Hello Steve Batson,
 SB> I have a question about Delphi's Suitability to write a computer
 SB> emuator.
 well, you already know the answer:
 SB> Emulators must be very effiecient and tend to take alot of power to
 SB> emulate a system at it's original speed since the software must
 SB> emulate the original processor, the system hardware and be capable of
 SB> running the system ROM and OS on this emulated system. I know that
 SB> some of the good emulators are written in Assembler. Also, alot of
 An emulator must be fast as hell to emulate *any* real computer. You have to 
really use cpu time at best. Emulating the cpu is a rather easy task when 
compared to emulating other parts, say, video hardware; and that really takes 
hell of a lot cpu time..So, if you use Delphi, you have to either give up 
advanteges of delphi and write raw winapi+asm code or emulate the machine 
quite slowly. That does not mean that you can not use delphi for such a low 
level project, it just means that you won't enjoy advantages of delphi while 
doing so.
 SB> I was thinking that using Delphi 3 and DirectX would allow some nice
 SB> windows based emulators to be written.
 I have never met a windows based emulator that runs faster than its dos 
counterparts.. Windows, probably, is not the best platform to code emulators. 
A few of my users - I run a bbs on emulators - have reported that their 
winuae runs faster than their duae but this is not the case with me..
 SB> I think it would quite a learning exercise to write an emulator.
 Sure, have you tried to sketch out the basics? It is real fun to work on 
that , but rather hard to succeed; you have to know the machine you'd emulate 
perfectly, including undocumented parts and bugs, you have to know the 
platform you would emulate the machine to a considerable degree and you have 
to be a real good programmer.. Good luck!
                                                Berk
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