On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 03:30:18PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote: > Hmm. I wonder if other emulators have the same problems as the atari800 > emulator. From the description: > > "The Atari Operating System ROMs are not available with this package, > due to copyright. You'll have to either make copies of them from an > old Atari computer, or see README.Debian for other ways to obtain > them." > > I'd say that this was a valid reason to put atari800 into contrib. My > understanding is that this emulator *just won't work* without these > ROMs. No matter what "data" ROM you want to run, you need the OS ROMs to > do so.
This describes the situation with xtrs (almost) perfectly[1].
> I know it may be a fine point, but I'd contrast that with an emulator
> that is free and self-sufficient, but for which there is no DFSG-free
> software to run.
A *lot* of old home computer emulators won't be self-sufficient without the
ROM, because the environments were so constrained that ROM-based service
routines were very heavily used.
[1] The exception being Model 4 operating systems, which were written to be
far more independent of the BASIC ROM. In the case of the 4P, the
BASIC ROM was not even loaded into RAM.
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