[Info-vax] VMS on Raspberry Pi 5

[Martin Gregorie]

On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:00:13 -0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie wrote:

> 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.

Correction: the HP 21 is nor programmable but the HP 28S is.




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