Date   : Wed, 06 Sep 2000 21:05:28 +0100
From   : Steven Flintham <sf@...>
Subject: Re: First release of BBC Debugger!

On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 02:10:54PM -0700, Angus Duggan wrote:
> The debugger looks neat, but at the risk of sounding like a parrot I have to
> ask: Why yet another BBC emulator? What is it about BBC micro enthusiasts
> that makes them all want to write their own BBC emulator? Why not contribute

Perhaps for the challenge, or to get a better understanding of the
BBC? I'm personally half-working on a BBC emulator; I doubt it will
ever be finished, and it's even less likely it will ever be better
than what's already available, but does it matter? Just thinking about
the CRTC/video ULA emulation has been an interesting exercise, for
example - understanding how it works, and thinking about how I could
emulate the display. All the CRTC programming to get fancy results
which seemed so tricky before now makes some kind of sense, and it was
a real `ah! so that's why!' moment when I realised where the `weird'
mapping between screen addresses and pixels came from...

And it's also given me a motivation to learn something about how
bitmap graphics work under X - something I probably wouldn't have done
if I didn't have a `need' for it.

I suppose the point is that, to some extent, you have to learn by
doing stuff, and since there's very little that's completely original
sometimes you need (or want) to do something that's already been done
before, just for the experience of doing it yourself. 

Steven