Re: Another cassette: Apple-80 (at least, it is real)

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Egan Ford <datajerk@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/27/12 3:51 PM, Antoine Vignau wrote:
>> Yep, it is real, for once. Readable, digitized and now available at
>> http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/, my latest acquisition: Apple-80, an 8080
>> simulator for the Apple II.
> 
> As always, thanks for sharing!
> 
> I created a small benchmark to test the performance (computing Pi to 100 digits).
> 
> Pi100 takes 1.62 seconds with a 2 Mhz 8080.
> 
> 1.51 seconds with a 2 MHz Z-80 SoftCard (same 8080 binary).
> 
> With Apple80 @ 1Mhz, 233 seconds (same 8080 binary with a modified echo).
>  ~144x wall clock time.  I originally wanted to do 1000, but it would
> have taken ~6.5 hours.
> 
> Native 6502 performance for 100 digits is 1.16 seconds.

A factor of 200x (emulated 8080 / native 6502) is quite large. I would
expect an emulator written for performance to do about ten times better. 

Therefore, it seems likely that Dann's emulator is written more for
tutorial purposes, with performance not a serious consideration. 

-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon