Re: The Apple II is crap

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

M. Pender wrote:

>Changing the time required to perform instructions as a function of the
>machine architecture *inherently* changes how code works.  Timing critical
>code had to be written so it would take the same time whether the first word
>of a pair of parameters was on an odd word boundary or an even word boundary
>when a 16-bit data bus was used, vis the 8-bit data bus of the 8088.  That's
>a HUGE difference.

That code runs without change is a first-order fact.
The speed at which it runs is second-order.

Consider that later, wider implementations are always significantly
faster than their predecessors.  As a result, even old code which is
decidedly non-optimal for the new implementation usually runs at
least as fast as it did on its narrower-implementation predecessor.

Timing-critical code is a different thing entirely, and the IBM PC
always had hardware that could be used to create, or at least
calibrate, a real-time delay, independent of processor speed.

-michael

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