> Even though a gate provided by an fpga is hardware, it's totally different hardware from that same gate in a native ic.

And the ez80 is totally different hardware than a classic z80. It seems like a religious argument that a z80 core implemented on an FPGA, offering exactly the same registers and features as a classic z80, is somehow less "real" than the ez80 (which doesn't offer the exact same features as a z80) simply because the FPGA might (or might not) be reprogrammable to a different set of gates.

> You just get a very similar outward effect, IE, a very good emulation.

An emulator is a thing that exists in the world, and this is not it. Someone in another thread mentioned implementing a z80 on an ESP32. That is an emulator.

> This conversation is stupid.

Insofar as it's about terminology... yeah, okay, your word.