"Emulating the 6502 is in itself is a significant undertaking so this phase took on the order of a week or two."
Don't know if the author was bragging or what, but it reminds me of the fact that Woz designed and created all of the hardware and software for the original Apple and Apple II. Nicely done for it's time. I wonder if anyone can create something would be equivalent to today's systems.
Author here. I meant that in earnest, getting the emulator 6502 compatible was a large part of the project. But it did come together in about ten days, on the order of 70 hours.
There's something about these old systems, you can fit the whole system into your mental working memory. Just can't do that with todays abstractions.
The 6502 is a beautiful CPU, but is really simple too. I took me 5 days (let's say 10 hours) to get my 6502 VM working and passing Klaus Dormann's functional tests.
Don't know if the author was bragging or what, but it reminds me of the fact that Woz designed and created all of the hardware and software for the original Apple and Apple II. Nicely done for it's time. I wonder if anyone can create something would be equivalent to today's systems.