Reimplementation aside, the other option is to have the end user procure his or her own copy of the BIOS. Reimplementing the BIOS may seem senseless at first, much like reinventing the wheel, but is often a necessary procedure when the copyright holders of the original BIOS refuse to license the BIOS to the emulator's developers so that they can use that version in the emulator - as is often the case. The first is to reimplement the BIOS from the ground up: to rewrite the BIOS, in other words, despite the fact that a perfectly good BIOS (i.e., the one was implemented in the original system) already exists. The developers of emulators for these systems have two options when it comes to simulating the BIOS. As mentioned in a previous section, emulators for some systems - like the Amiga and Macintosh - must be able to simulate that system's BIOS to function properly. What exactly are the emulators that all this debate is about? This section examines a few specific examples of modern software emulators and takes a look at their respective legal statuses.Ī sidenote that may be helpful in reading this: there are two main types of emulators, those that use a copied BIOS and those that use a reimplemented BIOS.
