In computing , an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the host ) to behave like another computer system (called the guest ). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system. Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate (or imitate) another program or device.
165-423: Many printers , for example, are designed to emulate HP LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. If a non-HP printer emulates an HP printer, any software written for a real HP printer will also run in the non-HP printer emulation and produce equivalent printing. Since at least the 1990s, many video game enthusiasts and hobbyists have used emulators to play classic arcade games from
330-453: A digital preservation strategy states, "the ideal approach would provide a single extensible , long-term solution that can be designed once and for all and applied uniformly, automatically, and in organized synchrony (for example, at every refresh cycle) to all types of documents and media". He further states that this should not only apply to out of date systems, but also be upwardly mobile to future unknown systems. Practically speaking, when
495-509: A mouse and keyboard devices. Some older consoles such as 1988 Sega Genesis aka Mega Drive and 1993 3DO Interactive Multiplayer , supported optional mice, both with special mice made for them, but the 3DO mouse like that console was a flop, and the mouse for the Sega had very limited game support. The Sega also supported the optional Menacer , a wireless infrared light gun, and such were at one point popular for games. It also support BatterUP ,
660-467: A network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm. An ID Card printer is used for printing plastic ID cards. These can now be customised with important features such as holographic overlays, HoloKotes and watermarks. This is either a direct to card printer (the more feasible option) or a retransfer printer. A virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of
825-457: A typewriter ), or, less commonly, hits the back of the paper, pressing the paper against the ink ribbon (the IBM 1403 for example). All but the dot matrix printer rely on the use of fully formed characters , letterforms that represent each of the characters that the printer was capable of printing. In addition, most of these printers were limited to monochrome, or sometimes two-color, printing in
990-406: A typewriter . A hammer strikes a wheel with petals, the "daisy wheel", each petal containing a letter form at its tip. The letter form strikes a ribbon of ink , depositing the ink on the page and thus printing a character. By rotating the daisy wheel, different characters are selected for printing. These printers were also referred to as letter-quality printers because they could produce text which
1155-474: A video game that can be played with a game controller . These may be home consoles , which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game controller, or handheld consoles , which include their own display unit and controller functions built into the unit and which can be played anywhere. Hybrid consoles combine elements of both home and handheld consoles. Video game consoles are
1320-489: A xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor . Another toner-based printer is the LED printer which uses an array of LEDs instead of a laser to cause toner adhesion to the print drum. Inkjet printers operate by propelling variably sized droplets of liquid ink onto almost any sized page. They are
1485-589: A "control program", but the terms " hypervisor " or "virtual machine monitor" became preferred over time. Each hypervisor can manage or run multiple virtual machines . Printer (computing) In computing , a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a durable representation of graphics or text, usually on paper . While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Different types of printers include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers. The first computer printer designed
1650-527: A [Commodore] 64 to emulate an IBM PC [which uses MS-DOS], in the same sense that it's possible to bail out Lake Michigan with a teaspoon . Most emulators just emulate a hardware architecture—if operating system firmware or software is required for the desired software, it must be provided as well (and may itself be emulated). Both the OS and the software will then be interpreted by the emulator, rather than being run by native hardware. Apart from this interpreter for
1815-465: A baseball bat-shaped controller. A controller may be attached through a wired connection onto the console itself, or in some unique cases like the Famicom hardwired to the console, or with a wireless connection. Controllers require power, either provided by the console via the wired connection, or from batteries or a rechargeable battery pack for wireless connections. Controllers are nominally built into
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#17327725253551980-415: A brochure. As of the 2020s, 3D printing has become a widespread hobby due to the abundance of cheap 3D printer kits, with the most common process being Fused deposition modeling . Personal printers are mainly designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs , requiring minimal setup time to produce
2145-523: A certain application is released in a new version, rather than address compatibility issues and migration for every digital object created in the previous version of that application , one could create an emulator for the application , allowing access to all of said digital objects. Because of its primary use of digital formats, new media art relies heavily on emulation as a preservation strategy. Artists such as Cory Arcangel specialize in resurrecting obsolete technologies in their artwork and recognize
2310-407: A chemical coated paper, which is charged by the print head according to the image of the document. The paper is passed near a pool of liquid ink with the opposite charge. The charged areas of the paper attract the ink and thus form the image. This process was developed from the process of electrostatic copying . Color reproduction is very accurate, and because there is no heating the scale distortion
2475-445: A cheque must be printed using MICR toner or ink. Banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly. The following printing technologies are routinely found in modern printers: A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text and graphics. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ
2640-480: A closer connection to the authenticity of the digital object, operating system, or even gaming platform. Emulation addresses the original hardware and software environment of the digital object, and recreates it on a current machine. The emulator allows the user to have access to any kind of application or operating system on a current platform , while the software runs as it did in its original environment. Jeffery Rothenberg, an early proponent of emulation as
2805-444: A company does not already have a local (or network) printer that has the features they need, then the web-based option is a perhaps a more affordable solution. The web-based solution is good for small businesses that do not anticipate a lot of rapid growth, or organizations who either can not afford a card printer, or do not have the resources to learn how to set up and use one. Generally speaking, desktop-based solutions involve software,
2970-645: A considerable increase in durability and a greater degree of counterfeit prevention. Some card printers come with an option to print both sides at the same time, which cuts down the time taken to print and less margin of error. In such printers one side of id card is printed and then the card is flipped in the flip station and other side is printed. Alongside the traditional uses in time attendance and access control (in particular with photo personalization), countless other applications have been found for plastic cards, e.g. for personalized customer and members' cards, for sports ticketing and in local public transport systems for
3135-449: A database (or spreadsheet) and can be installed on a single computer or network. Alongside the basic function of printing cards, card printers can also read and encode magnetic stripes as well as contact and contact free RFID chip cards ( smart cards ). Thus card printers enable the encoding of plastic cards both visually and logically. Plastic cards can also be laminated after printing. Plastic cards are laminated after printing to achieve
3300-520: A dedicated data cable such as the USB , through a short-range radio like Bluetooth , a local area network using cables (such as the Ethernet ) or radio (such as WiFi ), or on a standalone basis without a computer, using a memory card or other portable data storage device. Video game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display
3465-471: A detailed description of many of the technologies used. Several different computer printers were simply computer-controllable versions of existing electric typewriters. The Friden Flexowriter and IBM Selectric-based printers were the most-common examples. The Flexowriter printed with a conventional typebar mechanism while the Selectric used IBM's well-known "golf ball" printing mechanism. In either case,
