
Apple2fpga: Reconstructing an Apple II+ on an FPGA (2008) - luu
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/apple2fpga/
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js2
I'm surprised there's no mention of the Mega II which was essentially a IIe on
an ASIC and was designed by Apple as early as 1984:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_II)

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Quequau
It's a pity those chips aren't around anymore because I suspect that if folks
could use them as a basis for an Raspberry Pi-esque DIY Apple IIe it might be
really popular.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
The scaling of marginal vs. NRE costs (not to mention core-limited vs. pad-
limited chip area) has put us in the somewhat odd situation that it's actually
cheaper to crank out an SoC capable of running an emulator than it is to
implement the thing you want in < 1% of the transistors.

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cable2600
This brings back memories.

The Commodore 65 was a prototype of a faster C64 with Amiga like graphics and
sound.

[http://mega65.org/](http://mega65.org/)

The Mega65 is a clone of the C65 with a 50mhz 4510 CPU using FPGA as well.

They should all share notes.

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katastic
It's always impressive to me that it takes a 233 MHz(+) processor to emulate a
1 MHz one.

I think modern N64 emulators need at least a 2 GHz processor. (Less for ARM
ala RPI, IIRC due to similarities in the instruction set.) And there's even an
SNES emulator (BSNES) that needs >3 GHZ but it's schtick is that it aims to be
completely accurate.

*Obviously these are not hard numbers. The point is the order-of-magnitude.

~~~
flohofwoe
Most of the processing power in modern 'cycle-perfect' emulators goes into
other parts than the CPU and needs to run at a higher frequency than the
emulated CPU. Usually the video hardware is the most expensive.

80's home computers are essentially lock-stepped multi-processor systems,
where the CPU is just one processor, the others are (at least) the audio- and
video-generator.

Especially the video generator can become expensive, since it needs at least
be fast enough to generate a new line every 64 microseconds, and if the video
generator has things like programmable resolution, color palette and sprites
(which a lot of 8-bit home computers had), this can be quite a lot of
"unpredictable" work per pixel.

Since all those 'special processors' ran synchronized per clock cycle, it is
impossible or at least very hard to write efficiently multi-threaded
emulators, since they would need to synchronize threads after each emulated
clock cycle (it might actually be a bit easier for newer emulated systems
where subsystems are often not synchronized that strictly).

Earlier emulators from the 90's often got away by skipping some of the 'cycle
perfect' requirements and/or implemented some clever but complicated hacks
which didn't really emulate the original hardware, that's why they could still
run many games on much slower host hardware.

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russellbeattie
Just think... Woz designed this thing when he was 26. Amazing.

~~~
colejohnson66
26 is a bit on the high end. Mark Zuckerburg was just shy of 20 when he
created `thefacebook.com', and Bill Gates was about 19 1/2 when he founded
Microsoft. But I’m not disregarding the achievement; Larry Page and Sergey
Brin were about 25 when they founded Google.

~~~
katastic
I'd say it's a lot easier to create a website than it is to create a computer
in the 70's.

~~~
russellbeattie
Written in PHP no less... Zuckerburg is nothing like Woz in terms of technical
knowledge, acumen and ability. The comparision is almost an insult.

~~~
colejohnson66
Nowhere in my post did I compare their projects. I compared their age. And
there’s nothing wrong with using PHP as a framework for your website.
Mediawiki is written in PHP and Wikimedia’s websites (including Wikipedia) run
on Mediawiki. Just because a language is bad doesn’t mean the projects written
in them are bad. Also, AFAIK, Facebook doesn’t run on PHP anymore.

~~~
Lievelingsduif
I think everybody's acting offended because you're comparing their ages when
they made something successful, not what they made.

The what is a huge nuance, I personally think Zuckerberg would be able to
create a device like this at this point in time.

While you were just comparing ages you accidentally bundled achievements and
that's a big no no.

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smegel
Believe it or not there is still a quarterly publication dedicated to the
apple ii

[https://juiced.gs](https://juiced.gs)

~~~
js2
Holy moly, there's still a yearly KansasFest! And you can get an Apple II
ethernet card:

[http://www.a2retrosystems.com/](http://www.a2retrosystems.com/)

I'm gobsmacked. Maybe I gave up on my Apple II too soon!

~~~
univacky
Oh, man, we're just looking at the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. There is a
ton of new hardware for Apple 2s - replacement power supplies, sound cards,
coprocessor cards, solid state floppy emulators, VGA drivers, and even FPGA
cards (Carte Blanche).

There is also new software being written for the Apple 2 - take a look at Nox
Archaist, for example: [http://www.6502workshop.com/p/nox-
archaist.html](http://www.6502workshop.com/p/nox-archaist.html)

