"mark lewis" wrote to "Steven Horn" (21 May 03  10:08:10)
 --- on the topic of "FTP07"

 ml> i pulled the 8088's from my machines and plugged in those NEC V20's...
 ml> the boxes i had that had 8086's in them got the NEC V30 chip, of
 ml> course :wink:  those simple upgrades made a world of difference!

I recall that the register and memory moving instructions didn't benefit
much but the arithmetic was about 3 to 5 times faster and that's where
the big difference was noticed. It was almost like adding a math chip
(no fp though) and the graphics were significantly faster because of it.

One rarely mentioned feature of the V20 was that via software it could
be switched instantly into becoming a Z80 (or was that an 8080?) and
CP/M code could be executed directly. I remember setting up my old XT
with a directory for CP/M stuff. IIRC it worked pretty generically.

 Mike
 ****

... Z80's are our friends...Z80's are our friends...Z80's are our friends.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30