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#17327725253553630-555: A digital circuit such as a processor. This is done after a digital circuit has been designed in logic equations, but before the circuit is fabricated in hardware. Functional simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the execution of a second computer program written in symbolic assembly language or compiler language, rather than in binary machine code . By using a functional simulator, programmers can execute and trace selected sections of source code to search for programming errors (bugs), without generating binary code. This
3795-468: A fee to Microsoft to register one intent to do so. Since the release of the Nintendo Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System, most video game console manufacturers employ a strict licensing scheme that limit what games can be developed for it. Developers and their publishers must pay a fee, typically based on royalty per unit sold, back to the manufacturer. The cost varies by manufacturer but
3960-501: A few exceptions such as the PlayStation TV and OnLive Game System , are Android -based digital media players that are bundled with gamepads and marketed as gaming devices. Such microconsoles can be connected to the television to play video games downloaded from an application store such as Google Play . Handheld game consoles are devices that typically include a built-in screen and game controller in their case, and contain
4125-421: A five–seven year cycle called a generation, with consoles made with similar technical capabilities or made around the same time period grouped into one generation. The industry has developed a razor and blades model : manufacturers often sell consoles at low prices, sometimes at a loss, while primarily making a profit from the licensing fees for each game sold. Planned obsolescence then draws consumers into buying
4290-479: A handheld unit, though some newer ones allow for separate wireless controllers to also be used. While the first game consoles were dedicated game systems, with the games programmed into the console's hardware, the Fairchild Channel F introduced the ability to store games in a form separate from the console's internal circuitry, thus allowing the consumer to purchase new games to play on the system. Since
4455-443: A hard copy of a given document. They are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute (ppm), and the cost per page is relatively high. However, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on memory cards or from digital cameras and scanners . Networked or shared printers are "designed for high-volume, high-speed printing". They are usually shared by many users on
4620-405: A hardware or microcode assist, while "simulation" referred to pure software emulation. For example, a computer specially built for running programs designed for another architecture is an emulator. In contrast, a simulator could be a program which runs on a PC, so that old Atari games can be simulated on it. Purists continue to insist on this distinction, but currently the term "emulation" often means
4785-532: A layer of ink on paper. A card printer is an electronic desktop printer with single card feeders which print and personalize plastic cards . In this respect they differ from, for example, label printers which have a continuous supply feed. Card dimensions are usually 85.60 × 53.98 mm, standardized under ISO/IEC 7810 as ID-1. This format is also used in EC-cards , telephone cards , credit cards , driver's licenses and health insurance cards . This
4950-402: A licensing agreement to gain access to the console's proprietary storage format for the media as well as to use the console and manufacturer's logos and branding for the game's packaging, paid back through royalties on sales. In the transition to digital distribution, where now the console manufacturer runs digital storefronts for games, license fees apply to registering a game for distribution on
5115-554: A period during the early home computer era when a range of printers were manufactured under many brands such as the Commodore VIC-1525 using the Seikosha Uni-Hammer system. This used a single solenoid with an oblique striker that would be actuated 7 times for each column of 7 vertical pixels while the head was moving at a constant speed. The angle of the striker would align the dots vertically even though
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5280-593: A printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer. A virtual printer can be used to create a file which is an image of the data which would be printed, for archival purposes or as input to another program, for example to create a PDF or to transmit to another system or user. A barcode printer is a computer peripheral for printing barcode labels or tags that can be attached to, or printed directly on, physical objects. Barcode printers are commonly used to label cartons before shipment, or to label retail items with UPCs or EANs . A 3D printer
5445-468: A printer on their network that is capable of printing identification cards. If a business already owns an ID card printer, then a desktop-based badge maker is probably suitable for their needs. Typically, large organizations who have high employee turnover will have their own printer. A desktop-based badge maker is also required if a company needs their IDs make instantly. An example of this is the private construction site that has restricted access. However, if
5610-420: A problem when emulating computers whose processor speed is on the same order of magnitude as the host machine. Until not many years ago, emulation in such situations was considered completely impractical by many. What allowed breaking through this restriction were the advances in dynamic recompilation techniques. Simple a priori translation of emulated program code into code runnable on the host architecture
5775-583: A rechargeable battery or battery compartment. This allows the unit to be carried around and played anywhere, in contrast to a home game console. Examples include the Game Boy , the PlayStation Portable , and the Nintendo 3DS . Hybrid video game consoles are devices that can be used either as a handheld or as a home console. They have either a wired connection or docking station that connects
5940-525: A rotating basis. Examples of such services include the Xbox network , PlayStation Network , and Nintendo Switch Online . Certain consoles saw various add-ons or accessories that were designed to attach to the existing console to extend its functionality. The best example of this was through the various CD-ROM add-ons for consoles of the fourth generation such as the TurboGrafx CD, Atari Jaguar CD , and
6105-503: A single chip, otherwise known as a system on a chip (SoC), which is a further reduction in size and cost. In addition, consoles tend to focus on components that give the unit high game performance, such as the CPU and GPU, and as a tradeoff to keep their prices in expected ranges, use less memory and storage space compared to typical personal computers. In comparison to the early years of the industry, where most consoles were made directly by
6270-402: A single horizontal series of pixels across the page), referring to the configuration of the print head. In the 1970s and '80s, dot matrix printers were one of the more common types of printers used for general use, such as for home and small office use. Such printers normally had either 9 or 24 pins on the print head (early 7 pin printers also existed, which did not print descenders ). There was
6435-501: A single typeface at one time, although bolding and underlining of text could be done by "overstriking", that is, printing two or more impressions either in the same character position or slightly offset. Impact printers varieties include typewriter-derived printers, teletypewriter-derived printers, daisywheel printers, dot matrix printers, and line printers. Dot-matrix printers remain in common use in businesses where multi-part forms are printed. An overview of impact printing contains
6600-403: A software implementation. Even in emulators that treat each device as a special case, there is usually a common basic infrastructure for: Emulation is one strategy in pursuit of digital preservation and combating obsolescence . Emulation focuses on recreating an original computer environment, which can be time-consuming and difficult to achieve, but valuable because of its ability to maintain
6765-478: A sought-after feature across many consoles that followed. Backward compatibility functionality has included direct support for previous console games on the newer consoles such as within the Xbox console family, the distribution of emulated games such as Nintendo 's Virtual Console , or using cloud gaming services for these older games as with the PlayStation Now service. Consoles may be shipped in
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6930-435: A special incentive for its fans. Pack-in games are typically first-party games, often featuring the console's primary mascot characters . The more recent console generations have also seen multiple versions of the same base console system either offered at launch or presented as a mid-generation refresh. In some cases, these simply replace some parts of the hardware with cheaper or more efficient parts, or otherwise streamline
