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mpark
Registered Member

Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 682

Posted 6/29/2009 7:28 AM (GMT -8)

Morpheus is a hardware platform for Largos, but beyond that it's actually hard to describe because you can configure it in so many ways. Basically it's Propeller-based hardware that can address insane amounts of memory and generate very high-res 256-color graphics and do a lot more. Physically it's a set of Protoboard-sized boards that you mix and match and stack according to your needs.

I was a little too preoccupied during UPEW with my own stuff to really appreciate what Bill has accomplished, but now, a day later, it's starting to sink in and it's really quite remarkable. I'm sure he'll be along any minute now to explain how the heck he gets Morpheus to do what it does.

My wife was lucky enough to win a Morpheus CPU board at the UPEW raffle, and Bill (and wife Agnes) generously comped us two memory boards. I guess it's time to solder some chips onto them and start exploring the world beyond 32k.

Baggers
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 1773

Posted 6/29/2009 8:00 AM (GMT -8)

:D I guess he's probably still travelling home from UPEW :) or having some chill time after the show, which is always good.

http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/ home of the PropGFX Lite

jazzed
_oOo_(^^)_oOo_

Date Joined Jan 2008
Total Posts : 2114

Posted 6/29/2009 8:27 AM (GMT -8)

Could be that he's still on honeymoon :) -Or- just building more suspense.

--Steve

Propalyzer: Propeller PC Logic Analyzer

http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=331847

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/29/2009 10:00 PM (GMT -8)

Baggers: Jazzed is pretty correct, there will be more details on my site tomorrow... and you are correct, both my wife and I basically crashed, and I finally started to catch up on my sleep. I got home about an hour ago, and I am already here.

Jazzed: thank you for your kind words - and it was great to meet you! Thats a fair summary - I'll provide more details later in this thread and even more on my site tomorrow... as far as the honeymoon... I hope it will never be over :)

mpark: it was great to meet you and your wife! I am amazed by your Sphinx compiler, and can't wait to try it. Largos will support it from the start. I know what you mean about being preoccupied... I can't wait to watch the video so I catch all of your presentation.

my 6.250MHz custom Crystals available for running Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller (alpha version released)
Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
www.mikronauts.com - blog about microcontrollers, especially the Propeller, Morpheus and Mem+

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/29/2009 10:32 PM (GMT -8)

Hi guys,

It's great to finally spill the beans... it has been so tough to not say anything over the last few months!

I'll post more details tomorrow, but you guys deserve at least the basics :)

Morpheus (rev 1.0a)

- Dual Propeller based single board computer designed for Largos, targeting education (including gaming) and industrial control (including consultants, engineers and hobbyists)
- currently available as a bare PCB, kits (including sockets and all the parts) will be available next week, optional high quality stacking connectors

CPU #1:

- "designed for Largos" so that root fs is on SPI flash and SPI ram for edit buffer
- boot EEPROM
- Phillips PCF8563 Real Time Clock
- P0-P7 available for I/O expansion (optionally used by Mem+, see Mem+ features below), ProtoBoard compatible 10 pin header, all ucontroller.com modules should work out of the box on it
- P8-P15 two indepenend SPI memory sockets, P8-P11 used for 32KB SRAM or FRAM, P12-P15 for WinBond or compatible 4K page erasable FLASH, available up to 8MB (64Mb) in capacity, or optionally use for second ProtoBoard compatible header
- PS/2 Keyboard support (demo board compatible)
- PS/2 Mouse support (demo board compatible)
- stereo audio out
- DC input
- 3.3V and 5V voltage regulation on board
- dual filter capacitor support (standard .1uF ceramic, and tantalum/electrolytic capacitor support as per Saphiea's findings)
- 4 bit bus connecting to CPU #2
- controls RESET line of CPU #2
- can optionally drive XINPUT of CPU #2 from dedicated I/O pin instead of crystal (dial-a-cpu-frequency)
- PropPlug compatible programming header, adds optional fifth pin for 3.3V

CPU #2

- 4 bit bus to CPU #1 on P28-P31
- normally loaded by CPU #1, however has optional Prop plug compatible 5 pin programming header
- optional EEPROM for independent boot
- 512KB SRAM
- 24 bit address / 8 bit data FULL EXPANSION BUS ON 40 PIN HEADER
- VGA support, build time option for 64 color Parallax compatible mode or my extended 256 color mode
- working 1024x768 4 color driver, this week will have individual palette entries for each scan line
- "coming REAL SOON NOW (1-2 weeks)" 256x192 256 color per pixel gaming mode
- soon thereafter sprites will be added - LOTS OF THEM, 16x16, 256 color palette
- working burst read speed: 20MB/sec at 80MHz (requires 3 cogs)
- working burst write speed: 20MB/sec at 80MHz (requires 3 cogs)
- can switch "pages" in as little as three instructions (more below)
- setting address within a page takes one instruction
- easy to use 10MB/sec mode with random access within a 256 byte page

More on the memory design:

