BasiliskII Macintosh 68k Emulator Ported to ESP32-P4 / M5Stack Tab5
71 points
10 hours ago
| 6 comments
| github.com
| HN
bArray
6 hours ago
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Looking at the M5Stack Tab5 IoT Development Kit [1] based on the ESP32-P4 - it's a really nice piece of kit.

[1] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tab5-iot-developme...

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nottorp
3 hours ago
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Yeah, the first thing I thought of when seeing this was "how long till this tablet thingy will be out of stock everywhere?".
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jhbadger
1 hour ago
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Pity that this isn't for the Cardputer (a M5Stack device that includes a built in (tiny) screen and keyboard), although it might be impractical on it.
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zeckalpha
1 hour ago
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Hoping rePalm ends up there, too! https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=27.%20rePalm
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stonogo
27 minutes ago
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I note that the vide coding tools managed to keep the license headers in individual files, but the COPYING file containing the GPL2 has not made the transition.
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swiftcoder
8 hours ago
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How performant is this - are we able to achieve similar speeds as an actual 68k Mac on embedded hardware?
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vardump
6 hours ago
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At 8 MHz, a 68k can execute at most 2M instructions per second. So the answer is going to be yes, if this manages to execute one 68k instruction per ~200 cycles.

I think executing an instruction is going to be closer to 20-50 cycles than 200, so it should be much faster than a real 68k CPU.

I think performance is likely to be in the ballpark of a 68040 @20 MHz, but that's just a guess. This would leave 20 cycles for each emulated instruction. With JIT you could reach 200 MHz+ comparable speeds.

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rasz
5 hours ago
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Everything is coming from PSRAM including frame buffer (at 15 fps) so performance is going to be abysmal.
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vardump
4 hours ago
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You should be able to cache hot code and data in the SRAM. Although it'd significantly increase complexity.
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iamflimflam1
6 hours ago
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The P4 is pretty high spec with a 400MHz dual-core RISC-V
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cardanome
2 hours ago
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Especially as there is a decent working BasiliskII port for the PlayStation Portable with its 333MHz single-core MIPS CPU.

So this should be much easier.

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anthk
6 hours ago
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VMac would be lighter.
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