A MIST-y Amiga
by Francesco Sblendorio (translation by Ignazio Palmisano ) Let’s say it, us old computer enthusiasts have an unescapable problem, which will sooner or later come to the fore. Time goes by, and things break because of wear: we can replace broken parts, but these components are no longer manufactured. A ‘soft’ solution is software emulators: this way, we can keep ‘safe’ (to an extent; entropy affects unused components as well) our precious, ancient machines and use modern computers emulating them. But, obviously, the ‘feel’, the pleasure of working with the real machine, is lost with software emulators. There is a middle ground between new machines and old, original ones: hardware emulation. This is made possible by FPGA ( Field Programmable Gate Array ) technology: it consists of integrated circuits whose functions can be programmed via software. Basically, at boot the FPGA circuits are loaded with code that let the chip behave the same way as the traditional chip whose functional