> > The pro market was sort of catered for by the Thor, started as a QL in a
> > big beige box with a beige monitor and XT-style keyboard. It moved on quite
> > rapidly, eventually becoming an accomplished 68000 (not 68008) machine with
> > an improved OS (SMS/Q - still alive & well today). Unfortunately, the Thor
> > was too late - the IBM PC had already begun to claim dominance, primarily
> > due to the rapidly emerging clone mark
> Lets not forget the 68008 was a slow chip because all instructions on
> the 68000 was 2 or 4 or 6 bytes long and the 68008 only had a 8 bit
> buss.
Right, still the difference wasn't that big. Basicly all word (16 Bit)
acces times had a 4 cycle penalty (including the opcode fetch) against
the 68000, and als long (32 Bit) had a 8 cycle slowdown. Now it depended
heavy on the kind of programm you had. For most common instruction
types with memory access 12 to 50% more cycles where needed. So in
worst case a 68008 did bring only 65% of a straight 68000. In praxis
the QL was about 20%-25% slower than an Atari ST (Keep in mind, the
QL was 7.5 MHz while the Atari was 8 MHz - that's aleady 6% less).
> The 68000 I think too used a 8 x clock so the real clock speed is
> a lot slower than it seems.
Which still doesn't matter, than it's the same over the whole
family. And I think noone on this list is unexperianced enough
to judge just by the frequengy of the used oscilator.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
Received on Wed Mar 27 2002 - 07:03:56 GMT