I converted Bally Ellerson's "Grandfather Clock" Bally BASIC program from 300-Baud to 2000-Baud. The 300-baud version of the program is here:

http://www.ballyalley.com/program_d...(1981)(Barry%20Ellerson)(300%20baud).zip

The 2000-baud "AstroBASIC" version of the program, which I just converted to this format this morning, isn't online. If anyone needs it, then I can put the RAW version and the digitially archived version online at BallyAlley.com for testing purposes.

I timed the grandfather clock running under Bally BASIC and AstroBASIC on real hardware. I also timed the AstroBASIC version running under MAME. I used a digital stopwatch to get these estimates which are probably accurate to within one second. Here are the results:

1) Real Hardware - Bally BASIC: 1 Minutes = 1 minute in real time.
2) Real Hardware - AstroBASIC: 1 Minute = 38 seconds in real time.
3) Emulation - AstroBASIC: 1 Minute = 55 seconds in real time.

This means that it isn't my imagination that "AstroBASIC" runs significantly slower under MAME emulation. If my system speed makes any difference, my computer is a 64-bit, Windows 7 machine with an i7-4770@ 3.40Ghz with 8GB of RAM.

I've never noticed this timing difference using regular astrocade cartridge games. Then again, I've never taken this close of a look either.

If it's any help, using my Framemeister and AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable, I did record video of Bally BASIC and AstroBASIC running "Grandfather Clock." Using OBS Studio, I could also record footage of MAME running "Grandfather Clock." Maybe I could cobble together a video comparing all three at the same time. However, I've not done that before... so I'm not sure how to do it. I use Adobe Premiere Elements 14, so I'm pretty certain that there must be a way to do it. Anyway, I'm not sure if a video like this would even be useful.

I still can't get over that I can load an "AstroBASIC" program into the astrocade emulator that's part of MAME. That's simply too good to be true! Even if the speed is slow, it is still extremely useful to me, as I've always wanted to use MAME's debugger to observe BASIC's RAM "live."

Next up, I'm going to test loading an "AstroBASIC" program saved under MAME emulation onto real astrocade hardware.

Adam