A little UpDate on the DAZZLER ...

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I have an Altair-Duino Pro with an I/O Expansion and DAZZLER terminal.  I also have a ZAltair Z80c computer with a Cromemco ZPU set at 2MHz:  

I've been working with Bob to create a new game in Z80 assembly.  The game works well, but from his AltairZ80Sim where he fixed the timing faults in the DAZZLER emulator, he expects a little more out of the real computers.  

I was surprised that the Altair-Duino Pro seems to run slightly slower than a real 2MHz Z80 computer.  

Walt,

Okay. These numbers indicate that the CPU isn’t fast enough to run the program at the design rate of 12 frames per second. That isn’t a big deal, but it means the game doesn’t play as it was intended to. It will be easier to run up a high score.

ZAltair: 10.3 frames per second –  not too bad

ADP: 8.5 frames per second – this is only a bit more then 2/3 of the design speed.

n  Bob

[da...@hansels.net]

The AD is an emulator, which interprets the Z80 opcodes. It does not have a fixed speed, the overall speed depends
on which opcodes are used by a program and the I/O operations that are taking place. If you go into the configuration 
menu and enable the "Profiling" setting the top line of your terminal will show the current speed.

That being said, I just tested some Dazzler software (demo, kscope, ambush, tankwar) on the AD and all of them
ran at >2MHz when I disabled throttling in the config menu.

Is there a place where I can download your game (binary and source)? I'd be interested in seeing why it appears to be 
running slower than other Dazzler software.

David