7095-803: A specialized form of a home computer geared towards video game playing, designed with affordability and accessibility to the general public in mind, but lacking in raw computing power and customization. Simplicity is achieved in part through the use of game cartridges or other simplified methods of distribution, easing the effort of launching a game. However, this leads to ubiquitous proprietary formats that create competition for market share. More recent consoles have shown further confluence with home computers, making it easy for developers to release games on multiple platforms. Further, modern consoles can serve as replacements for media players with capabilities to play films and music from optical media or streaming media services. Video game consoles are usually sold on
7260-405: A specific machine. The simplest form of a CPU simulator is an interpreter , which is a computer program that follows the execution flow of the emulated program code and, for every machine code instruction encountered, executes operations on the host processor that are semantically equivalent to the original instructions. This is made possible by assigning a variable to each register and flag of
7425-471: A standard, unified I/O API can, however, rival such simpler models, if well thought-out, and they have the additional advantage of "automatically" providing a plug-in service through which third-party virtual devices can be used within the emulator. A unified I/O API may not necessarily mirror the structure of the real hardware bus: bus design is limited by several electric constraints and a need for hardware concurrency management that can mostly be ignored in
7590-551: A tradition in Japan, and this had already proven successful in arcade games like Pac-Man . Mario was used to serve as an identity for the NES as a humor-filled, playful console. Mario caught on quickly when the NES released in the West, and when the next generation of consoles arrived, other manufacturers pushed their own mascots to the forefront of their marketing, most notably Sega with
7755-481: A variation of buttons to perform other in-game actions such as jumping or interacting with the game world. Though controllers have become more featured over the years, they still provide less control over a game compared to personal computers or mobile gaming. The type of controller available to a game can fundamentally change the style of how a console game will or can be played. However, this has also inspired changes in game design to create games that accommodate for
7920-454: A variety of configurations, but typically will include one base configuration that include the console, one controller, and sometimes a pack-in game . Manufacturers may offer alternate stock keeping unit (SKUs) options that include additional controllers and accessories or different pack-in games. Special console editions may feature unique cases or faceplates with art dedicated to a specific video game or series and are bundled with that game as
8085-432: A virtual power source, this would be a highly unusual solution. Emulators typically stop at a simulation of the documented hardware specifications and digital logic. Sufficient emulation of some hardware platforms requires extreme accuracy, down to the level of individual clock cycles, undocumented features, unpredictable analog elements, and implementation bugs. This is particularly the case with classic home computers such as
8250-403: Is Zink (a portmanteau of "zero ink"). The following technologies are either obsolete, or limited to special applications though most were, at one time, in widespread use. Impact printers rely on a forcible impact to transfer ink to the media. The impact printer uses a print head that either hits the surface of the ink ribbon, pressing the ink ribbon against the paper (similar to the action of
8415-406: Is a device for making a three-dimensional object from a 3D model or other electronic data source through additive processes in which successive layers of material (including plastics, metals, food, cement, wood, and other materials) are laid down under computer control. It is called a printer by analogy with an inkjet printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing
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#17327725253558580-561: Is commonly known as the bank card format. Card printers are controlled by corresponding printer drivers or by means of a specific programming language. Generally card printers are designed with laminating, striping, and punching functions, and use desktop or web-based software. The hardware features of a card printer differentiate a card printer from the more traditional printers, as ID cards are usually made of PVC plastic and require laminating and punching. Different card printers can accept different card thickness and dimensions. The principle
8745-468: Is distinct from simulating execution of binary code, which is software emulation. The first functional simulator was written by Autonetics about 1960 for testing assembly language programs for later execution in military computer D-17B . This made it possible for flight programs to be written, executed, and tested before D-17B computer hardware had been built. Autonetics also programmed a functional simulator for testing flight programs for later execution in
8910-516: Is divided into modules that correspond roughly to the emulated computer's subsystems. Most often, an emulator will be composed of the following modules: Buses are often not emulated, either for reasons of performance or simplicity, and virtual peripherals communicate directly with the CPU or the memory subsystem. It is possible for the memory subsystem emulation to be reduced to simply an array of elements each sized like an emulated word; however, this model fails very quickly as soon as any location in
9075-405: Is important for such applications to be properly emulated. Most emulators do not, as mentioned earlier, emulate the main system bus ; each I/O device is thus often treated as a special case, and no consistent interface for virtual peripherals is provided. This can result in a performance advantage, since each I/O module can be tailored to the characteristics of the emulated device; designs based on
9240-413: Is kept in a code cache , and the original code is not lost or affected; this way, even data segments can be (meaninglessly) translated by the recompiler, resulting in no more than a waste of translation time. Speed may not be desirable as some older games were not designed with the speed of faster computers in mind. A game designed for a 30 MHz PC with a level timer of 300 game seconds might only give
9405-512: Is legal, Nintendo is recognized to be highly protective of any attempts to emulate its systems and has taken early legal actions to shut down such projects. To help support older games and console transitions, manufacturers started to support backward compatibility on consoles in the same family. Sony was the first to do this on a home console with the PlayStation 2 which was able to play original PlayStation content, and subsequently became
9570-606: Is less than ±0.1%. (All laser printers have an accuracy of ±1%.) Worldwide, most survey offices used this printer before color inkjet plotters become popular. Liquid ink electrostatic printers were mostly available in 36 to 54 inches (910 to 1,370 mm) width and also 6 color printing. These were also used to print large billboards. It was first introduced by Versatec, which was later bought by Xerox . 3M also used to make these printers. Pen-based plotters were an alternate printing technology once common in engineering and architectural firms. Pen-based plotters rely on contact with
9735-474: Is often forgotten is resistance to alteration: liquid ink , such as from an inkjet head or fabric ribbon, becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so documents printed with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with toner or solid inks, which do not penetrate below the paper surface. Cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of
9900-445: Is rare in real emulators for performance reasons (it is generally faster to use a subroutine to do the work of an interrupt). Interpreters are very popular as computer simulators, as they are much simpler to implement than more time-efficient alternative solutions, and their speed is more than adequate for emulating computers of more than roughly a decade ago on modern machines. However, the speed penalty inherent in interpretation can be
10065-404: Is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their components, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems . Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from the users, presenting instead an abstract computing platform. At its origins, the software that controlled virtualization was called
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#173277252535510230-506: Is the same for practically all card printers: the plastic card is passed through a thermal print head at the same time as a color ribbon. The color from the ribbon is transferred onto the card through the heat given out from the print head. The standard performance for card printing is 300 dpi (300 dots per inch, equivalent to 11.8 dots per mm). There are different printing processes, which vary in their detail: Broadly speaking there are three main types of card printers, differing mainly by
