Quote from: Rorshach on April 09, 2009, 10:11:15 AM
Arkan,
Thats why I use my real stuff. Emulators are utterly unredeemable crap.
I think emulators are an integral part of preservation, for two reasons:
1. They're the only way to easily deliver these old computing environments to something approaching a mass audience. The set of vintage hardware that exists in the world is only going to get smaller over time, because there are far fewer preservationists like ourselves than there are people who simply aren't aware of the historical/monetary/sentimental value of these old machines and therefore stow them away in an attic or just toss them. It will only grow harder and harder to get these systems in front of people who want to remember and work with them again - or who have never seen them before but may have a degree of interest that doesn't necessarily extend to the hassle of actually acquiring one off eBay and getting it running with appropriate software. Thus, emulators and the Internet over which to distribute them.
2. They assist in archiving data from decaying physical media. Using Apple Disk Transfer (ADT), I rip images of my 5.25" Apple II floppies to .dsk and .nib files on my PC all the time - and the easiest way for me to test the integrity of those images is to load them into the AppleWin emulator.
None of the original electronics or software will last forever. There will come a point, decades, centuries from now, where the only form that any of these old computers will exist in will be as copies, replicas, approximations. Look at the Apple 1 replica - it's made from modern components, and there are differences. This isn't because the manufacturer is cutting corners or doesn't have enough love for the machine, it's a simple fact of dealing with what modern components are available to recreate this particular computing environment. This kind of divergence will only grow wider over time as technology keeps changing (assuming no hypothetical future in which we have Star Trek-style replicators and can whip up an exact copy of a given historical object out of thin air). Software, being relatively impenetrable bundles of code, will have a better time of it, but of course the imperfection comes in with the emulator itself, where you only see a representation of the computing environment as given through your modern machine.
So, in the far future, "close" will have to be good enough, because that's all we'll have.
Regarding the points made about museums: I think that depicting the computers in historically accurate settings, keeping them 100% functional, and displaying their capabilities in a way that observers can grasp are all equally important priorities. They're all different facets of the same goal. When I talk about preserving these machines, I mean preserving all of them - both concrete tangibles like hardware, software, and the attendant skillsets, and more abstract aspects like an authentic historical context and the collective memory of What It Was Like. Some museums, and individuals, are better at one portion of this at the expense of another, but the ultimate goal of this whole fractured community of retro-enthusiasts, old-school hobbyists, museum curators, academic historians, preservationists of all stripes, should be identical and all-encompassing.
