BasiliskII Macintosh 68k Emulator Ported to ESP32-P4 / M5Stack Tab5(github.com)
67 pointsby rcarmo8 hours ago3 comments
  • bArray4 hours ago
    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...

    • nottorpan hour ago
      Yeah, the first thing I thought of when seeing this was "how long till this tablet thingy will be out of stock everywhere?".
  • swiftcoder6 hours ago
    How performant is this - are we able to achieve similar speeds as an actual 68k Mac on embedded hardware?
    • vardump4 hours ago
      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.

      • rasz3 hours ago
        Everything is coming from PSRAM including frame buffer (at 15 fps) so performance is going to be abysmal.
        • vardump2 hours ago
          You should be able to cache hot code and data in the SRAM. Although it'd significantly increase complexity.
    • iamflimflam14 hours ago
      The P4 is pretty high spec with a 400MHz dual-core RISC-V
      • cardanome31 minutes ago
        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.

  • anthk4 hours ago
    VMac would be lighter.