10395-492: Is these procedures' duty to map every access to the correct location of the correct object. On a base-limit addressing system where memory from address 0 to address ROMSIZE-1 is read-only memory, while the rest is RAM, something along the line of the following procedures would be typical: The CPU simulator is often the most complicated part of an emulator. Many emulators are written using "pre-packaged" CPU simulators, in order to concentrate on good and efficient emulation of
10560-458: Is universally accepted, one breakdown of generations, showing representative consoles, of each is shown below. Home video game consoles are meant to be connected to a television or other type of monitor, with power supplied through an outlet. This requires the unit to be used in a fixed location, typically at home in one's living room. Separate game controllers, connected through wired or wireless connections, are used to provide input to
10725-402: Is usually impossible because of several reasons: Various forms of dynamic recompilation, including the popular Just In Time compiler (JIT) technique, try to circumvent these problems by waiting until the processor control flow jumps into a location containing untranslated code, and only then ("just in time") translates a block of the code into host code that can be executed. The translated code
10890-452: The 650 on the 705 . In addition to simulators, IBM had compatibility features on the 709 and 7090 , for which it provided the IBM 709 computer with a program to run legacy programs written for the IBM 704 on the 709 and later on the IBM 7090. This program used the instructions added by the compatibility feature to trap instructions requiring special handling; all other 704 instructions ran
11055-631: The Bally Astrocade and APF-M1000 using tape drives, as well as the Disk System for the Nintendo Famicom, and the Nintendo 64DD for the Nintendo 64, but these had limited applications, as magnetic media was more fragile and volatile than game cartridges. In addition to built-in internal storage, newer consoles often give the consumer the ability to use external storage media to save game date, downloaded games, or other media files from
11220-538: The Commodore 64 , whose software often depends on highly sophisticated low-level programming tricks invented by game programmers and the " demoscene ". In contrast, some other platforms have had very little use of direct hardware addressing, such as an emulator for the PlayStation 4. In these cases, a simple compatibility layer may suffice. This translates system calls for the foreign system into system calls for
11385-485: The Game Boy Advance , saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This led to an effort by console manufacturers to stop unofficial emulation, but consistent failures such as Sega v. Accolade 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation 203 F.3d 596 (2000), and Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem 214 F.3d 1022 (2000), have had
11550-511: The IBM 3270 or VT100 and many others are no longer produced as physical devices. Instead, software running on modern operating systems simulates a "dumb" terminal and is able to render the graphical and text elements of the host application, send keystrokes and process commands using the appropriate terminal protocol. Some terminal emulation applications include Attachmate Reflection , IBM Personal Communications , and Micro Focus Rumba. Other types of emulators include: Typically, an emulator
11715-539: The Magnavox Odyssey and the home console version of Pong , and more recently have been used for retro style consoles such as the NES Classic Edition and Sega Genesis Mini . Dedicated consoles were very popular in the first generation until they were gradually replaced by second generation that use ROM cartridges . The fourth generation gradually merged with optical media . During
11880-548: The Microvision in 1979 and Game & Watch in 1980, and the concept was fully realized by the Game Boy in 1989. Both home and handheld consoles have become more advanced following global changes in technology. These technological shifts include improved electronic and computer chip manufacturing to increase computational power at lower costs and size, the introduction of 3D graphics and hardware-based graphic processors for real-time rendering, digital communications such as
12045-514: The NES Classic Edition , Sega Genesis Mini and also handheld retro consoles such as the Nintendo Game & Watch color screen series. Early console hardware was designed as customized printed circuit boards (PCB)s, selecting existing integrated circuit chips that performed known functions, or programmable chips like erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) chips that could perform certain functions. Persistent computer memory
12210-702: The Sega CD . Other examples of add-ons include the 32X for the Sega Genesis intended to allow owners of the aging console to play newer games but has several technical faults, and the Game Boy Player for the GameCube to allow it to play Game Boy games. Consumers can often purchase a range of accessories for consoles outside of the above categories. These can include: Console or game development kits are specialized hardware units that typically include
12375-533: The Xbox One family, Microsoft released the mid-generation Xbox One X as a higher performance console, the Xbox One S as the lower-cost base console, and a special Xbox One S All-Digital Edition revision that removed the optical drive on the basis that users could download all games digitally, offered at even a lower cost than the Xbox One S. In these cases, developers can often optimize games to work better on
12540-614: The 1970s and 1980s were about US$ 200−300 , and with the introduction of the ROM cartridge, each game averaged about US$ 30−40 . Over time the launch price of base consoles units has generally risen to about US$ 400−500 , with the average game costing US$ 60 . Exceptionally, the period of transition from ROM cartridges to optical media in the early 1990s saw several consoles with high price points exceeding US$ 400 and going as high as US$ 700 . Resultingly, sales of these first optical media consoles were generally poor. When adjusted for inflation,
12705-890: The 1980s using the games' original 1980s machine code and data, which is interpreted by a current-era system, and to emulate old video game consoles (see video game console emulator ). A hardware emulator is an emulator which takes the form of a hardware device. Examples include the DOS-compatible card installed in some 1990s-era Macintosh computers, such as the Centris 610 or Performa 630 , that allowed them to run personal computer (PC) software programs and field-programmable gate array -based hardware emulators . The Church-Turing thesis implies that theoretically, any operating environment can be emulated within any other environment, assuming memory limitations are ignored. However, in practice, it can be quite difficult, particularly when
12870-401: The 1990s and into the 2000s has largely displaced the need for printing as a means of moving documents, and a wide variety of reliable storage systems means that a "physical backup" is of little benefit today. Starting around 2010, 3D printing became an area of intense interest, allowing the creation of physical objects with the same sort of effort as an early laser printer required to produce
13035-409: The CPU may slow the system down. If a math coprocessor is not installed or present on the CPU, when the CPU executes any co-processor instruction it will make a determined interrupt (coprocessor not available), calling the math emulator routines. When the instruction is successfully emulated, the program continues executing. Logic simulation is the use of a computer program to simulate the operation of
13200-485: The Channel F, nearly all game consoles have featured the ability to purchase and swap games through some form, through those forms have changes with improvements in technology. While magnetic storage , such as tape drives and floppy disks , had been popular for software distribution with early personal computers in the 1980s and 1990s, this format did not see much use in console system. There were some attempts, such as
13365-484: The Coleco Telstar , which led other third-party manufacturers, using inexpensive General Instruments processor chips, to make their own home consoles which flooded the market by 1977. The video game crash of 1983 was fueled by multiple factors including competition from lower-cost personal computers, but unregulated competition was also a factor, as numerous third-party game developers, attempting to follow on
13530-466: The Internet, wireless networking and Bluetooth, and larger and denser media formats as well as digital distribution. Following the same type of Moore's law progression, home consoles are grouped into generations; each lasting approximately five years. Consoles within each generation share similar specifications and features, such as processor word size . While no one grouping of consoles by generation
13695-455: The X- and Y-axes, by a mechanism, and the selected letter form was struck by a hammer. Others used a type cylinder in a similar way as the Selectric typewriters used their type ball. In either case, the letter form then struck a ribbon to print the letterform. Most teleprinters operated at ten characters per second although a few achieved 15 CPS. Daisy wheel printers operate in much the same fashion as
