Benoit was in at the very early stages of emulation on the Acorn, writing his Woz (Apple][) and Trash80 (TRS80) emulators before emulation had come to the forefront of Acorn user's attention.
Where do you live?
I live in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, France.
Are there many Acorn users in France?
I can only talked about who I am in touch with. I think the Armada mail-list counts about 40 individuals in France, Belgium, Swiss and generally french speaking tradition countries. I am also a member of the FRAUG (French Acorn User Group) for which the 20 members used to meet every week in Paris.
When were you first introduced to emulation?
In 1987, for the first time, I saw a working emulator: it was a software only emulator working on an Amiga. Just like the Acorn PC emulator, it emulated a 8088 CPU and the usual 40/80 column colour text displays, called PCTask (I think). Later I purchased a strange device from Commodore named a "SideCar" which was a hardware emulator (but I disgress...).
When did you first start working on Woz?
The oldest file on my oldest backup archive displays a timestamp of February 1990 (this is the ROM image file). This means that the previous BASIC release was about that time too (say begin of year 1990).
Had you seen any other emulators on the Acorn before you started Woz?
Oh yes, I've seen some advertising papers about the Acorn platform and the software available from AcornSoft. I remember there was a Pascal Compiler, a BCPL compiler, a LISP interpreter, an Assembly language developemnt tool, a C compiler, and a PC software emulator -- the text claims that it can run a bit faster than a true hardware PC/XT at that time. I also remember that those packages were rather expensive (which partly explained why I began to work on !Woz using the free BBC BASIC interpreter).
Why did you write Woz?
There are more than one reason:
1) Partly because I had serious software and data which I would like to
always use on ONE platform and would like to apply the Acorn graphics abilities
(eg. graphics printing, doing graphs on "old" but still living
Apple data files.
2) Partly because I recognized in the "Acorn world" the same
adventurous spirit than the one which was there in the Apple and the Amiga
galaxies of the beginnings. And the environment (both developpent and from
a user point of view) was very much to my liking: in a few words: no luxurious
complexity, keep it simple and (not so) stupid.
3) Writing an emulator was a challenge to me as I did'nt know much of the
system internals at that time. The emulator was a project which would allow
me to familiarize with the ARM chipset without going too much in the system
libraries. (Though !Woz doesn't perform any hardware direct access).
When did you start Trash80?
July 92
How come Trash80 followed woz so soon?
A friend of mine (Jean Marc Levasseur) wrote a program (named !Voyager) to read the Amstrad CPC disk data (both at the track/sector level and at the file level). When he advises me that his work was nearly completed, I asked him if he could do the same for the TRS80 disks. I provided him with enough technical details about the disk format and organisation. As I was aware that the track/level transfer module would be ready earlier. I think that I had to prepare an environment for using the results (disk image files). That's why I developed !Trash80. The TRS80 Model 1 was my first computer I bought with my brother back in 1982.
Were you tempted to improve the emulation and try and make it more complete?
I have some ideas about how the emulation could be improved (Currently
a ToDo like file is part of the distribution. here are the headlines:
Support for interrupts (real time interrupt about 60 times per seconds)
Support for graphics (a Sprite file exists in the currrent distribution;
however, it is currently incomplete).
Support for disk images
Better documentation.
Optimisation.
Have you ever written/attempted any other emulators?
Other emulators attempted:
68000
P code (as used in the Pascal UCSD Apple distribution)
What was your favourite software on the Apple][ or Trs80?
TRS80 user serious software: Scripsit (from Radio Shack): this is a
word processing program;
TRS80 developpemnt software: Microsoft EDTASM + ; SouthernSoftware Accel
3 (BASIC compiler);
TR80 games: Big 5 software titles (Attack force + Robots); Duel N Droids
(Chris Kristoferson);
Apple //e user serious software: AppleWriter; AppleWorks;
Apple //e developpement software: Merlin 8/16 assembler (Glen Bredon -
RWP); ZBASIC compiler
Apple //e games: Ultima 4 and 5 (Origin); Karateka (Broderbund Software);
LodeRunner
Have you been surprised by the growth of emulation in recent months?
In the help file in the current distribution of !Woz, I wrote that emulation allow people to buy the wrong computer. Does it mean that more and more people who bought an Acorn Computer think they had? I've changed my mind about this assumption, however I still believe that the Acorn platform is ideal for emulation, and I am not suprised that more target platforms are being covered in these days. Example given: Acorn recently showed interest in emulating 16/8 bit platforms for providing console game playing to Internet users (using native format plugins or java applets).
What computers and consoles have you owned?
"Desktop" Computers: A TRS80 Model 1; A TRS80 Model 4; An Oric 1 (6502 based) (given back to a friend because of a malfunction due to heat); An Atari 800 XL; Two Apple //e; An Apple //c; An Amiga 1000 with the sidecar; An Amiga 2000 Model B; An Archimedes A440/1; An Acorn A4; An Acorn SA RISC PC; A HP Pavilion PC;
Consoles and "pocket computers": Sega Master; Lynx; HP48SX; HP48GX; Newton Messagepad 110
Do you use any other emulators?
In addition to !Woz and !Trash80 for the Acorn platforms:
On my A4 and Archimedes, I use the Acorn PC software emulator; On my SA
RISC PC, I use the UAE emulator and !Virtu; On my HP PC, I use AppleWin
and ApplePC emulators (in addition to UAE).
What sort of response have you have from other Acorn users?
As the !Woz public release did not include copyrigthed material, some users contacted me to obtain an electronic copy of them provided that they provide a proof of purchase of their Apple computer. Along with these, some were submitting contribution like Mr Jackson who designed the template for a potential !Woz FrontEnd (included in the current release but not operational at this time). Regarding the !Trash80 emulator, I guess that most people consider it mainly as a hack because they do not know much about the target platform.
Is there any chance of continued development?
As I have put the source files on the distribution media, chances for potential developpements by third parties are high. Occasionally, I might like to play a game or some other software titles that does require a feature not available in the emulator. If I find out that I have some spare time, then why not?