larsoncc writes "Emulation is a great way to preserve past game systems, but what if you could keep these digital dinosaurs running for decades? Well, you can, and some of us do. It's not easy for me to 'let go' of that vintage (circa 1978) Magnavox Odyssey2, or toss my Atari 7800 in the closet because I don't have a power supply. Here's my article to help you solve common problems with 15 different systems, and general tips for the others. Viva la TI-99/4a!!"

Currawong writes "danamania, well known for making the most of 68k Macs, has done the ultimate, and installed Mac OS X Panther on an old Centris with 68MB RAM, a 25MHz 68040 and 4GB drive - an early 90's machine with about the same power as a NeXT cube. To achieve this, she's had to run it under PearPC on Debian, resulting in a severe performance hit, as generic emulation runs "about 500 times slower" according to the developers. On this approximately 0.05MHz G3 speed emulator, the boot screen has taken 1.5 hours to appear, and the ETA for full boot is almost exactly 1 week! Regular updates are being posted as each milestone in the boot process is reached."

CherryBS writes "The CherryOS emulator, claiming that it could seamlessly run Mac OS X at 80% the speed of the host computer on standard x86 hardware (covered here previously), has created some controversy about stolen code. It turns out that CherryOS's emulation engine is nothing more than that of PearPC, an open source GPL project to create a PowerPC motheboard emulator." Read on for more details.

wraggster writes "Building on his previous work, Chui has taken another step for the Dreamcast community by releasing the first Amiga 500 emulator for the Dreamcast."

wraggster writes "Tonight has seen the Release of the Worlds first Atari ST Emulator for the Dreamcast by Ron of MadriDC fame & Chui. The emulator is a port of Castaway to the Dreamcast and already runs most games at full speed."

oldskoolar writes "For those of you who find emulation of your favorite Nintendo games disconcerting with a keyboard interface, Joystiq may have just the project you've been looking for. For those of you with more time than most people have ambition; why not couple this hack with an older mod."

wraggster writes " Tapwave Zodiac owners today enjoyed the Release of a major multiple system emulator called LittleJohn Z that includes such systems as Snes, Genesis, PC Engine, Nes, GBC, Wonderswan and NeoGeo Pocket. Sites such as Zodiac Gamer & Zodiac Emulation have more information on this release."

frankk74 writes "For those of you interested in Historical Computing and the Apollo manned spaceflights Ron Burkey has created a open source emulation of the Apollo Guidance Computer called vAGC. I use it as my desktop clock of choice. Note it only keeps mission time so after 24 hours you have reset the time :-). P.S. Another cool Apollo toy free and payware can be found here."

bedouin writes "I occasionally telnet to some BBSs that are very rich in ANSI graphics. While I can usually navigate fine through message areas and file boards, playing classic door games like Food Fight is almost unbearable. For about a year I've been searching for a Mac OS X terminal emulator that can accurately draw ANSI graphics just as they would appear on DOS systems with ansi.sys, but haven't found anything yet. Any suggestions? A native (and free or shareware) Mac OS X app would be prefered, but I'm willing to use an X11 or maybe even classic alternative as well. So far I've experimented with iTerm, GLterm, and aterm with unimpressive results."

querencia writes "Sun has announced that Solaris 10 will comply with the Linux Standard Base specification, thus allowing Linux apps to run unchanged on Solaris. This isn't emulation -- they claim that it is 'kernel-integrated and supported as an operating system feature.' While I appreciate the benefits of the Solaris OS, I've considered them on the losing end of the battle until now. Will the power of Linux apps put Solaris back into the running?" Update: 08/04 15:50 GMT by J : At OSCON, Sun reaffirmed that Solaris 10 will be open-sourced. They said it would be one of the OSI licenses, not sure which yet; that this was approved at the highest levels of the company; and (with the expected "we're just guessing" language), it could happen as soon as year's end.

Wraggster writes "The Sega Dreamcast console, which died an early commercial death, has recently seen some amazing new projects mainly aimed at emulation. Recently, a coder named Bluecrab released a port of the Saturn emulator called Yabause for the Dreamcast. Also, GPF (Troy Davis) has ported the excellent Visual Boy Advance (Game Boy Advance Emulator) to the Dreamcast. Finally, yesterday it was announced that Nincest (Nintendo 64 Emulator), an early N64 emulator that played demos only, has also been ported to the Dreamcast. All the projects are somewhat slow, but the achievement of the work is not to be discounted. Who says the Dreamcast is dead?"