13860-571: The Xbox 360, Xbox One, Nintendo 3DS, etc. Generally such emulators make currently impossible claims such as being able to run Xbox One and Xbox 360 games in a single program. As computers and global computer networks continued to advance and emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Fifth generation consoles such as Nintendo 64 , PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as
14025-402: The commands received from the CPU as the original program would. Developers of software for embedded systems or video game consoles often design their software on especially accurate emulators called simulators before trying it on the real hardware. This is so that software can be produced and tested before the final hardware exists in large quantities, so that it can be tested without taking
14190-405: The company itself. Microsoft and Nintendo both use this approach to their consoles, while Sony maintains all production in-house with the exception of their component suppliers. Some of the commons elements that can be found within console hardware include: All game consoles require player input through a game controller to provide a method to move the player character in a specific direction and
14355-447: The company selling the console, many consoles of today are generally constructed through a value chain that includes component suppliers, such as AMD and NVidia for CPU and GPU functions, and contract manufacturers including electronics manufacturing services , factories which assemble those components into the final consoles such as Foxconn and Flextronics . Completed consoles are then usually tested, distributed, and repaired by
14520-552: The comparatively limited controls available on consoles. Controllers have come in a variety of styles over the history of consoles. Some common types include: Numerous other controller types exist, including those that support motion controls , touchscreen support on handhelds and some consoles, and specialized controllers for specific types of games, such as racing wheels for racing games , light guns for shooting games , and musical instrument controllers for rhythm games . Some newer consoles also include optional support for
14685-496: The complete imitation of a machine executing binary code while "simulation" often refers to computer simulation , where a computer program is used to simulate an abstract model. Computer simulation is used in virtually every scientific and engineering domain and Computer Science is no exception, with several projects simulating abstract models of computer systems, such as network simulation , which both practically and semantically differs from network emulation. Hardware virtualization
14850-458: The computer's logical memory does not match physical memory . This clearly is the case whenever the emulated hardware allows for advanced memory management (in which case, the MMU logic can be embedded in the memory emulator, made a module of its own, or sometimes integrated into the CPU simulator). Even if the emulated computer does not feature an MMU, though, there are usually other factors that break
15015-473: The console to install additional functionality, voiding the manufacturer's warranty. Plug-and-play consoles usually come with the console unit itself, one or more controllers, and the required components for power and video hookup. Many recent plug-and-play releases have been for distributing a number of retro games for a specific console platform. Examples of these include the Atari Flashback series ,
15180-599: The console unit to a television screen and fixed power source, and the potential to use a separate controller. However, they can also be used as a handheld. While prior handhelds like the Sega Nomad and PlayStation Portable , or home consoles such as the Wii U , have had these features, some consider the Nintendo Switch to be the first true hybrid console. Most consoles are considered programmable consoles and have
15345-399: The console's design for production going forward; the PlayStation 3 underwent several such hardware refreshes during its lifetime due to technological improvements such as significant reduction of the process node size for the CPU and GPU. In these cases, the hardware revision model will be marked on packaging so that consumers can verify which version they are acquiring. In other cases,
15510-427: The console's design, and will be sold at a high cost to the developer as part of keeping this confidentiality. Newer consoles that share features in common with personal computers may no longer use specialized dev kits, though developers are still expected to register and purchase access to software development kits from the manufacturer. For example, any consumer Xbox One can be used for game development after paying
15675-477: The console. Early iterations of external storage were achieved through the use of flash-based memory cards , first used by the Neo Geo but popularized with the PlayStation. Nintendo continues to support this approach with extending the storage capabilities of the 3DS and Switch, standardizing on the current SD card format. As consoles began incorporating the use of USB ports, support for USB external hard drives
15840-455: The consumer, all related to Moore's law of technological improvements. For the consoles of the 1980s to 1990s, these improvements were evident in the marketing in the late 1980s to 1990s during the "bit wars", where console manufacturers had focused on their console's processor's word size as a selling point. Consoles since the 2000s are more similar to personal computers, building in memory, storage features, and networking capabilities to avoid
16005-409: The design and development of new systems. It eases the development process by providing the ability to detect, recreate and repair flaws in the design even before the system is actually built. It is particularly useful in the design of multi-core systems, where concurrency errors can be very difficult to detect and correct without the controlled environment provided by virtual hardware. This also allows
16170-410: The development of new systems specifically for computer use. In the 1980s there were daisy wheel systems similar to typewriters, line printers that produced similar output but at much higher speed, and dot-matrix systems that could mix text and graphics but produced relatively low-quality output. The plotter was used for those requiring high-quality line art like blueprints . The introduction of
16335-582: The development process of "home brew" DIY demos and in the creation of new games for older systems. The Internet has helped in the spread of console emulators, as most - if not all - would be unavailable for sale in retail outlets. Examples of console emulators that have been released in the last few decades are: RPCS3 , Dolphin , Cemu , PCSX2 , PPSSPP , ZSNES , Citra , ePSXe , Project64 , Visual Boy Advance , Nestopia , and Yuzu . Due to their popularity, emulators have been impersonated by malware. Most of these emulators are for video game consoles like
16500-428: The display device. Even with more advanced integrated circuits (IC)s of the time, designers were limited to what could be done through the electrical process rather than through programming as normally associated with video game development . Improvements in console hardware followed with improvements in microprocessor technology and semiconductor device fabrication . Manufacturing processes have been able to reduce
16665-467: The early 1970s. Ralph H. Baer devised the concept of playing simple, spot-based games on a television screen in 1966, which later became the basis of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Inspired by the table tennis game on the Odyssey, Nolan Bushnell , Ted Dabney , and Allan Alcorn at Atari, Inc. developed the first successful arcade game , Pong , and looked to develop that into a home version, which
16830-418: The emulated binary machine's language , some other hardware (such as input or output devices) must be provided in virtual form as well; for example, if writing to a specific memory location should influence what is displayed on the screen, then this would need to be emulated. While emulation could, if taken to the extreme, go down to the atomic level, basing its output on a simulation of the actual circuitry from
16995-401: The end of the twentieth century. Line printers print an entire line of text at a time. Four principal designs exist. In each case, to print a line, precisely timed hammers strike against the back of the paper at the exact moment that the correct character to be printed is passing in front of the paper. The paper presses forward against a ribbon which then presses against the character form and
17160-505: The equivalence between logical and physical memory: many (if not most) architectures offer memory-mapped I/O ; even those that do not often have a block of logical memory mapped to ROM , which means that the memory-array module must be discarded if the read-only nature of ROM is to be emulated. Features such as bank switching or segmentation may also complicate memory emulation. As a result, most emulators implement at least two procedures for writing to and reading from logical memory, and it
