[HN Gopher] Zilog Z8000 Coprocessor for the IBM PC by Sweet Micr...
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       Zilog Z8000 Coprocessor for the IBM PC by Sweet Micro Systems
       [video]
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 47 points
       Date   : 2022-12-18 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | Gys wrote:
       | Interesting video. He is looking for Z8000 software which was
       | released around 1984. So if you have it, contact him!
        
       | guenthert wrote:
       | So, iiuc, the motivation for this "second processor" card for the
       | PC was originally to have improved performance for BASIC
       | programs? And in order to achieve this, not only a faster CPU has
       | been used, but also an in-RAM "just-ahead-of-time" compiler
       | (similar in spirit to Turbo Pascal)? But why a Z8000? 68k was
       | available and popular then (a little faster than a Z8000 and with
       | orthogonal instruction set, 32 bit wide registers and 32bit flat
       | address space easier to program)?
       | 
       | Byte's Sieve of Eratosthenes benchmark caught my eye: the Trump
       | card (with its TBASIC compiler) completes one iteration in 2.4s
       | (the original IBM PC takes 190s using BASICA interpreter). To put
       | those numbers into perspective, 100 iterations of that test
       | complete in 2.44s on a 1GHz Allwinner ARM32 of the original
       | Banana Pi using the brandy BBC BASIC interpreter.
       | 
       | EDIT: in the Byte article [1] the author mentioned that he was
       | contracted for TBASIC and the RAM disk, while other software like
       | the C compiler were provided by Zilog. So it's a Z8000 show-case
       | / eval board?
       | 
       | [1] http://www.dtweed.com/circuitcellar/trumpcrd.pdf
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | I'm reminded of the Mockingboard. It was pretty much just a 386
       | with a ton of RAM (up to 24 MiB) crammed onto an ISA board which,
       | together with a special build of Golden Common Lisp, was marketed
       | as a "Lisp machine on a budget" solution for PC users. This was
       | back before Compaq started shipping PC compatibles with 386 CPUs,
       | so it kinda made sense at the time?
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-18 23:01 UTC)