Hi everyone!
The other day I was wondering how many of you still use real CPC hardware on a regular basis. My impression is that most of us use emulators for a couple of reasons mostly to do with some sort of convenience, but is that actually true?
only real hardware is real!.. but emulators have their place…convenience mostly.. its a PITA firing up the real CPC and making sure the expansions work after sitting for a while etc etc..
Hardware is king, the emulators are handy, I use Caprice32 to help debugging, but, as I’ve found, it won’t pick up everything you will see on other emulators or hardware, so has to be to real thing I reckon.
The reason I prefer emulation is the convenience. I keep my 6128 keyboard around my workspace for nostalgia. I do wish to set the CPC up at some point. I am not sure my CTM works anymore though. 
I find the actual keyboards are solid, I have a multitude of Monitors that are unhappy, bloody difficult finding someone willing to work on them now though .. no one wants to touch the CRT’s 
Real hardware as much as I can. I use emulation a lot for development though
Yeah and the problem with CRTs is that, certain CRTC tricks will not work as intended without displaying on one; and then not all CRTs are suitable for the job. A long time ago there was mention of a few models other than Amstrad ones that could do it properly, but I cannot pinpoint them.
Also, I vaguely remember somebody developing a dongle that worked as an intermediate between the CPC and a ‘normal’ monitor to properly display the register outputs. Was that for real, or did I dream about it?
I use an intermediate layout: MiSTer FPGA on CRT screen. It’s not the real thing but basically the same experience. Less space occupied in desktop and many other platforms in the same device.
Interesting, so real CPCs seem to be alive and kicking 
I had not expected that share tbh
When actively developing in the last couple of years, I mostly had my 6128 with M4 around so I could send the current prod to it over wifi, super convenient and a killer feature of the M4. And I wanted it to work (and sound) properly on the real thing, not just the emulator.
For developing, emulator. For playing, real hardware. For testing, both.
The poll is extremely limited and I can’t select any of those choices as they don’t fit.
To give a game a try I always use emulation first. Also for development I usually use an emulator and rarely the real hardware.
But without the real hardware it would no longer be interesting at all and imho playing on the real thing is much more fun.
Obviously at an event, you always have to use real hardware!!! Later, to show videos on YouTube, real hardware if possible too, but that involves a lot of logistics to capture the video!!
There are demos and games that will always look better on the original hardware!!!
But obviously sometimes you can’t have the original machine, you feel like playing or testing something, and you use an emulator, and for testing purposes an emulator comes in handy!!!
Besides, I’d add, it’s always good to test the final product on a real CPC, because sometimes it turns out it doesn’t work, hehe.
How ironic. As a huge fan I never desecrated Relentless or Corsair Trainer by playing them on something other than a CRT. And never will
I am utterly sorry to disappoint you 
But it seems that it was useful to most people here - and for me
I have played Relentless (albeit on green screen) on the 464 we had on display at the office among other platforms, because most of us were retro geeks and occasionally fired up games and demos (well, mostly on the Amiga for the latter). But that was many years ago and I’ve been working from home since, so… emulators it is!
In the past, Axelay had been sending me photographs from his CTM so I could get an idea of how my graphics actually looked on the real thing. Eventually the ‘real-thing-look’ became hard-coded in my brain, so I know without needing to actually look at it. But I do need a setup at some point, just for the warm feeling. 
You need a third option there - “Hardware all the way until the kid took over the available space”
Usually real hardware, especially when I know exactly what I want to play or what I want to do.
When I want to test things out or I’m short on time or patience, I use MiSTer. They recently released a fork of the official Amstrad core with support for the Plus range, so lately I’ve been using it for that too.
