Date   : Fri, 19 Aug 1994 09:45:06 EST
From   : Stephen Quan <quan@...>
Subject: Re: announcement of xbeeb

There was a similar argument kicking around with the Macintosh emulator,
Executor.  They declared what they had done was completed legitimate.
They have been writing Macintosh programs for years, and have a large
number of software programming manuals for the Macintosh.  (I guess
we are or have been 6502 coders).

Then, they took the software program manuals and used them as a direct
source of specification for writing a Macintosh emulator that runs on
NeXT machines and later IBM PCs.  (We have the Advanced User's Guide,
User's Guide and perhaps a number of other sources).

However, in there case, OS behaviour was purely emulated.  For instance
a call such as JSR &FFEE would be trapped and their own code would be
executed.  This detaches their emulator significantly from the real
thing.  Their emulator does not recognised undocumented Apple calls.

They had a worry that they could not ship a Apple Macintosh System
or a Finder, as this material belongs to apple.  Besides, both of
this programs do make use of undocumented calls which meant they
wouldn't have worked well anyways.  I think they are trying to either
get Apple to help them out, failing that, they might be writing a mock
finder, which means their emulator may be far from having System 6 or
System 7 support.  (In our case, we need to use OS ROM and BASIC ROM).

This is where we stand with Acorn, I guess.

As far as posting xbeeb goes, it really should not be a problem,
as long as you aren't shipping ROMs with it.  Executor and other
emulators have been around, and they are all emulators of what you
might arguable say is copyright hardware and software.  For a start
we aren't copying somebody's hardware, we are emulating it, there
is a difference.  Besides, shouldn't Motorola hold rights to the 6502
and who knows, what other chips in the system?

Anyhow, if the moderator of comp.sys.acorn.announce does indeed work at
Acorn, perhaps we could try to make him as a spokeperson for our
emulator.  From my end (Australia!), he is the closest thing to being
an alive-person from Acorn, and perhaps we could ask him to convey our
emulator interests to Acorn.

Failing that, I draw one last example, that's Ap2em (I think).  The
ap2em is an emulator for apple II and has been kicking around the
internet for quite sometime.  I am not sure what the state of the
nation is with that emulator, but it is quite clear from the Apple
emulator group that this and other Apple emulators are being used.
In their case, they have a ROM problem, but they just attach a readme.txt
file instructing how Apple 2 owners may go about obtaining ROMs.  In
our case we could supply a short instruction on building a RS423-RS232C
cable and perhaps suggest a set commands that might be used to copy
files.
-- 
Stephen Quan (quan@...                 ), SysAdmin, Analyst/Programmer.
Centre for Spatial Information Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart.
GPO BOX 252C, Australia, 7001.  Local Tel: (002) 202898 Fax: (002) 240282
International Callers use +6102 instead of (002).