Hello Sam users, I'm one of those people responsible for starting the recent flame war over SimCoupe, the GPL, etc. Any hoo, I was just thinking about one of the posts I read, and it gave me an idea...
The biggest problem that the Sam Coupe has is the lack of new software (right?). Software developers don't want to spend time writing Sam Coupe programs, because the user base isn't big enough to net them a reasonable profit. However, there are Sam Coupe emulators for the two big hardware platforms, the Apple Macintosh and the IBM PC (right?). Now, why don't Mac and PC users buy Sam software? I can think of two good reasons -- because those platforms aren't being targeted, and because it would be a hassle for those users to install the software. Sooo... all we need is a few extensions to SimCoupe which makes it transparent to the Mac / PC user. i.e.. the Sam program is installed as per a normal Mac / PC program, and the only thing the user sees of SimCoupe is a little logo that pops up on the loading screen. Imagine this: == T'n'T A game packed with humour :-) , colour @-> , sound * , and _above_all_ ACTION! Loosely based on Bomb Jack. As well as the normal one player game, T'n'T has gone one better by giving you _TWO_ player action (...) $10 -- Available for Mac / PC and Sam. == (Damn, how do you get a pound sign in this stupid ANSI character set?) The Mac / PC user sends away for the program, and receives one installation disk. They insert the disk, double click the "install" icon (or type "install" or whatever), and hey presto, one game installed. Behind the scenes, SimCoupe looks for a previous installation of itself, installs or upgrades accordingly, copies the Sam .dsk file to an appropriate directory, creates a batch file, etc., etc. Who would buy this software? Mac or PC owners who previously had a Sam; Mac or PC owners who have friends with Sams (e.g. the readers of Format PC); and, with a bit of luck, Mac or PC owners who have friends who have friends with Sams. Who would write the software? To begin with, authors don't need to write new software, they just spend a little time designing a couple of icons, then convert one or two of their existing program to a .dsk file, copy it onto a Mac disk and a PC disk (with appropriate versions of SimCoupe), test them to make sure they work, place an ad in Format PC, and wait. If this looks promising, then they can begin to invest their effort in Sam programming again. How would SimCoupe make it self transparent? Well, the batch file that runs SimCoupe contains something like "simcoupe /autoboot tnt.dsk", SimCoupe loads, makes tnt.dsk the default disk, and does an automatic boot up. Then if a reset / reboot ever happens (as Sam programs sometimes do when "exit" is selected), SimCoupe returns to the host OS. (The most obvious technical problem I can think of with this whole idea is that not all Sam programs have this option.) Thoughts? -- James Gasson