Thanks to Waxy.org for its story discussing Jaleco's apparently legitimate use of the public domain PocketNES emulator in a Game Boy Advance game without explicit permission, explaining: "While the emulation community was outraged, the emulator's programmer felt a bit differently." The article notes: "Like the recent Classic NES Series, Jaleco Entertainment's Jajamaru Jr. for the Gameboy Advance is a nostalgic reissue for the Japanese market... [that] includes five different emulated classic NES/Famicom titles from Jaleco's library: Ninja Jajamaru, Jajamaru's Great Adventure, Exerion, City Connection, and Formation Z." Although "Emulation fans were upset, with cries of copyright infringement", the emulator's author responded: "Yes, PocketNES is public domain... I wanted it to be public domain. This 'Jaleco incident', in fact, is the very reason I wanted to make it FREE (as in public domain) rather than 'GPL free' (strings attached). I'm not a fan of the GPL, I think it's selfish."

Thanks to the EFF site for its list of 'Patent Busting's Most Wanted' miscreants, the top ten patents "that pose the biggest threat to the public domain", as previously mentioned in a Slashdot mainpage post. However, Slashdot Games-relevant entries worth investigating further include an entry on Nintendo, accused of "threatening reverse engineering of videogames to promote interoperability and emulation by hobbyists and entrepreneurs like Crimson Fire Entertainment and Gambit Studios", and an entry on Sheldon F. Goldberg, accused of "claiming to own basic online gaming architecture [as well as Solitaire]." The article indicates: "EFF's team of lawyers and technologists will be tracking down prior art and preparing to petition the Patent and Trademark Office for revocation of these offenders' patents."

An anonymous reader writes "Since Commodore recently re-appeared selling a Commodore 64 joystick 'TV game', as previously mentioned on Slashdot Games (the company is now owned by Dutch computer builder Tulip), they're now expanding their efforts, and have set up a legal emulation site where you can buy classic Commodore 64 titles, initially including Epyx and Hewson titles. Apparently, in a later stage, Commodore will release a Gentoo Linux based set top box which plays MP3s and runs Commodore 64 games."

David Horn writes "PocketGamer is carrying a story on the successful emulation of Windows 95 and Windows 98SE on the Pocket PC. This was made possible by a Pocket PC port of Bochs, a DOS emulator. If you're keen to try this yourself, you'll need a minimum of a 256MB memory card (or stream the image over a wireless network) and you'll need a program like Nyditot Virtual Display to increase your screen resolution. Oh, yes, and you'll also need the emulator. You can find more information and a selection of screenshots here. Following the porting of a full speed Playstation emulator and Pocket Quake, this really raises the bar for what the Pocket PC is capable of."

Thanks to 1UP for its article discussing the forthcoming, impressively feature-rich Action Replay Max for PlayStation 2. This Sony-unapproved third-party USB drive/CD combo includes the ability to "burn a CD of MP3 music, DivX video, or Genesis/Mega Drive ROMs [on your PC], which will then play back on an Action Replay-equipped PS2", and, similar to previous versions, "...will circumvent the PS2's DVD region lockout, and also stream MP3 music or DivX video from a PC connected to the PS2 by way of its Network Adaptor." In addition, the device can "download new cheat codes through a broadband Internet connection, or accept new codes loaded on a CD-R or Datel's own USB flash drive", and finally, Datel "has also added its PS2 online chat and instant messaging client to the Action Replay package."

Joanne Pransky's tongue is firmly in her cheek a fair amount of the time as she answers your questions, but much of what she says is thought-provoking, especially in light of speculations like Marshall Brain's Robotic Nation essays about the inevitable spread of robotic devices in our society.

An anonymous reader writes "The guys over at Ahead Games are working on an overclock mod for the GBA. They've been able to run it at up to 2x the regular operating speed without any major heat or battery life problems. Now, you're probably asking yourself "Why the hell would anyone want to overclock their Gameboy?" Answer: Super Nintendo emulation. There's already a working beta of a SNES emulator out for the GBA called SNES Advance. The big problem is there's just not enough horsepower under the GBA's hood to emulate the SNES sound chip. This mod will hopefully remedy that."

ben_ writes "According to this article on inq7.net, a Philippines company called SpecOps has revealed their Project David, a middleware layer that solves the problem Wine has been working at for years and will "enable all major Microsoft Windows applications to run on the free and open source Linux OS". Further (and more sceptical) analysis at Linux Electrons." I'm with Linux Electrons on this; as nice as it sounds, the information about David comes via Press Release which as we all know are founts of dependability *cough*.

Wraggster writes "Over at DCEmu.co.uk, we have an interesting interview with the author of NxDoom, NxQuake (both excellent ports to the Sega Dreamcast) and also a Genesis/Megadrive emulator for the Dreamcast called Genesis Plus. Check out the interview with BlackAura."