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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!ames!orville!fouts
From: fouts@orville (Marty Fouts)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: European Emulator (Rudeness??????)
Message-ID: <95@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Dec-86 17:22:15 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.95
Posted: Fri Dec 19 17:22:15 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Dec-86 02:18:45 EST
References: <868@ark.cs.vu.nl>
Sender: usenet@ames.UUCP
Reply-To: fouts@orville.UUCP (Marty Fouts)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 57
Keywords: keep it cool

In article <868@ark.cs.vu.nl> Patrick@ark.cs.vu.nl (Patrick van Kleef) writes:
>**** MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH ****
>
>Posting for a friend:
>---------------------
>I don't know why you people call the Magic Sac a software device. I can see it,
>hold it, move it and therefore I call it a hardware device. And it's a hardware
>device that's far from cheap here at the European continent. The prices range
>between $300 and $400. And that's a price of a product *without* ROM's.
>For that price you get Magic Box containing exactly two chips, one condensator
>and two Rom sockets.

Magic Sac is a product.  The entire product consists of a manual, two
diskettes of software (one for the Mac and one for the ST) and a ROM
cartridge.

The cartridge is supplied so that you can use the Apple ROM's which you have
to buy yourself.  As has been said before, this is the only legal way to do
a Mac emulator which uses the binary software from the Apple ROM's.

Data Pacific wanted to be able to supply the ROM's (as well as the system
image and finder you also need,) but Apple refused to license them to do
this.  If you have to wretch, wretch at Apple for making all of this
necessary.

>
>Considering this, I find it understandable that inventive guys go look for meansoof making their own emulator. And software only is -in my opinion- something
>that entirely loads from disk, no hardware (sorry) device needed. I consider

You seem to have missed something.  A disk is hardware, the drive it loads
from is hardware. Software is the collection of signals which become the
memory data that runs the machine.  Either a disk or a rom (among other
things) can be used to contain software.  Both require additional hardware
(rom cartridge, disk drive) to be accessed.  You are splitting hairs.

>
>And finding some way of putting your Mac Rom's on disk, is far easier than
>obtaining them. In Europe, Apple took great care in getting all obsolete
>Rom's back. Therefore there's hardly any place where you can buy them.

Making duplicates of Apple's ROM software is copyright infringement.  It
is illegal.

It would be possible for someone to do a Mac emulator entirely in software.
This would require determining how the Mac behaved using only published
descriptions and writing software which behaved exactly the same way.

To stay out of legal trouble you would probably have to be able to prove
that you never had the opportunity to disassemble the code in the ROMS, or
to look at a disassembled code listing.  And even then you would probably
have problems because Apple has copywritten the 'look and feel' of the
interface.

BTW I'm not in any way related to Data Pacific, other than as a satisfied
customer.

Marty