perfect6502/README.md

43 lines
1.6 KiB
Markdown
Raw Permalink Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

# perfect6502
*perfect6502* is a MOS 6502 CPU emulator that performs a simulation of the original NMOS 6502 netlist that was extracted by the [visual6502.org](http://www.visual6502.org/) project.
Consequently, *perfect6502* is
* *perfect*: It is not a reimplementation of the 6502, but a simulation of the original transistors. Its complete behavior, its internal state and its outputs are half-cycle exact.
* *slow*: Even though *perfect6502* is highly optimized C code, achieves only 1/30 of the speed of a 1 MHz 6502 on a high-end CPU of 2020.
*perfect6502* is useful for
* understanding and reverse engineering the 6502
* debugging 6502 emulators by running them side by side with *perfect6502*
## Usage
As a demonstration and as a performance/regression test, *perfect6502* is hooked up to [Commodore BASIC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_BASIC) (cbmbasic).
You can compile the project with
$ make
and run it with
$ cbmbasic/cbmbasic
You should get the following output:
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
## Benchmarking
You can use the UNIX `time` tool to measure the performance of the emulator. Run `time cbmbasic/cbmbasic` and press Ctrl+C once it has reached `READY.` the "user" time is the effective time that was required to reach character input. On a 1 MHz 6502, this takes 0.05 sec.
# Credits
*perfect6502* is is written by [Michael Steil](http://www.pagetable.com/) and derived from the JavaScript [visual6502](https://github.com/trebonian/visual6502) implementation by Greg James, Brian Silverman and Barry Silverman.
# Contributing
Further performance optimizations are gladly accepted.