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KuroNeko wrote:Which reminds me, CDifan, do you have any reaction from Philips or Sony on your plans? Sony in particular worries me...

CDi was a "greenbook" format, I think is not a legal problem to make a CDi player.

CDiemu will be one of the most harder emulators to make, similar to jaguar or jaguar CD but 70000 lines are 70000 lines.

But CDIfan, if one day for any reason you stop, please make open source! (One example is : PC2e).

For example, I will be intrested in make CDi emu port for linux

KuroNeko wrote:

Overdrive_X wrote:You think 1 year of work and 75 000 lines of codes should be free ? Come on i don't even know why Zsnes & ePSXe aren't commercial software

Because Nintendo and Sony would sue?

Which reminds me, CDifan, do you have any reaction from Philips or Sony on your plans? Sony in particular worries me...

Neko

Zsnes is completly legal , they won't sue Zknight and _Demo_ for this. Emulators are legal the only thing it's ePSXe need a psx bios witch is copyright. Remember iNes ... it was commercial and nintendo did nothing. There is also a commercial GBA No$GBA Nintendo didn't do nothing. So there is no problem with emulator as long you didn't had the white or blue print for making it.

Remember Bleem? Seems to me they will sue if money is made, not just an emu, but a commercial emu.

Neko

KuroNeko wrote:Remember Bleem? Seems to me they will sue if money is made, not just an emu, but a commercial emu.

Neko

Yeah but bleem is legal. They tried to close the project by suing. But remember bleem come when psx was still active. Philips CD-i is 99.9% dead. So i don't think they care.

well basicly 99% of all emulators are legal software as long the law isnt changed and as long you dont put any copyrighted stuff in your package

tho many programs there contains over 70.000 lines of codes are free software and besides its not about how many lines you code but how good your software are its up the person(s) there make the program if its gonna be free or not what other must respect ....

Overdrive_X wrote:

KuroNeko wrote:Remember Bleem? Seems to me they will sue if money is made, not just an emu, but a commercial emu.

Neko

Yeah but bleem is legal. They tried to close the project by suing. But remember bleem come when psx was still active. Philips CD-i is 99.9% dead. So i don't think they care.

Correct me if i'm wrong but I don't think an emulator or emulation has ever been truly tested in the courts. With the Bleem! story SONY simply kept suing again and again which left Bleem! with little money to defend itself over and over. Even with its problems I still find Bleem! and Bleemcast remarkable pieces of software, they take pride of place in my collection as examples of emulation history breaking through into the commercial world.

I also find NINTENDOS attitude towards emulation curious. Now with its next-gen platform the REVOLUTION having backwards compatibility with all previous consoles (through emulation) I wonder how long this has been planned for. It seems to figure why they have a strong position against ROMS and emulation now doesn't it!?!

well if the new nintendo consule even would be able to run all previous games what i kinda find funny becouse you cant buy them anyone but are able to play them i afcouse dont know if they would start selling them again but i would say that wouldnt sell good becouse mostly old games only have value for Us retro freaks or collectors

Bleem was a milestone there proved you can beat the big guns out there what i dont like was they won in the court and then stopped developing Bleem so in a way sony won ...

but to be honest i dislike newer emulators becouse alot dont even bother to go buy the consule or handheld when you can dl a emulator and play them there ....

Eat-an-Octorok wrote:Damn, that's a rip off. When wasd the last time people had to pay to download emulators?

Depends on what you're emulating and its target market... I don't think the price quoted is a rip-off. If you're actually interested in the CD-i and perhaps own one or two, it's not much to pay, especially when you consider the amount of work that has been put into it.

Besides, paying for the emulator is cheaper than buying an actual CD-i machine from the likes of eBay (especially when you add shipping costs), and then you can't guarantee that the laser transport mechanism will continue to work indefinitely.

A lot of emulators are free because:
1. The target machine is easy to emulate
2. It was a very popular machine in its day
3. There's more than one emulator of the target machine

The CD-i has none of the above.

As for paying for emulators in general, I bought Z80 (the original Spectrum emulator for the PC) as it was cheap and did a decent job, much better than the freebie equivalents at the time. I've also bought a Spectrum emulator for my phone, again because this did a far better job than a free one.

Just my 2p worth!

- Ali

ah, Spectrum. I used to have a Spectrum 16. Neat little thing with rubber keys which had 4-5 functions

Pity they don't make computers like that anymore: very compact, no cooling required.

Can't seem to find any SPectrum computers on the 2nd hand market that are in good condition though, it wasn't very popular over here. Ebay's got nice offers in the UK, but shipping costs are 3-4 times the worth of the device

Now CDi is another matter, swimming in offers here

Neko

InTheSand wrote:

Eat-an-Octorok wrote:Damn, that's a rip off. When wasd the last time people had to pay to download emulators?

Besides, paying for the emulator is cheaper than buying an actual CD-i machine from the likes of eBay (especially when you add shipping costs), and then you can't guarantee that the laser transport mechanism will continue to work indefinitely.

- Ali

Except you need to own a cd-i player in the first place, otherwise you can't get the roms needed to work with the emulator...

@Merijn: err... yes, oops! No CD-i = no ROM! D'oh!

@KuroNeko: I still have a soft spot for the ol' Spectrum! As for "no cooling required", I had one in particular that used to get very warm - good winter hand-warmer!

There was a point in the UK, just as the Amiga began to get really popular, when Spectrums could be bought in absolute mint condition with tonnes of accessories and software for only a few £s. I wish I'd bought more!

Always the way with "retro" hardware - tonnes of it about when nobody wants it! I guess that situation won't really happen much in the future as old PCs and Macs just don't have the same appeal...

- Ali