2nd Life is a complete TRS-80 Model III emulator for Atari ST, STE, TT, Falcon or compatible computers. It can be used to run most TRS-80 Model I and III programs.
It emulates the Z-80 microprocessor, video subsystem, keyboard, cassette relay, printer port, internal clock, floppy disk controller and four 80-track single sided disk drives. The emulation code is written completely in assembler, and as a result the emulated computer runs on a 16 MHz 68000 (STE) virtually as fast as the original machine. But even on an 8 Mhz ST the perceived speed is close to that of the original machine, as the emulator optimizes key ROM subroutines (I developed it on an 8 Mhz ST, so I know).
Test results from the included SPEED.BAS application which compares the speed to an original 2 Mhz Model III are:
| Test | ST | STE | Falcon | TT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integer | 43% | 85% | 83% | 170% |
| Floating Point | 32% | 59% | 60% | 121% |
| Memory | 45% | 86% | 88% | 182% |
| Text | 170% | 311% | 311% | 530% |
| Scrolling | 60% | 131% | 217% | 333% |
The Floating Point test is a good indicator of the CPU emulation speed. The perceived speed is much better though because of the video and ROM subroutine acceleration feature.
The GEM shell is written in C and includes a font editor, keyboard layout editor, disassembler, debugger, memory dump and virtual diskdrives as icons in a window. It also offers a snapshot feature. The emulator even has joystick support (emulating TRS-80 spacebar and arrow key presses).
Besides the emulator, the package includes applications to convert disk images and transfer files between a TRS-80 and Atari ST through their parallel ports, as well as several virtual disks with TRS-80 software, a complete manual and additional documentation.
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