Summary
The conclusion is simple. The AWOW AK41 is more than capable of emulating all the popular home computers at high frame rates.
Emulators are legal. The problem is when the emulator is used in conjunction with a ROM image, either of a game or of the firmware (the firmware file is essentially a copy of the original code used to boot the home computer).
It’s important to remember to respect copyright law. Some game developers for home computers are willing to allow users to download their games. For some home computers, this is more common than you might think (e.g. ZX Spectrum) And for some home computers there’s a good range of homebrew games to enjoy as well.
Remember the copyright position doesn’t just apply to the games themselves. To emulate the home computers, you often need to have access to the operating system and firmware. These are still under copyright. But it’s possible to legally obtain these files (for example if you actually own the home computer itself), and there can be legimitate versions of the ROMs developed.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – FS-UAE
Page 3 – ZEsarUX & Hatari
Page 4 – Clock Signal
Page 5 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| AWOW AK41 Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Week 11 | Video consoles: SNES emulation |
| Week 10 | Running TeamViewer with AWOW AK41 as the host |
| Week 9 | Astronomy on the AK41 including Celestia, Stellarium, Skychart, and more |
| Week 8 | Recording video with OBS Studio |
| Week 7 | Home computer emulators: FS-UAE, ZEsaurUX, Hatari, Clock Signal |
| Week 6 | Web browsing with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Vivaldi |
| Week 5 | Gaming: SuperTuxKart, AwesomeNauts, Retrocycles, Robocraft, DOTA 2, and more |
| Week 4 | Run multiple operating systems on the AK41 |
| Week 3 | Video and audio playback looking at hardware acceleration |
| Week 2 | Benchmarking the AK41 with 3 other low power machines |
| Week 1 | Introduction to the series including wiping Windows and installing Manjaro |
This blog is written on the AWOW AK41 Mini PC.
Thanks for the series about the AWOW mini PC, very informative.