17325-433: The exact behavior of the system to be emulated is not documented and has to be deduced through reverse engineering . It also says nothing about timing constraints; if the emulator does not perform as quickly as it did using the original hardware, the software inside the emulation may run much more slowly (possibly triggering timer interrupts that alter behavior). "Can a Commodore 64 emulate MS-DOS ?" Yes, it's possible for
17490-444: The feature size on chips (typically measured in nanometers ), allowing more transistors and other components to fit on a chip, and at the same time increasing the circuit speeds and the potential frequency the chip can run at, as well as reducing thermal dissipation . Chips were able to be made on larger dies , further increasing the number of features and effective processing power. Random-access memory became more practical with
17655-607: The game. Early examples include the Atari 2600 , the Nintendo Entertainment System , and the Sega Genesis ; newer examples include the Wii U , the PlayStation 5 , and the Xbox Series X . A microconsole is a home video game console that is typically powered by low-cost computing hardware, making the console lower-priced compared to other home consoles on the market. The majority of microconsoles, with
17820-405: The hardware changes create multiple lines within the same console family. The base console unit in all revisions share fundamental hardware, but options like internal storage space and RAM size may be different. Those systems with more storage and RAM would be marked as a higher performance variant available at a higher cost, while the original unit would remain as a budget option. For example, within
17985-423: The hardware lockout chips and sell without paying any royalties to Nintendo, such as by Atari in its subsidiary company Tengen . This licensing approach was similarly used by most other cartridge-based console manufacturers using lockout chip technology. With optical media, where the console manufacturer may not have direct control on the production of the media, the developer or publisher typically must establish
18150-523: The hardware of older consoles that allow games from that console to be run. The development of software emulators of console hardware is established to be legal, but there are unanswered legal questions surrounding copyrights , including acquiring a console's firmware and copies of a game's ROM image , which laws such as the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act make illegal save for certain archival purposes. Even though emulation itself
18315-409: The hardware, either by being programmed via the circuitry or set in the read-only flash memory of the console. Thus, the console's game library cannot be added to or changed directly by the user. The user can typically switch between games on dedicated consoles using hardware switches on the console, or through in-game menus. Dedicated consoles were common in the first generation of home consoles, such as
18480-437: The head had moved one dot spacing in the time. The vertical dot position was controlled by a synchronized longitudinally ribbed platen behind the paper that rotated rapidly with a rib moving vertically seven dot spacings in the time it took to print one pixel column. 24-pin print heads were able to print at a higher quality and started to offer additional type styles and were marketed as Near Letter Quality by some vendors. Once
18645-402: The higher density of transistors per chip, but to address the correct blocks of memory , processors needed to be updated to use larger word sizes and allot for larger bandwidth in chip communications. All these improvements did increase the cost of manufacturing, but at a rate far less than the gains in overall processing power, which helped to make home computers and consoles inexpensive for
18810-479: The higher-performance console with patches to the retail version of the game. In the case of the Nintendo 3DS , the New Nintendo 3DS , featured upgraded memory and processors, with new games that could only be run on the upgraded units and cannot be run on an older base unit. There have also been a number of "slimmed-down" console options with significantly reduced hardware components that significantly reduced
18975-481: The host system e.g., the Linux compatibility layer used on *BSD to run closed source Linux native software on FreeBSD and NetBSD . For example, while the Nintendo 64 graphic processor was fully programmable, most games used one of a few pre-made programs, which were mostly self-contained and communicated with the game via FIFO ; therefore, many emulators do not emulate the graphic processor at all, but simply interpret
19140-478: The importance of a decentralized and deinstitutionalized process for the preservation of digital culture. In many cases, the goal of emulation in new media art is to preserve a digital medium so that it can be saved indefinitely and reproduced without error, so that there is no reliance on hardware that ages and becomes obsolete. The paradox is that the emulation and the emulator have to be made to work on future computers. Emulation techniques are commonly used during
19305-468: The impression of the character form is printed onto the paper. Each system could have slight timing issues, which could cause minor misalignment of the resulting printed characters. For drum or typebar printers, this appeared as vertical misalignment, with characters being printed slightly above or below the rest of the line. In chain or bar printers, the misalignment was horizontal, with printed characters being crowded closer together or farther apart. This
19470-442: The later part of video game history, there have been specialized consoles using computing components to offer multiple games to players. Most of these plug directly into one's television, and thus are often called plug-and-play consoles. Most of them are also considered dedicated consoles since it is generally impossible to access the computing components by an average consumer, though tech-savvy consumers often have found ways to hack
19635-405: The letter form then struck a ribbon which was pressed against the paper, printing one character at a time. The maximum speed of the Selectric printer (the faster of the two) was 15.5 characters per second. The common teleprinter could easily be interfaced with the computer and became very popular except for those computers manufactured by IBM . Some models used a "typebox" that was positioned, in
19800-464: The limitations of the past. The confluence with personal computers eased software development for both computer and console games, allowing developers to target both platforms. However, consoles differ from computers as most of the hardware components are preselected and customized between the console manufacturer and hardware component provider to assure a consistent performance target for developers. Whereas personal computer motherboards are designed with
19965-615: The liquid ink on a rotating, oil coated drum. The paper then passes over the print drum, at which time the image is immediately transferred, or transfixed, to the page. Solid ink printers are most commonly used as color office printers and are excellent at printing on transparencies and other non-porous media. Solid ink is also called phase-change or hot-melt ink and was first used by Data Products and Howtek, Inc., in 1984. Solid ink printers can produce excellent results with text and images. Some solid ink printers have evolved to print 3D models, for example, Visual Impact Corporation of Windham, NH
20130-591: The low-cost laser printer in 1984, with the first HP LaserJet , and the addition of PostScript in next year's Apple LaserWriter set off a revolution in printing known as desktop publishing . Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, but at quality levels formerly available only from commercial typesetting systems. By 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed; expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered
20295-419: The means for the player to switch between different games. Traditionally, this has been done by switching a physical game cartridge or game card or by using optical media . It is now common to download games through digital distribution and store them on internal or external digital storage devices. Some consoles are considered dedicated consoles , in which games available for the console are "baked" onto
20460-639: The median household income, based on the United States Census data for the console's launch year. Since the Nintendo Entertainment System, console pricing has stabilized on the razorblade model , where the consoles are sold at little to no profit for the manufacturer, but they gain revenue from each game sold due to console licensing fees and other value-added services around the console (such as Xbox Live ). Console manufacturers have even been known to take losses on
20625-400: The method used to print onto the card. They are: Different ID Card Printers use different encoding techniques to facilitate disparate business environments and to support security initiatives. Known encoding techniques are: There are basically two categories of card printer software: desktop-based, and web-based (online). The biggest difference between the two is whether or not a customer has
20790-401: The military computer D-37C . Video game console emulators are programs that allow a personal computer or video game console to emulate another video game console. They are most often used to play older 1980s to 2000s-era video games on modern personal computers and more contemporary video game consoles. They are also used to translate games into other languages, to modify existing games, and in
