3 ms·

Ask HN: Is there a legal way to emulate the MEGA65 in software?

1 points by amichail 2y ago

Also, why sell the MEGA65 in hardware form in the first place?

themerone 2y ago
It's open source, why wouldn't it be legal to emulate?
- amichail 2y ago
  Because you need the MEGA65 ROM (which is derived from the Commodore 65 ROM) to emulate it.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Not necessarily. You could be sure to stay on pretty solid legal ground (in the US, anyway) by duplicating the behavior of that ROM with your own implementation. Traditionally, this is done with a "chinese wall". Have one group of devs reverse-engineer the ROM and write up a thoroughly detailed specification of the behavior, then another group of "untainted" devs codes up a new ROM that matches that specification.
    - amichail 2y ago
      They are doing that but it is incomplete: https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms
philistine 2y ago
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/MEGA65 https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/MEGA65 Says right here their implementation is 100% open-source, so it should be legally feasible.
- amichail 2y ago
  See: https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms