On the Ultima Dragons Facebook Chapter, Dee DæGraaffe linked to a bit.ly article bundle (maintained by Aiera commenter xyzzy/Lady D.D. Dragon) containing links to a most interesting study done by students at the University of Texas.

As xyzzy puts it:

Students at the University of Texas used Ultima II for an interesting study on game preservation, looking into both the technical hurdles (difficulties copying disks, finding adequate emulators, etc.) and the impacts of using original hardware to play the game vs. an emulator. One link is to a blog entry that acts as an overview of the project, the other is to the detailed final report.

You can find the final report by the three students who worked on the project here; it’s a worthwhile read.

There is also a blog entry at Continuous Play (the blog of the University of Texas/ Videogame Archive, which I believe is located in Austin), which summarizes the project’s scopeand findings.