From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: =?UTF-8?B?YWzDrXJpbyBleW5n?= <alirioeyng@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use
 non-free software
Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2016 19:43:42 +0000
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On 4/9/16, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:
> al=C3=ADrio eyng <alirioeyng@gmail.com> wrote:
>> so mame is not just an emulator.
>> it is a emulator, disassembler and debugger.
...
>> is there a similar environment to a current architecture?
> community/qtspim 9.1.17-2
>     New user interface for spim, a MIPS simulator.
not really.
mame is a _machine code_ emulator, disassembler and debugger.
spim is an _assembly_ emulator and debugger.

assembly from disassembled _machine code_ can be used for reverse
engineering, detecting bugs on assemblers/compilers, ...
assembly _source code_ has meaningful labels, comments... like [0];
but you wont get it by reverse engineering itself, although you can
write it later.

spim isn't a tool for reverse engineering, although it can help after
using a disassembler.

but this question was already addressed by mame itself supporting
current architectures.
ignoring the trademark, for the purposes of this discussion:
a mame version with only support for current architectures (i386, z80,
...) would be like qemu.
a mame version with only support for obsolete architectures with some
free software depending on it would be like wine.
a mame version with only support for obsolete architectures without
free software depending on it would be like ndiswrapper.

[0]https://github.com/garoa/GunSmoke/blob/master/homebrew/maincpu.asm