Re: Apple II benchmarks

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20000603112338.03127.00001448@ng-ck1.aol.com>,
Supertimer <supertimer@aol.com> wrote:
 
> I am convinced now that we see history through our
> own experiences.  After all, why is every time
> someone mentions "Apple II"  you think of an
> Apple II+ in CP/M mode
 
I do think of an Apple II, II++ or possibly IIe or IIc, but
not necessarily in CP/M mode.  The II+, IIe and IIc
were all upgrades of the original II, with basically the
same performance.
 
> while to me I think of a IIGS?
 
Dunno ... but I wonder, if you mean IIgs, why don't you say "IIgs"
instead of just "II" ?  The IIgs was really a quite different
machine, with a II compatibility mode.  I would want to claim that
the IIgs differed more from the II than the /// did, however you
never refer to the /// as "II", do you?  After all, the /// too
could run Apple II programs....
 
> And why is it that every time someone mentions "PC"
> I think of a PC Transporter card in a IIGS in Turbo XT
> emulation (80186 compatible) and you think of a PC
> with a math coprocessor chip?
 
Probably because the coprocessor was, to me, a very important reason
to switch to the PC.  Remove the coprocessor from the PC, and I would
look elsewhere for decent floating-point performance.  Yes, there are
some of us who actually do use computers for computations -- while it
seems to be a dying art, it's not yet completely dead... :-)
 
>>>> and it still had an 8-bit external bus.  I remember
>>>> quite well how my 6 MHz Z80 card in the Apple II often outperformed
>>>> the 4.77 MHz PC, except on floating-point intensive code, where the
>>>> 8087 in the PC did give a speed advantage the Apple II was unable to
>>>> catch up on.
>>> 
>>> Of course that isn't a comparison between an Apple II and a PC, but
>>> between the CP/M computer in the Apple and the PC.
>> 
>> Sorry, but it was still an Apple II: it used the Apple II's bus and
>> memory, and *all* I/O operations were done using the 6502.  No standard
>> CP/M disk format could be read -- all CP/M disks had to be in Apple II
>> disk format.
> 
> Hmm.  Then, Paul, all your comparisons are invalid.  You
> know why?  All you said about the PC = Apple II.  Why?
> Because I can plug a PC Transporter into your Apple II+
> and it would still be an Apple II but an Apple II using an
> 80186 compatible processor!  ;-)
 
...and an 8-bit data bus, which would limit the memory and I/O throughput
quite drastically.  Nowadays a "PC" includes those Pentium-III machines
and I *don't* think you'll be able to locate a P-III add-on board for
your Apple II.... :-))))
 
> Oh, an in the PCT, I/O operations except for video and
> optionally drives are also done using the 6502, 65C02
> or 65C816 depending on the Apple II model.  The PCT's
> hard drive is the Apple II's hard drive if you had one.
> The disk could be an Apple II disk drive if your MS-DOS
> programs were in Apple II format OR you can connect
> your Apple drive directly to the PCT and it would read
> PC format disks.  The video was CGA, directly from
> the PC although a video mixer allows both videos to
> display on the IIGS.  On an 8-bit Apple II, the video goes
> through the Apple II motherboard out the same
> composite output as your Apple II video.
 
All in all: matters may get quite confusing, unless you specify
the precise conditions.
 
>>> But take an Apple II that had a numeric coprocessor board installed
>>> (and there were such available) and it might have blown the doors off
>>> the Intel 8087 equipped machine too.
>> 
>> Sorry, but the Apple II didn't "blow the door off" the 4.77 MHz PC
>> without coprocessor -- rather it was able to sometimes keep up with
>> the PC.  Equipping the Apple II with some coprocessor would hardly
>> "blow the door off" an 8087 equipped 4.77 MHz PC either, since you
>> still had that 8-bit data bus, on the Apple II as on the 4.77 MHz PC.
> 
> I'm sorry, but this may be true if all you intend to do is
> crunch numbers for a specific purpose (astronomy?)
 
Yep.....
 
> but for normally application users, the Apple II was
> very often faster.  I know this because I remember
> being turned off by 4.77Mhz PC speed but found 1Mhz
> Apple IIe quite acceptable.
 
I guess this biouls down to a discussion about the semantics
of the phrase "blow the doors off...".  To me, that phrase implies
being at least an order of magnitude faster than, not just a little
faster than.
 
