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> As another commenter here says: just use an old computer to run your old software. Developing emulators is a much easier solution than preserving compatibili
by kanox 6y ago
> As another commenter here says: just use an old computer to run your old software.
Developing emulators is a much easier solution than preserving compatibility at the hardware or even the OS level. The fact that 20-year old windows games work fine is a product of Microsoft spending insane resources to maintain vendor lock-in.
Emulators themselves tend to be highly portable, for example I suspect that zsnes and dosbox will "just work" on arm64 macs or even RISC-V.
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago> The fact that 20-year old windows games work fine is a product of Microsoft spending insane resources to maintain vendor lock-in. And x86/x86-64 supporting legacy instructions smh.
- wk_end 6y agoOtherwise I agree but: ZSNES is probably a bad example. It's written in inscrutable 32-bit x86 assembly language and hasn't been updated in nearly 15 years, so it's unlikely to be ported anywhere.
- thristian 6y agoA better example would be the SNES emulators bsnes and higan, written in modern C++, which did just work when compiled on an ARM Mac the other day.
- Koshkin 6y agoBut can’t you simply run an emulator in an emulator (or a VM)?
- wk_end 6y agoSure :) although I don't know if that still means that the inner emulator is "highly portable" or "just works" exactly - at least compared to any other software. (At the end of the day you shouldn't be running ZSNES anyway. In terms of accuracy, compatibility, even security: way better SNES emulators out there.)