[Info-vax] VMS on Raspberry Pi 5

[Martin Gregorie]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 17:36:53 +0000, Chris Townley wrote:

> On 13/11/2023 17:32, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2023-11-13, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 11/13/2023 5:26 AM, Pancho wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't really know the performance penalty of emulators.
>>>
>>> The overhead of a non-JIT instruction set emulation must be huge.
>> 
>> Back in my Amiga days, I played with the Transformer, a software
>> emulation of an 8088 on a 68000.  It would run MS-DOS, but very slowly
>> - I figured about a 10x slowdown.
>> Once just for giggles I ran Z80MU (a Z80 emulation for MS-DOS) under
>> the Transformer.  Under these two levels of emulation I fired up the
>> CP/M BASIC interpreter and typed "PRINT SIN(whatever)".  It came back
>> with the correct answer - 7 seconds later.
>> 
>> 
> That sounds like the Sinclair scientific calculator in the early 70s

I had one of the really small 4 function calculators in 1975. IIRC it 
wasn't all that slow (similar speed to a slide rule if each calculation 
required both slide and cursor to be moved for each calculation) but its 
main drawbacks was being really too small and fiddly, I used to be pretty 
good with the mechanical, electrically driven FACIT desktop calculators 
and I'd say the Sinclairs were just a little faster than those Facits.

However, I got an HP 21 (RPN0 calculator in 1977 and that was much faster 
AND much stronger and better made: still have it and it still works, but 
got an HP 21 (programmable too). That got replaced by an HP 28s in 1990 
and is still in daily use.   
 

-- 

Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org