some of these can't be played on the original systems without modifications (NSF was like that for a while, I believe).
Also, once the original systems are all gone, emulators of such systems will be left emulating something that doesn't exist as well.
One topical example of emulators that emulate non-existent systems are some game music players, where the environment the code+data run in is somewhat different than on the system it's based on. I imagine some of these can't be played on the original systems without modifications (NSF was like that for a while, I believe).
Something like Donald Knuth's MIX and MMIX?BMF54123 wrote:I seem to recall a fictional computer system was created for a programming book or something, and people made "emulators" for it...can't remember any other details, though.
But if we're counting a Java VM as an emulator, we might as well count heavily microcoded architectures like x86 too. The back end of an x86 CPU looks nothing like what x86 instruction bytecode might imply. In fact, the Pentium 4's instruction cache (aka "trace cache") holds instructions that have been translated from x86. A real x86 chip does exist, namely Intel's i386DX, but not x86-64.
If one was really good with MAME/MESS code, I'm sure they could piece together all sorts of made-up emulated systems from existing parts. I can just imagine a few crazy setups already..
If you mean completely made-up CPU, graphics, and everything, then I doubt very many people have done all that (not for free, anyways).
If you mean completely made-up CPU, graphics, and everything, then I doubt very many people have done all that (not for free, anyways).
