Hardware Simulation

Question

I'm working on a software project intended for recuperating old specific hardware, mostly for non-for-profit organizations and poor schools.

I need a way to simulate old hardware so I can test the application before shipping it out.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You might want to check out Emulator Zone, and emulator is a good google search term you might not have tried.

Answer 2

I'm not sure exactly what the question is asking for. I think you are asking for a way to emulate certain HW?

If that is the case, I've used QEMU in the past, and it has worked great.

Answer 3

Use virtual machines? Prepare the images reflecting (more or less) the state of the target machines (speed, hardware, etc). And use them for testing the deployment?

Answer 4

Well. If the old hardware is communicating via RS232, then write a class that wraps the RS232 commands and make the class inject the messages the old hardwares would respond. In your program, work against that class instead of real rs232-port and just change instance to real rs232 before shipping.

I have done this succesfully in a project and it worked out really good and its not that complicated that you can think.