- 24 bit addressing, latched from P0-P15 when P26&27 are both low, P26 is ~RD, P27 is ~WR
- addresses $000000-$07FFFF reserved for memory mapped IO
- on-board 512K ram addressed from $200000-$27FFFF, but "mirrored" thru $37FFFF (I did not have space to implement finer decoding, but see Mem+ section)
- $400000-$5FFFFF nominally for first Mem+ board
- $600000-$7FFFFF nominally for second Mem+ board

HOWEVER, if you take the ram chip off Morpheus and put it on a mem+ you can actually put FOUR Mem+ boards onto your stack for 7.5MB of static ram

If there is enough interest (by this I mean pre-orders after I figure out the potential price) I am willing to produce a surface mounted 8MB sram board that will take the memory space to a potential 15.5MB of ram on a Morpheus board

Mem+ board:

- Four sockets for 512KB memory chips for 2MB per board
- Jumper for selecting board address range ($000000-$1FFFFF,$200000-$3FFFFF,$400000-$5FFFFF,$600000-$7FFFFF) with minor limitations discussed below
- raises PropPlug compatible programming pins for CPU #1 to Mem+ for easy access
- ONE of the Mem+ boards installed in a stack may implement one or more of the four following optional additional functions
--- MAX3232 based serial port, with optional RESET transistor which as a jumper to disable reset, selectable DTR/RTS for reset, DB9 PCB mount footprint
--- MCP23S17 SPI I/O expander, uses four available pins of CPU#1 brought out to 2x5 ten pin headers along with GND and 3.3V - some may use these for joysticks :)
--- SD card interface, uses other four available pins of CPU#1

School board: (wifey calls it "Icing on the cake")

- optional stacking headers for P0-7 and P8-15 on CPU 1
- position for stacking header for expansion bus (GND, +3.3V, +5V, ~RD, ~WR, A0-A23, D0-D7)
- solderless breadboard mounted on ProtoBoard format Morpheus specific stacking pattern

ALL BOARDS are 4.0"x3.05" with mounting holes matching Parallax standards
Morpheus is compatible with Ethernet, joystick, and other boards from ucontroller.com
[The PropGFX guys and some others had 256 color NTSC/PAL, but as far as I know I'm the first with VGA 256 colors on the market for the Prop - please correct me if I am wrong!]

Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 6/30/2009 7:50:28 AM GMT

heater
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2008
Total Posts : 1834

Posted 6/29/2009 11:28 PM (GMT -8)

Good grief Bill, there is a LOT in there. I'm amazed you managed to keep your hat on it so long?
Can hardly wait for another tomorrow.

For me, the past is not over yet.

Hanno
Registered Member

Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 447

Posted 6/29/2009 11:47 PM (GMT -8)

Congrats Bill on this impressive achivement. Your design will take the Propeller much further. I like the size of your boards, the fact that you're using the spinstudio boards, that you've taken the time to get high bandwidth working, and that you're taking graphics to the next level with multiple sprites and full pixel-level access to 1024x768 video. Good job!
Hanno

Download a free trial of ViewPort- the premier visual debugger for the Propeller
Includes full debugger, simulated instruments, fuzzy logic, and OpenCV for computer vision. Now a Parallax Product!

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/29/2009 11:50 PM (GMT -8)

Thanks!

It was NOT easy to keep it under my hat until UPEW, but I thought I'd introduce it with a BANG!

heater said...
Good grief Bill, there is a LOT in there. I'm amazed you managed to keep your hat on it so long?
Can hardly wait for another tomorrow.

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/29/2009 11:53 PM (GMT -8)

Thank you Hanno!

I will make sure I tell everyone that ViewPort was used during the development, and that it made the development go faster and easier... because it did!

Unfortunately right now the XGA mode is slow, as I am only writing to the bitmap once per horizontal sync, and not using (yet) the bandwidth available during the VFP, VSYNC and VBP lines... but I will use them, and I figure I can write at least 10-20 bytes during each HSYNC period as well.

That mode is NOT good for high speed animation.

The upcoming 256x192 by 256 colors per pixel / lots of sprites mode IS for animation and games

I think I'd better go to bed now, I give up on updating my site tonite - my host is having issues.

Hanno said...
Congrats Bill on this impressive achivement. Your design will take the Propeller much further. I like the size of your boards, the fact that you're using the spinstudio boards, that you've taken the time to get high bandwidth working, and that you're taking graphics to the next level with multiple sprites and full pixel-level access to 1024x768 video. Good job!
Hanno

mctrivia
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 2540

Posted 6/29/2009 11:57 PM (GMT -8)

any chance this could be used for 1600x1200 images with minor transition effects?

propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5

Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.

Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.

Baggers
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2007
Total Posts : 1773

Posted 6/29/2009 11:58 PM (GMT -8)

Bill, that's an impressive board :) I can't wait to see the resulting vids ( hint hint :) )

http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/ home of the PropGFX Lite

Cluso99
We live onboard

Date Joined Apr 2008
Total Posts : 2277

Posted 6/30/2009 12:40 AM (GMT -8)

Congratulations Bill - very impressive. Cannot believe how you managed to keep it under your hat for so long.

