Hi.
I'm in the process of building an accelerator based on the Cortex-7 processor.
I'm currently emulating the 65816 and i8080, and also running ARM Cortex-7 code.
I discovered that a 65802 processor update was available for the TransWarp accelerator.
Were there any other cards available with the 65802 or 65816 processors?
I'm particularly interested in information about software that utilizes the capabilities of these processors, as well as programs such as assemblers, debuggers, etc., available for the Apple II Plus.
Thank you for help.
You can plug a 65802 directly into a //e motherboard, I have one like that. You can also put one in most of the other accellerator cards besides just the Transwarp. It usually works.
To take actual advantage of the 16 bit instructions you need to write code for it. A lot of people used the later versions of the Merlin assembler for that, but there were others that could do it.
Thanks for your reply.
However, I'm not sure I understand correctly.
I don't want to connect a real 65802 or 65816 processor.
I'm building an emulation based on the STM32H750.
My goal is to build an accelerator card using this chip that will perform similarly to the TransWarp card.
On Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_accelerators
in the description of the TransWarp card, I found the following information:
"In the same issue of the publication, it was determined that the TransWarp was faster than the McT SpeedDemon or Titan Accelerator//e when running the same applications, even though all three cards ran at the same native frequency of 3.58 MHz. The TransWarp was released in the early to mid-1980s at an original retail price of $279. Applied Engineering offered a unique upgrade to the 16-bit 65802 microprocessor for $89 for those who could use its advanced features."
So I'm asking, was there any software included with the additional 65802? Or was there any other software, not necessarily from AE, that used Trans Warp with the 65802? I have an AppleII EUROPLUS computer, so I'm most interested in the programs that can run on it.
If you are interested in developing an accellerator card you might look at how cards like A2VGA and A2DVI sniff the bus with the RPi Pico interfaced through 74LVC245s. You can probably do something similar with the SRM32H750.
As for additional software, as far as I know AE didn't really supply anything special, that was left up to the user.
As for 65802 in a ][+ or Europlus, that is pretty much unsupported in general. Apple never sanctioned use of any CMOS 65xx in a pre-//e model. I've tried 65C02 in a ][+, and it worked, at least with the version I tried, and I don't even remember which one it was, I think maybe a Rockwell, as it was 30+ years ago.
Generally you're going to find very little software that supports 16 bit instructions that isn't IIgs specific. As I mentioned there were a few assemblers which would generate 16 bit code that would run on a //e with a 65802, but it was pretty muvh all DIY. Virtually everything off the shelf you're going to be running it as if it was a 65C02. Even then, there isn't a lot of software that requires a 65C02 that doesn't in general require an "Enhanced" //e, as it often uses //e 80 columns or //e specific video modes like Double Hires or Double Lores, or Mousetext, or makes calls to the Enhanced ROMs. Most software back in the day was written to 6502, and not even 65C02 instructions.
I think there might be a problem with Merlin8/16 for the Apple IIe due to the different memory model in the Apple IIe (over 64 KB) and the required 128 KB of memory.
Running Merlin8/16 on my card in the Apple IIe is quite possible, but I want to run it on older models.
I'm currently emulating the 65816 with its memory model. In the Apple IIe e/c, memory above 64 KB is controlled differently than in the 65816 or a TransWarp card.
For this reason, I think it would be easier to run the Merlin8/16 version for the Apple IIGS. My card, depending on whether the emulation runs in RAM or EEPROM, has 448/512 KB available. Although I plan to expand it to 16 MB in the future, for now it operates as a standalone SOC with a terminal connected.
Of course, I could try to implement the user RAM model from AppleIIe and a processor, e.g. 65c02, but that's probably the future.