20955-463: The most common type of computer printer used by consumers. Solid ink printers, also known as phase-change ink or hot-melt ink printers, are a type of thermal transfer printer , graphics sheet printer or 3D printer . They use solid sticks, crayons, pearls or granular ink materials. Common inks are CMYK -colored ink, similar in consistency to candle wax, which are melted and fed into a piezo crystal operated print-head. A Thermal transfer printhead jets
21120-571: The needed tools for free after validating the small development size and needs of the team. Similar licensing concepts apply for third-party accessory manufacturers. Consoles, like most consumer electronic devices, have limited lifespans. There is great interest in preservation of older console hardware for archival and historical purposes, as games from older consoles, as well as arcade and personal computers, remain of interest. Computer programmers and hackers have developed emulators that can be run on personal computers or other consoles that simulate
21285-417: The needs for allowing consumers to add their desired selection of hardware components, the fixed set of hardware for consoles enables console manufacturers to optimize the size and design of the motherboard and hardware, often integrating key hardware components into the motherboard circuitry itself. Often, multiple components, such as the central processing unit and graphics processing unit, can be combined into
21450-562: The next console generation. While numerous manufacturers have come and gone in the history of the console market, there have always been two or three dominant leaders in the market, with the current market led by Sony (with their PlayStation brand), Microsoft (with their Xbox brand), and Nintendo (currently producing the Switch console). Previous console developers include Sega , Atari , Coleco , Mattel , NEC , SNK , Fujitsu , and 3DO . The first video game consoles were produced in
21615-569: The opposite effect. According to all legal precedents, emulation is legal within the United States. However, unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country-specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention . Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. , 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as
21780-464: The other hand, the mechanical components of line printers operate with tight tolerances and require regular preventive maintenance (PM) to produce a top quality print. They are virtually never used with personal computers and have now been replaced by high-speed laser printers . The legacy of line printers lives on in many operating systems , which use the abbreviations "lp", "lpr", or "LPT" to refer to printers. Liquid ink electrostatic printers use
21945-639: The paper (but not impact, per se) and special purpose pens that are mechanically run over the paper to create text and images. Since the pens output continuous lines, they were able to produce technical drawings of higher resolution than was achievable with dot-matrix technology. Some plotters used roll-fed paper, and therefore had a minimal restriction on the size of the output in one dimension. These plotters were capable of producing quite sizable drawings. A number of other sorts of printers are important for historical reasons, or for special purpose uses. Printers can be connected to computers in many ways: directly by
22110-416: The player 30 seconds on a 300 MHz PC. Other programs, such as some DOS programs, may not even run on faster computers. Particularly when emulating computers which were "closed-box", in which changes to the core of the system were not typical, software may use techniques that depend on specific characteristics of the computer it ran on (e.g. its CPU's speed) and thus precise control of the speed of emulation
22275-399: The pressure of the print head to be applied to a stack of two or more forms to print multi-part documents such as sales invoices and credit card receipts using continuous stationery with carbonless copy paper . It also has security advantages as ink impressed into a paper matrix by force is harder to erase invisibly. Dot-matrix printers were being superseded even as receipt printers after
22440-436: The price of consoles has generally followed a downward trend, from US$ 800−1,000 from the early generations down to US$ 500−600 for current consoles. This is typical for any computer technology, with the improvements in computing performance and capabilities outpacing the additional costs to achieve those gains. Further, within the United States, the price of consoles has generally remained consistent, being within 0.8% to 1% of
22605-511: The price of inkjet printers dropped to the point where they were competitive with dot matrix printers, dot matrix printers began to fall out of favour for general use. Some dot matrix printers, such as the NEC P6300, can be upgraded to print in color. This is achieved through the use of a four-color ribbon mounted on a mechanism (provided in an upgrade kit that replaces the standard black ribbon mechanism after installation) that raises and lowers
22770-559: The price they could sell the console to the consumer, but either leaving certain features off the console, such as the Wii Mini that lacked any online components compared to the Wii , or that required the consumer to purchase additional accessories and wiring if they did not already own it, such as the New-Style NES that was not bundled with the required RF hardware to connect to a television. Consoles when originally launched in
22935-462: The printing business to Xerox in 2001. A dye-sublimation printer (or dye-sub printer) is a printer that employs a printing process that uses heat to transfer dye to a medium such as a plastic card , paper, or canvas . The process is usually to lay one color at a time using a ribbon that has color panels. Dye-sub printers are intended primarily for high-quality color applications, including color photography; and are less well-suited for text. While once
23100-470: The production of game cartridges with its lockout chips and optical media for its systems, and thus charges the developer or publisher for each copy it makes as an upfront fee. This also allows Nintendo to review the game's content prior to release and veto games it does not believe appropriate to include on its system. This had led to over 700 unlicensed games for the NES, and numerous others on other Nintendo cartridge-based systems that had found ways to bypass
23265-463: The production of season tickets, for the production of school and college identity cards as well as for the production of national ID cards. The choice of print technology has a great effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of documents, and noise. Some printer technologies do not work with certain types of physical media, such as carbon paper or transparencies . A second aspect of printer technology that
23430-530: The province of high-end print shops, dye-sublimation printers are now increasingly used as dedicated consumer photo printers. Thermal printers work by selectively heating regions of special heat-sensitive paper. Monochrome thermal printers are used in cash registers, ATMs , gasoline dispensers and some older inexpensive fax machines. Colors can be achieved with special papers and different temperatures and heating rates for different colors; these colored sheets are not required in black-and-white output. One example
23595-526: The ribbons as needed. Color graphics are generally printed in four passes at standard resolution, thus slowing down printing considerably. As a result, color graphics can take up to four times longer to print than standard monochrome graphics, or up to 8-16 times as long at high resolution mode. Dot matrix printers are still commonly used in low-cost, low-quality applications such as cash registers , or in demanding, very high volume applications like invoice printing. Impact printing, unlike laser printing, allows
23760-498: The sale of consoles at the start of a console's launch with expectation to recover with revenue sharing and later price recovery on the console as they switch to less expensive components and manufacturing processes without changing the retail price. Consoles have been generally designed to have a five-year product lifetime , though manufacturers have considered their entries in the more recent generations to have longer lifetimes of seven to potentially ten years. The competition within
23925-419: The same advantages as a laser printer in terms of flexibility, but produced somewhat lower-quality output (depending on the paper) from much less-expensive mechanisms. Inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot-matrix and daisy-wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s, high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the $ 100 price point and became commonplace. The rapid improvement of internet email through
24090-480: The same components as the console and additional chips and components to allow the unit to be connected to a computer or other monitoring device for debugging purposes. A console manufacturer will make the console's dev kit available to registered developers months ahead of the console's planned launch to give developers time to prepare their games for the new system. These initial kits will usually be offered under special confidentiality clauses to protect trade secrets of
