Both run on 6502 processors.
Code #1 is a delay loop.
Code #2 is a 16 bit unsigned multiply (multiplies $20/$21 by $22/$23, returning the result in $24/$25/$26/$27).
Update: OK, I couldn't resist. I dug out the 6502 assembler and emulator to test code #2. Now, admittedly, the emulator could be broken, but I didn't get any results that made sense for either a multiply or divide. I spent about 45 minutes playing with this, and the simulator seems to be executing as I would expect. But the resulting $26/$27 locations never come up with any valid values using $20/$21 and $22/$23 as inputs (the higher address is the high byte of each word, so I had byte ordering correct).
And since code #1 was going for maximum delay, you could have gotten a little more delay by changing it to:
start LDY #$FF
loop1 LDX #$FF
loop2 DEX
BNE loop2
DEY
BNE loop2
RTS
You're resetting X to #$FF, when it's already 0, losing 255 free 2 cycle delays.
--Chris
e-mail jcwren