On 3 Mar 2003 at 13:58, Gavin Scott wrote: > One can argue whether "Emulator" is the correct technical term for > this ("Simulator" is probably more correct from a dictionary point of > view) but the world seems to have generally settled on the use of > "Emulator" for this type of thing. I have been having discussions about "Platform Emulation" and "Platform Simulation" with some people. I view them differently, so I'd like to introduce the latter definition, for sake of argument. I agree that "Emulation" should be what we've been talking about when we discuss a "binary" solution. In other words, we can pick up our binaries from our existing 3000 hardware and run them unchanged under the "Emulator". I've been calling Platform Simulation software such as MPUX from Ordina-Denkart or the BiTech-Sungard tools, or whatever other tools are out there that build some of the MPE environment on the target platform. You still need to take your source code to the new platform and compile it there, with perhaps making some modifications to fit the Simulator. The Simulator may give some of the look and feel of MPE by providing a command interpreter, or message file workalikes, or an intrinsic library to interface to the target OS, or whatever. But, that isn't the same as being able to take your existing environment, store it off on the 3000 and restore it onto the platform running the Emulator and load and go. I think we need to be clear in what we mean by Emulation or Simulation because the definitions can apply to both scenarios described above. But, we do need a means to differentiate between the two, because they are different, even though the end result of moving your existing applications to another platform is what is received by both. Regards, M. -- Mark Klein http://www.dis.com PGP Key Available