MCL65 – Fastest Apple II+ | Hacker News Reader

MCL65 – Fastest Apple II+

microcorelabs.wordpress.com

48 pointsrbanffy14 comments

> The MCL65+ is a 6502 accelerator card which uses a 600Mhz Arduino Teensy4.1 microcontroller to emulate a 6502 microprocessor as well as its bus interface signals. It was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the original 6502 processor

Oh man, that is really cool. The possibility for retro computers to be actually usable tools by giving them a little more horsepower and RAM is really neat!

As a matter of pedantry (maybe), I’m inclined to point out that a Teensy 4 is not an Arduino, and not a microcontroller in its own right. It’s a module that runs an NXP chip.

That said, I agree, this is really cool. Emulating the chip calls onboard is really neat.

I was going to say, don't let Arduino LLC catch you calling it that ;)

It is definitely not an "Arduino", and to be more pedantic, the chip is from Freescale (which is now owned by NXP), but not from NXP itself.

They can be useful right now. All you need is a way to allow them to communicate with modern computers.

The biggest issue is that most of the OSs of the time had no concept of a remote or shared disk, or a network. If it has that, it’s easier to integrate them.

Some consider it a feature that they can't communicate quickly with other computers. They don't need overhead of security. With limited networking, activities are simply different from modern computers.

The use that makes most sense, I think, is word processing. We don’t need much to write - George R. R. Martin still uses WordStar, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2020 on an 8-bit Kaypro and Jerry Pournelle used his custom built Zeke II for far longer than it’d be reasonable. Being offline also removes a lot of tempting distractions, which, for me at least, is a killer feature.

I also have an unhealthy love for physical terminals. A lot of what I do could be done on those.

With all the computation and memory stuffed into a modern microcontroller, is it still a retro computer? At some point, you might as well just emulate the whole thing in software.

It’s also a proof.

It’s one thing to code around issues it’s another thing to actually run on metal

In this case, it's emulating a 6502 processor with onboard RAM/ROM. The hardware that make it an Apple II+ is not emulated.

I bet this could be great for accelerating Acorn BBC B microcomputers as well. Elite on a 6502 Tube was out of this world when released during the late 80s.

See PiTubeDirect:

https://github.com/hoglet67/PiTubeDirect/wiki

https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/pitubedirect

Very neat hack!

I'm not an expert but this looks vaguely similar to what you ask :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8UtnKWmstA

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