![]() So you know your computer has a hard drive, where your operating system and all your files and programs live. It also has a CPU, central processing unit, which is commonly analogized to the brain of the computer: it coordinates all the different pieces of your computer, hardware and software alike: operating system, keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive (or solid state drive), CD-ROM drive, USB hub, etc.īut the CPU itself needs a little bit of programmed code in order to work it has to be able to both understand and give instructions. Rather than stored on a hard drive like the operating system, which is easily writablemodifiable by the user, this crucial, small central piece of code is stored on the CPU on a chip of Read-Only Memory (the read-only part is why this sort of code is often called firmware rather than software). If the whole goal of an emulator is to trick legacy software into thinking its on an older machine by creating a fake computer-inside-your-computer (a virtual machine), you need a ROM file to serve as the fake brain. The major selling point of Windows systems is that they are not locked into specific hardware: there arehave been any number of third-party manufacturers (Dell, Lenovo, HP, IBM, etc etc) and they all have to make sure their hardware, including the CPUROM that come with their desktops, are very broadly compatible, because they can never predict what other manufacturers hardwaresoftware you may be trying to use in combination. This makes emulation easier, because the emulating application can likewise go for broad compatibility and probably be fine, without worrying too specifically about exactly what model of CPUROM its trying to imitate (see, for example, DOSBox ). So setting up a Mac emulator, you have to get very specific about which ROM file you are using as your fake brain because certain Apple models would have certain CPUs, which could only work with certain operating system versions, which would only work with certain versions of QuickTime, which would only play certain files, which would.īut, at least so far as my knowledge of American intellectual property law goes, and I am by no means whatsoever an expert, we are in gray legal territory.
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