What I mean by this, is that under Elate/AmigaOS, a device driver's job is to take non-specific
code and convert it to the specific code required for a hardware device - ie, the OS tells the PIL
of some graphics task that needs to be performed and the device driver for the system's graphics
card contains the necessary information about the hardware to convert this information into code the
graphics card will understand.
What I mean by "backwards" is, can a device driver be used to convert specific graphics card code
into the non-specific variety ? The idea I'm trying to get at is Emulation.
Imagine a PC Emulator for AmigaOS that is not only capable of running MSDOS/Windows programs at
just under native speed, but also pretend the PC you're emulating has whatever hardware you want -
regardless of what your actual system has. eg - You have a system with XXX graphics card, but a
MSWindows game you've been dying to play is greatly enhanced by having a YYY graphics card. You set
your "Elate/AmigaOS PC Emulator" to pretend to have YYY graphics card, and it uses the YYY graphics
device driver "backwards" to convert the code from the MSWindows game, then the XXX to "do it's
best" with your current hardware. The uses of this become more evident when running Elate/AmigaOS
on more "foreign" systems like a PowerPC based Classic Amiga (when it's available) where the
graphics card is quite different.
Any thoughts on if this will work ? And if so, will it work well ? And if not, why not ?
I haven't purchased the SDK yet due to a lack of money - but in the next few weeks I'll be buying
a midrange PC for the hardware and then a couple of weeks after that I should be able to get the
SDK. I do however think that if my idea could work, it's a little above my skill level of coding
and the idea would be much better done by someone else - the idea is freeware but if someone does do
it based on this idea, I'd at least appreciate a free copy of the program, and maybe a mention in the credits :)
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