4 ms·

I cannot fathom… My closes reference is a PIC16F that I used to program in 8bit assembly, but the thing was 8MHz, and I only blinked an LED! :)

by _benj 5y ago

boondaburrah 5y ago
Closer than you think since IIRC the PIC, like the Z80, takes 4+ clock cycles to complete one instruction and the 6502 can sometimes do it in 1 (albeit a much simpler/limited core, but obviously Commodore/Apple/Nintendo et al made it work).
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  They made it work by not doing picture rendering on the CPU. Same as GPUs today. Still impressive though
  - ddingus 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTRkZ-SKs5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTRkZ-SKs5g That's basically the CPU running at 1.024 Mhz. The video hardware is dumb, runs independent of the CPU, and just scans a region of memory to send pixels to the display. All software pushing pixels otherwise. You are not wrong with the NES, C64 and other machines using a graphics chip with sprites and other hardware features to assist in various ways. But, quite a lot happened on the CPU. BTW, this game is done on a 1Mhz 6809, all software pushing pixels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKxa5C9jHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKxa5C9jHY (I would skip out to the middle somewhere in that video to get a sense of what is being done) On that game specifically, it's a single frame buffer. Screen divided into two halves, each drawn while the display is delivering the other to the player.
    - boondaburrah 5y ago
      The Fujitsu FM-7 line of 8-bit computers actually shipped with two 6809 compatible CPUs (Hitachi 6309 IIRC) and the second one just did software graphics the whole time pretending really hard to be a GPU.
      - ddingus 5y ago
        Dual 6309 chips? NICE!! I won't bother, because I've got a good retro hobby going and under control, but I want one of those. :D

4 ms·

I cannot fathom… My closes reference is a PIC16F that I used to program in 8bit assembly, but the thing was 8MHz, and I only blinked an LED! :)

by _benj 5y ago

I cannot fathom… My closes reference is a PIC16F that I used to program in 8bit assembly, but the thing was 8MHz, and I only blinked an LED! :)

boondaburrah 5y ago
Closer than you think since IIRC the PIC, like the Z80, takes 4+ clock cycles to complete one instruction and the 6502 can sometimes do it in 1 (albeit a much simpler/limited core, but obviously Commodore/Apple/Nintendo et al made it work).
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  They made it work by not doing picture rendering on the CPU. Same as GPUs today. Still impressive though
  - ddingus 5y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTRkZ-SKs5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTRkZ-SKs5g That's basically the CPU running at 1.024 Mhz. The video hardware is dumb, runs independent of the CPU, and just scans a region of memory to send pixels to the display. All software pushing pixels otherwise. You are not wrong with the NES, C64 and other machines using a graphics chip with sprites and other hardware features to assist in various ways. But, quite a lot happened on the CPU. BTW, this game is done on a 1Mhz 6809, all software pushing pixels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKxa5C9jHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKxa5C9jHY (I would skip out to the middle somewhere in that video to get a sense of what is being done) On that game specifically, it's a single frame buffer. Screen divided into two halves, each drawn while the display is delivering the other to the player.
    - boondaburrah 5y ago
      The Fujitsu FM-7 line of 8-bit computers actually shipped with two 6809 compatible CPUs (Hitachi 6309 IIRC) and the second one just did software graphics the whole time pretending really hard to be a GPU.
      - ddingus 5y ago
        Dual 6309 chips? NICE!! I won't bother, because I've got a good retro hobby going and under control, but I want one of those. :D