From time to time we mention in-circuit emulators, a large and expensive hardware technology which helps develop microprocessor systems by plugging into the microprocessor socket and allowing tracing and debug at the cycle level.
I came across a mention of the HP64000 multi-user emulator in a post about a book about developing games for the Nintendo Famicom (also and later known as the NES) - which uses a 6502-like CPU. Interestingly the 6502 doesn't seem to be a supported device, but it must have been.
It's an interesting read for a flavour of what it was like to develop game code in the mid-80s:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/10704982391 ... bETSNy1yU7which links to
http://www.chrismcovell.com/secret/week ... puter.htmland see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_64000 (which in turn links to an
HP Journal issue about the system)
As an amusing footnote, a commenter found this limitation:
Quote:
Fantastic! And that explains why all Konami megarom games always seemed to be designed for a machine with a faster Z80 processor, thus run on 3.57MHz MSX machines skipping frames constantly: The 64252A Z80 emulator pod had only two possible speeds:
1) 3.6MHz without waitstates
2) 4MHz with waitstates when accessing the memory
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