Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: James Russell Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Software roms Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 09:26:47 +0100 Organization: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Lines: 31 Message-ID: <3580E647.B472F665@scee.sony.co.uk> References: <357FD9F3.5F1B@livemedia.co.uk> <357FFD23.F5671FD5@scee.sony.co.uk> <01bd958e$4e2b5800$f30b0a0a@Angela1.intelligent-group.com> <358091d9.12244996@news.scea.sony.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: camfw01.millennium.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; I) Matthew Hulett wrote: > > Hello, > I was just reading about MAME and software ROMS. At least I now > know that MAME is an arcade game emulator... > Of course, to me, ROM is read-only memory... What is a software > ROM? What is a visual ROM? The nomenclature isn't exactly standard, so at a guess I'd say a software ROM is just a PC file containing the contents of a ROM chip. I'm not sure what a visual ROM is, but a flash ROM is like a normal ROM, but you can change its contents whenever you feel like it and it will remain like that even after power-off. > In addition, is it unethical to use them because it is a piece of > software that a company should be getting profits and royalties from > the sale of? Yes, it is. Especially since some companies are now releasing their old titles (retrogaming is _big_ fad) on platforms such as the PSX and PC. They'll lose money because of these emulators. The emulators themselves aren't illegal, but having a copy of the game ROM is when you don't own the game ROM. However, some companies don't care. Many Sinclair Spectrum programmers have stated that they don't mind their programs/roms being freely distributed, almost 17 years after they first came out. Cheers, James