At the risk of stating the obvious, a PC is more than just its processor. And if you want to accurately emulate what’s going on inside the CPU, you’d do well to pay attention to the rest of the machine, as [GloriousCow] shows us by bus-sniffing the original IBM Model 5150.
A little background is perhaps in order. Earlier this year, [GloriousCow] revealed MartyPC, the cycle-accurate 8088 emulator written entirely in Rust. A cycle-accurate emulation of the original IBM PC is perhaps a bit overkill, unless of course you need to run something like Area 5150, a demo that stretches what’s possible with the original PC architecture but is notoriously finicky about what hardware it runs on.
Getting Area 5150 running on an emulator wasn’t enough for [GloriousCow], though, so a deep dive into exactly what’s happening on the bus of an original IBM Model 5150 was in order. After toying with and wisely dismissing several homebrew logic analyzer solutions, a DSLogic U3Pro32 logic analyzer was drafted into the project.
Fitting the probes for the 32-channel instrument could have been a problem except for the rarely populated socket for the 8087 floating-point coprocessor on the motherboard. A custom adapter gave access to most of the interesting lines, including address and data buses, while a few more signals, like the CGA sync lines, were tapped directly off the video card.
Capturing one second of operation yielded a whopping 1.48 GB CSV file, but a little massaging with Python trimmed the file considerably. That’s when the real fun began, strangely enough in Excel, which [GloriousCow] used as an ad hoc but quite effective visualization tool, thanks to the clever use of custom formatting. We especially like the column that shows low-to-high transitions as a square wave — going down the column, sure, but still really useful.
The whole thing is a powerful toolkit for exploring the action on the bus during the execution of Area 5150, only part of which [GloriousCow] has undertaken as yet. We’ll be eagerly awaiting the next steps on this one — maybe it’ll even help get the demo running as well as 8088MPH on a modded Book8088.
If he emulates a 5150 on a popular SBC, will it be called a glorious cow pi?
B^)
probably yes
What a crappy thing to say. Brings a while new meaning to the phrase “man, this app *stinks!*”
That’s why I have an aversion against dull puns and the Amis who make them. Originally, the idea of puns was they aimed to be highest level of humor. Nowadays, it’s usually on idiocracy level, tendency falling, far from what it tended to be. I’d rather see subtle, but smart jokes to appear. But that’s a wish that likely will be unfulfilled for near future to come.
Sehr nett. Beleidigende Begriffe verwenden in der Glaube keiner wird sie verstehen.
Es ist ja auch ziemlich lustig wenn eine Deutsche sich über humor beschwert – Das Deutsche Fernsehen ist voll mit Leute die meine sie wären lustig, sind es aber nicht.
Puns in English are usually regarded as a lower form of humor, often just barely above slapstick. I don’t know where you get the idea that they were intended to be a higher form of humor.
Hehe. I smell what you did there… :)