24255-451: The same game on a different console for a period of two years. This served as one of the first means of securing console exclusivity for games that existed beyond technical limitation of console development. The Nintendo Entertainment System also brought the concept of a video game mascot as the representation of a console system as a means to sell and promote the unit, and for the NES was Mario . The use of mascots in businesses had been
24420-428: The same on a 7090. The compatibility feature on the 1410 only required setting a console toggle switch, not a support program. In 1963, when microcode was first used to speed up this simulation process, IBM engineers coined the term "emulator" to describe the concept. In the 2000s, it has become common to use the word "emulate" in the context of software. However, before 1980, "emulation" referred only to emulation with
24585-410: The simulated CPU. The logic of the simulated CPU can then more or less be directly translated into software algorithms, creating a software re-implementation that basically mirrors the original hardware implementation. The following example illustrates how CPU simulation can be accomplished by an interpreter. In this case, interrupts are checked-for before every instruction executed, though this behavior
24750-683: The software development to take place before the hardware is ready, thus helping to validate design decisions and give a little more control. The word "emulator" was coined in 1963 at IBM during development of the NPL ( IBM System/360 ) product line, using a "new combination of software , microcode , and hardware ". They discovered that simulation using additional instructions implemented in microcode and hardware, instead of software simulation using only standard instructions, to execute programs written for earlier IBM computers dramatically increased simulation speed. Earlier, IBM provided simulators for, e.g.,
24915-617: The storefront – again gaining access to the console's branding and logo – with the manufacturer taking its cut of each sale as its royalty. In both cases, this still gives console manufacturers the ability to review and reject games it believes unsuitable for the system and deny licensing rights. With the rise of indie game development , the major console manufacturers have all developed entry level routes for these smaller developers to be able to publish onto consoles at far lower costs and reduced royalty rates. Programs like Microsoft's ID@Xbox give developers most of
25080-684: The success of Activision in developing third-party games for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision, flooded the market with poor quality games, and made it difficult for even quality games to sell. Nintendo implemented a lockout chip, the Checking Integrated Circuit , on releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System in Western territories, as a means to control which games were published for the console. As part of their licensing agreements, Nintendo further prevented developers from releasing
25245-415: The time to copy the program to be debugged at a low level and without introducing the side effects of a debugger . In many cases, the simulator is actually produced by the company providing the hardware, which theoretically increases its accuracy. Math co-processor emulators allow programs compiled with math instructions to run on machines that do not have the co-processor installed, but the extra work done by
25410-524: The user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. To mitigate this however, several emulators for platforms such as Game Boy Advance are capable of running without a BIOS file, using high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy. Terminal emulators are software programs that provide modern computers and devices interactive access to applications running on mainframe computer operating systems or other host systems such as HP-UX or OpenVMS . Terminals such as
25575-522: The video game console market as subset of the video game industry is an area of interest to economics with its relatively modern history, its rapid growth to rival that of the film industry, and frequent changes compared to other sectors. Effects of unregulated competition on the market were twice seen early in the industry. The industry had its first crash in 1977 following the release of the Magnavox Odyssey, Atari's home versions of Pong and
25740-410: The wax tends to repel inks from pens , and are difficult to feed through automatic document feeders , but these traits have been significantly reduced in later models. This type of thermal transfer printer is only available from one manufacturer, Xerox , manufactured as part of their Xerox Phaser office printer line. Previously, solid ink printers were manufactured by Tektronix , but Tektronix sold
25905-411: Was a mechanically driven apparatus by Charles Babbage for his difference engine in the 19th century; however, his mechanical printer design was not built until 2000. The first patented printing mechanism for applying a marking medium to a recording medium or more particularly an electrostatic inking apparatus and a method for electrostatically depositing ink on controlled areas of a receiving medium,
26070-490: Was also added, such as with the Xbox 360. With Internet-enabled consoles, console manufacturers offer both free and paid-subscription services that provide value-added services atop the basic functions of the console. Free services generally offer user identity services and access to a digital storefront, while paid services allow players to play online games, interact with other uses through social networking, use cloud saves for supported games, and gain access to free titles on
26235-603: Was as clear and crisp as a typewriter. The fastest letter-quality printers printed at 30 characters per second. The term dot matrix printer is used for impact printers that use a matrix of small pins to transfer ink to the page. The advantage of dot matrix over other impact printers is that they can produce graphical images in addition to text; however the text is generally of poorer quality than impact printers that use letterforms ( type ). Dot-matrix printers can be broadly divided into two major classes: Dot matrix printers can either be character -based or line-based (that is,
26400-434: Was estimated to be about US$ 3−10 per unit in 2012. With additional fees, such as branding rights, this has generally worked out to be an industry-wide 30% royalty rate paid to the console manufacturer for every game sold. This is in addition to the cost of acquiring the dev kit to develop for the system. The licensing fee may be collected in a few different ways. In the case of Nintendo, the company generally has controlled
26565-403: Was expensive, so dedicated consoles were generally limited to the use of processor registers for storage of the state of a game, thus limiting the complexities of such titles. Pong in both its arcade and home format, had a handful of logic and calculation chips that used the current input of the players' paddles and resisters storing the ball's position to update the game's state and send it to
26730-738: Was in 1962 by C. R. Winston, Teletype Corporation, using continuous inkjet printing. The ink was a red stamp-pad ink manufactured by Phillips Process Company of Rochester, NY under the name Clear Print. This patent (US3060429) led to the Teletype Inktronic Printer product delivered to customers in late 1966. The first compact, lightweight digital printer was the EP-101 , invented by Japanese company Epson and released in 1968, according to Epson. The first commercial printers generally used mechanisms from electric typewriters and Teletype machines. The demand for higher speed led to
26895-427: Was much less noticeable to human vision than vertical misalignment, where characters seemed to bounce up and down in the line, so they were considered as higher quality print. Line printers are the fastest of all impact printers and are used for bulk printing in large computer centres. A line printer can print at 1100 lines per minute or faster, frequently printing pages more rapidly than many current laser printers. On
27060-600: Was released in 1975. The first consoles were capable of playing only a very limited number of games built into the hardware. Programmable consoles using swappable ROM cartridges were introduced with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976, though popularized with the Atari 2600 released in 1977. Handheld consoles emerged from technology improvements in handheld electronic games as these shifted from mechanical to electronic/digital logic, and away from light-emitting diode (LED) indicators to liquid-crystal displays (LCD) that resembled video screens more closely. Early examples include
27225-424: Was started by retired Howtek employee, Richard Helinski whose 3D patents US4721635 and then US5136515 was licensed to Sanders Prototype, Inc., later named Solidscape, Inc. Acquisition and operating costs are similar to laser printers . Drawbacks of the technology include high energy consumption and long warm-up times from a cold state. Also, some users complain that the resulting prints are difficult to write on, as
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