Cloudschatze
Veteran Member
I recently acquired yet another Tandy system - the 1000 SL. Equipped with an 8 MHz 8086, this is probably one of the easier systems to drop a V30 into, resulting in a measurable increase in overall system performance. Here are a few benchmark comparisons to help quantify the difference between the two CPUs, using Jim Leonard's, "TOPBench," and James Pearce's, "DiskTest" utilities.
Intel 8086-2 @ 8 MHz
TOPBENCH Score : 8
DiskTest Write Speed : 224 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 255 KB/s
NEC V30 @ 8MHz
TOPBENCH Score : 12
DiskTest Write Speed : 313 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 373 KB/s
The Tandy SL and SL/2 have a programmable wait state generator, configurable either through the advanced BIOS setup options, or by using the FFE9h register. By default, three wait states are configured for external memory access. Inexplicably, and unlike the other parameters, changing it via the setup utility has absolutely no effect. Instead, it needs to be modified using the port FFE9h register, which I'm doing at boot-time through an AUTOEXEC.BAT routine.
The following results reflect the effect of a zero wait state configuration.
NEC V30 @ 8MHz, 0WS
TOPBENCH Score : 13
DiskTest Write Speed : 357 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 426 KB/s
Since I'm using a Diamond SpeedStar 24 graphics adapter in lieu of the onboard TGAII chipset, I regret not performing a VGA benchmark while the 8086 was yet installed. I may swap it in again, in case that comparison is valuable to anyone. With the V30, "3DBench" reports a whopping 1.7 FPS, regardless of the wait state configuration.
Intel 8086-2 @ 8 MHz
TOPBENCH Score : 8
DiskTest Write Speed : 224 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 255 KB/s
NEC V30 @ 8MHz
TOPBENCH Score : 12
DiskTest Write Speed : 313 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 373 KB/s
The Tandy SL and SL/2 have a programmable wait state generator, configurable either through the advanced BIOS setup options, or by using the FFE9h register. By default, three wait states are configured for external memory access. Inexplicably, and unlike the other parameters, changing it via the setup utility has absolutely no effect. Instead, it needs to be modified using the port FFE9h register, which I'm doing at boot-time through an AUTOEXEC.BAT routine.
The following results reflect the effect of a zero wait state configuration.
NEC V30 @ 8MHz, 0WS
TOPBENCH Score : 13
DiskTest Write Speed : 357 KB/s
DiskTest Read Speed : 426 KB/s
Since I'm using a Diamond SpeedStar 24 graphics adapter in lieu of the onboard TGAII chipset, I regret not performing a VGA benchmark while the 8086 was yet installed. I may swap it in again, in case that comparison is valuable to anyone. With the V30, "3DBench" reports a whopping 1.7 FPS, regardless of the wait state configuration.