3 ms·

One of the guys "talking nonsense on an obscure newsgroup" here. :) There was no premise. I ported my T3X compiler (http://t3x.org/t3x/t3x0.html http://t3x.org

One of the guys "talking nonsense on an obscure newsgroup" here. :) There was no premise. I ported my T3X compiler (http://t3x.org/t3x/t3x0.html http://t3x.org/t3x/t3x0.html) to DOS and CP/M, self-compiled it on both, and was surprised to see pretty much no difference between the lines compiled per MHz on both systems. It is just a friendly discussion to explore some technical details of ancient architectures. No attempt to question IBM's business model. That would be a bit late to the party anyway :)

pacha-- 3y ago
The Z80 and 8088 are CPUs from when I was a kid. I clearly remember how 8088 was considered a much more advanced one back then. Nice to see this comparison. Thanks a lot for sharing.
anonymousiam 3y ago
I was actually surprised by the results, but maybe not in the way that most people would think. I avoided the 4.77MHz PCs because my (self built) 4MHz Z80 machine consistently outperformed them. I used IBM PCs at work and they were fine. The extra memory was awesome, but the speed of running applications was never in question. My Z80 was always faster. The 16-bit instructions of the 8088 required two bus cycles to fetch, while the 8-bit instructions of the Z80 required only one. Memory bandwidth was comparable (4116 dynamic RAM) and caches did not yet exist, so the Z80 always won. I did not "upgrade" my home computer until the 386(SX) could emulate the Z80 faster than the Z80 silicon could run.
eichin 3y ago
Heh, where were you in 1983 when I needed a decent Z80 Compiler :-) (edit: oh this isn't C. Still, any compiler would have been a step up from asm) (I was at a small company doing mailing list processing for non-profit fundraising campaigns, on an IMSAI (upgraded to a Z80 and 24M hard drive) (no that's not a typo, it was huge by which I mean * it was split in to 3x 8M pseudo disks so it fit the CP/M filesystem limits * it was about the size of a pair of tower PCs tipped over and laid side-by-side ) and we were looking askance at IBM PCs in particular - not enough I/O, not faster - in observable ways, like WordStar had noticeable latency compared to the Z80 version - it was pretty easy to believe the gossip that "these were only moving in quantity because IBM was forcing their big customers to buy them", which was a popular theory it at the time. We were, with hindsight, entirely wrong :-)
zybftjmvs 3y ago
I am interested in reading your book on Raja Yoga, but I am a student experiencing financial difficult at the moment. I just thought I would ask you if there is a free digital copy available.

pacha-- 3y ago

The Z80 and 8088 are CPUs from when I was a kid. I clearly remember how 8088 was considered a much more advanced one back then. Nice to see this comparison. Thanks a lot for sharing.

anonymousiam 3y ago

I was actually surprised by the results, but maybe not in the way that most people would think. I avoided the 4.77MHz PCs because my (self built) 4MHz Z80 machine consistently outperformed them. I used IBM PCs at work and they were fine. The extra memory was awesome, but the speed of running applications was never in question. My Z80 was always faster. The 16-bit instructions of the 8088 required two bus cycles to fetch, while the 8-bit instructions of the Z80 required only one. Memory bandwidth was comparable (4116 dynamic RAM) and caches did not yet exist, so the Z80 always won. I did not "upgrade" my home computer until the 386(SX) could emulate the Z80 faster than the Z80 silicon could run.

eichin 3y ago

Heh, where were you in 1983 when I needed a decent Z80 Compiler :-) (edit: oh this isn't C. Still, any compiler would have been a step up from asm) (I was at a small company doing mailing list processing for non-profit fundraising campaigns, on an IMSAI (upgraded to a Z80 and 24M hard drive) (no that's not a typo, it was huge by which I mean * it was split in to 3x 8M pseudo disks so it fit the CP/M filesystem limits * it was about the size of a pair of tower PCs tipped over and laid side-by-side ) and we were looking askance at IBM PCs in particular - not enough I/O, not faster - in observable ways, like WordStar had noticeable latency compared to the Z80 version - it was pretty easy to believe the gossip that "these were only moving in quantity because IBM was forcing their big customers to buy them", which was a popular theory it at the time. We were, with hindsight, entirely wrong :-)

zybftjmvs 3y ago

I am interested in reading your book on Raja Yoga, but I am a student experiencing financial difficult at the moment. I just thought I would ask you if there is a free digital copy available.