Sorgelig wrote:If you don't need verilog but just decapping, then you have more luck.
Let me be clear: I don’t mean we don’t need Verilog, I’m very fascinated by FPGA emulation/replica, I feel a basic pleasure in its elegant rawness. But I think that decapping based documentation would be the definitive base for preservation, HDL transistor level recreation and cycle accurate emulation (and in a few decades, transistor level software recreation).
Sorgelig wrote:High resolution shots of 68000 and some Amiga chips are floating on internet.
I didn't know. But does it exists an organized, well coordinated repository for all this work? I see many organized projects in the emulation world (MAME, Higan, Libretro, ecc.), but the FPGA emulation/replica and documentation world seems to be rather scattered. MiSTer resembles me the most organized project, even being mostly a one-man show for now; reading other threads I think that porting MiSTer to other boards would make it gain the status of platform transcending the binds to a specific hardware implementation.
Sorgelig wrote:There are many better implementations of said chips in verilog,
What do you mean by “better implementations of said chips”? Verilog implementations of the original functions better optimized and performing than the original integrated circuit design or higher fidelity transistor level replica of the original designs than available open source implementations?
Sorgelig wrote:but authors usually don't want to make them opensource.
I see high level of drama in sagas like the jwdonald’s and pgate1’s ones. I mean: I’m not against closed source, I have my own software company, me, my partners and my employees live thanks to the earnings produced by closed source software. However, if you spend so many time in a spare time/hobby project, and you don’t find a way to monetize it in a reasonable time and if events dictates the non-profitability of your project, why don’t open source your job and make it outlast yourself and your interest? If your hobby can buy you a new house good for you, but if it can’t, admit it and don’t thrash it.
Sorgelig wrote: I envy your optimism on open source. I'm more pessimistic since i'm in this area some time already.
I'm not so optimist in general; but I see great minds and resources at work in the retrocomputing/gaming world, and good photographic documentation seems to me the natural next step, the holy grail of preservation, along with functional documentation (in the form of open source emulators) and formal hardware description (in the form of HDL implementation/replica).
Locutus73