How good is it?

[metalfoot]

Growing up I always wanted a 128. Gazette had some cool-looking programs which were 128 only. Enter VICE. Now I have a virtual 128 but I'm just curious how good/accurate the 128 emulation is. I'm not expecting it to be quite up to 64 calibre as folks have been working on that emu for much longer. But is it good enough to run most applications?

[Guest]

The VDC in the 128 emulator is flaky.  The VDC isn't a really well documented beast, and not many people have truly pushed it's limits, but there are some drawbacks to the emulation in VICE, such as lack of a true implementation of FAST mode, that make me wonder if it's even possible to get a cycle-exact VDC emulation until the rest of the emulator is up to snuff.

[Blacklord]

The VDC in the 128 emulator is flaky.  The VDC isn't a really well documented beast, and not many people have truly pushed it's limits, but there are some drawbacks to the emulation in VICE, such as lack of a true implementation of FAST mode, that make me wonder if it's even possible to get a cycle-exact VDC emulation until the rest of the emulator is up to snuff.

That being said, most applicatuons written for the VDC *do* work under VICE.

cheers,

Lance

[metalfoot]

How many games/apps for the 128 make heavy use of the VDC's special features, if, as you note, it is not as well documented as say the VIC-II?

[Guest]

My point is that just because things appear to work doesn't mean they are doing what you think they are doing, especially if your code is timing critical and you expect the timers to be running in 2mhz mode.

[metalfoot]

I understand. I'm just new to this computer as a whole and looking to learn! I can imagine that timing-critical stuff ought to run, well, on time. VICE is also notorious for having a bad NTSC 64 emulator but a really good PAL one. That's all.

[Stephane Richard]

That's how I run VICE here, in PAL mode.  not that I've been having problems or anything in NTSC mode.  Just that I don't know, just looks better in pal full screen mode has a better border all around it too. and no commodore monitor gives a clearer picture than in VICE ;-)....if there was one, I wanna know which one so I can look for it and buy it when I find a 128 for me to buy ;-).