>> Also: the only coporcessors I ever saw for the Apple II did only
>> single-precision FP arithmetic (4-byte IEEE format), and to me it was
>> essential to have greater precision than that.  To me, the 5-byte FP
>> format of Applesoft was barely enough, the 6-byte FP format of early
>> versions of Turbo Pascal was OK, and the 8-byte IEEE double precision
>> format is fine.  But the 4-byte IEEE single-precision format was just
>> not enough for me - therefore I frowned at those coprocessors for the
>> Apple II that I saw.
> 
> Maybe if you waited a year or two.  After that Mac
> was released, Apple II coprocessor cards using the
> 68881 chip appeared.  These Motorolla based FP
> cards had what you wanted.
 
The 8087 offered one advantage though: 10-byte reals.  The Motorola
68881 only had up to 8-byte reals.  Sometimes that extra precision
was nice to have -- sadly, 10-byte real support seems to have been
dropped in the Win-32 environment, therefore I still have 16-bit
PC environments handy for such needs.
 
Also: you cannot expand the Apple II forever; at one point you'll
have to switch motherboard as well, i.e. move on to another computer.
Besices the coprocessor, the PC offered another nice advantage: a
diskette format which became standard.  Before the era of CD-ROM's, I
obtained much data on PC diskettes from various places.  I even
helped a few friends with Mac's to transfer these data to their
diskette formats (this was when the Mac still used GCR on their
diskettes).
 
But you're quite right that the performance of the "vanilla"
"non-turbo" XT and clones was quite disappointing at times - here
we are in full agreement.
 
>>If it was an early spreadsheet, it may have been written in assembly
>>language which had been machine translated from 8080 assembly to
>>8086/8088 assembly.  Such programs were quite common in the early PC
>>days: while it allowed a quick migration of software from CP/M to the
>>PC, performance did indeed suffer.
> 
> Early PC programs were SO slow and that PCT is
> constantly reminding me.  I am sure it has to do with
> both hardware and software problems and the fact that
> the IBM name was enough to sell the computers and
> competitive speed was not really necessary.
> 
> For the Apple II, programmers have a history of doing
> the best work they can.  Optimization is an obsessive
> trait in the average Apple II programmer.  That's why
> AppleWorks (the 8-bit version) has always been a very
> quick program.
>
> WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus, Multiplan?  I shudder
> to think of the speed on 4.77Mhz PCs.  But I remember
> using 8-bit AppleWorks on a 1MB Apple IIe quite
> fondly.
> 
> Thus, assuming you are right that CPU wise the
> 65C02 can only often keep up with the 4.77Mhz 8086.
> Well, that is more than enough to make almost ALL
> Apple IIe applications faster than almost ALL 4.77Mhz
> PC applications BECAUSE of the better programmers
> in the Apple II world and the better programming styles.
> And that was what happened.
 
I would like to see that claim backed up with real benchmark
figures on actual applications.  Coud you do that?
 
Remember that the same optimization tricks which worked on the Apple
II worked equally well on the PC: do as little as you can, and do it
as quickly as you can.  There were assembly language wizards in the
PC world too, but they rarely produced products which were sold in
shrink-wrapped packages.  Nevertheless they were there, and you could
obtain them through various sources.  I remember e.g. "PC Magazine"
used to have code for compactly coded programs, usually in assembler,
some 10-15 years ago.  I still have some of them around, e.g. a
full-screen editor in an executable file only 2K large!
 
Also, remember that it's all too easy to becaome a "religious zealot"
in favor of the system you fancy.  Earlier you claimed:
 
  "Well, that is more than enough to make almost ALL Apple IIe
  applications faster than almost ALL 4.77Mhz PC applications BECAUSE
  of the better programmers in the Apple II world and the better
  programming styles."
 
Such a sweeping generalisation is almost certainly false, and if you
want to appear balanced, you should refrain from saying them, unless
you can back them up with facts.  There were good programmers and
bad programmers in the PC world as well as in the Apple II world.
Compare e.g. Borland's Turbo Pascal ver 1.0 with Apple Pascal for
an eye-opener....
 
BTW there are very few "4.77 MHz PC applications", because almost all
applications which ran on 4.77 MHz PC's also ran fine on faster PC's
(OK, some had problems on 200+ MHz PC's....); therefore almost no PC
applications required a 4.77 MHz PC.
 
-- 
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