The prop certainly has grown up in the last 6 months !!!!!

Links to other interesting threads:

Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBladeProp, RamBlade, TwinBlade, SixBlade, website

Single Board Computer: 3 Propeller ICs and a TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)

Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)

Emulators: Micros eg Altair, and Terminals eg VT100 (Index) ZiCog (Z80), MoCog (6809)

Search the Propeller forums (via Google)

My cruising website is: www.bluemagic.biz MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 5:59 AM (GMT -8)

Hmm...

1600x1200 two colors per pixel should be possible as that requires 14.4MB/sec for refreshing the screen at 60Hz, and some slow transitions would be possible.

More bits per pixel is not feasible as even four colors per pixel would require 28.8MB/sec for refreshing at 60Hz.

mctrivia said...
any chance this could be used for 1600x1200 images with minor transition effects?

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 6:00 AM (GMT -8)

Thank you!

Demos and videos of them are on my TODO list :)

Baggers said...
Bill, that's an impressive board :) I can't wait to see the resulting vids ( hint hint :) )

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 6:02 AM (GMT -8)

Thank you!

That means a lot, because I really like your TriBlade, I just had a different design goal - thus the latches :), as I needed ten pins for the 256 color VGA.

Cluso99 said...
Congratulations Bill - very impressive. Cannot believe how you managed to keep it under your hat for so long.

The prop certainly has grown up in the last 6 months !!!!!

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 6:06 AM (GMT -8)

Heater,

I forgot to mention, I kept ZiCog and MotoCog in mind - if an emulation does not need high resolution graphics, it can use all of the bus bandwidth for the emulator, and just run a text mode or regular Propeller tile / low rez bitmap graphics on the VGA.

Morpheus will make a great platform for emulations; ZiCog and terminal will run on one board.

Personally I hope someone tries to make an Amiga emulator that will run on Morpheus, my calculations show it may be possible. I used to be part of Commodore's Amige developers program, and have fond memories of the Amiga.

heater said...
Good grief Bill, there is a LOT in there. I'm amazed you managed to keep your hat on it so long?
Can hardly wait for another tomorrow.

TrapperBob
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2004
Total Posts : 38

Posted 6/30/2009 6:14 AM (GMT -8)

Bill,

Way to go! Fantastic! Can't wait to get my hands on one. I love "playing" with the Prop!!!
This platform you describe is outrageous and should really open up the realm of possibilities.
Did I say I can't wait to get my hands on one!!! The kids in our robotics group will be exposed
to even more possibilities. Thanks for you hard work, late nites, all nites , etc

TrapperBob

CounterRotatingProps
Ah, just another dull day for the shoemaker...

Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 1014

Posted 6/30/2009 6:19 AM (GMT -8)

Hi Bill,

as an old, and somewhat burnt out, developer, I have to say that you're certainly supporting one of Parallax's motives: to bring the fun back into computing!

I don't know if things are set up this way, but it would be very helpful to have the board and your platform work 'out of the box' so to speak. Keep the download and setup as simple and automated as possible. I'd like to be able to plug it in and go.

thanks for your hard work!

- Howard in Florida
~~~~~~~~~~~~

mctrivia
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 2540

Posted 6/30/2009 6:27 AM (GMT -8)

Ok still can't make high res picture frame with prop.

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 7:11 AM (GMT -8)

TrapperBob,

Thank you! I'm waiting for my web host to fix whatever is wrong, because the Wordpress admin screens are unusably slow right now - after that I will start building the Morpheus information pages, and put up ordering instructions :)

I expect to offer a servo controller board for the stack at some point, and prototyping boards (for the stack) that can be used to interface to servos easily are already in the works, I should be ordering the rev 1 PCB's this week.

Bill

TrapperBob said...
Bill,

Way to go! Fantastic! Can't wait to get my hands on one. I love "playing" with the Prop!!!
This platform you describe is outrageous and should really open up the realm of possibilities.
Did I say I can't wait to get my hands on one!!! The kids in our robotics group will be exposed
to even more possibilities. Thanks for you hard work, late nites, all nites , etc

TrapperBob

Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 6/30/2009 3:18:56 PM GMT

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 7:15 AM (GMT -8)

Hi Howard,

I plan on offering fully assembled and tested boards in a week or so, with a demo in the eeproms. Until the volumes get high enough I will have to hand assemble and test them myself.

After Largos is released, assembled units will come pre-loaded with Largos and a lot of software, and kits will have the option of a pre-loaded flash chip.

Thank you for your kind words!

Bill

CounterRotatingProps said...
Hi Bill,

as an old, and somewhat burnt out, developer, I have to say that you're certainly supporting one of Parallax's motives: to bring the fun back into computing!

I don't know if things are set up this way, but it would be very helpful to have the board and your platform work 'out of the box' so to speak. Keep the download and setup as simple and automated as possible. I'd like to be able to plug it in and go.

thanks for your hard work!

- Howard in Florida
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 7:17 AM (GMT -8)

Sorry, not nearly enough memory bandwidth for that.

mctrivia said...
Ok still can't make high res picture frame with prop.

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 7:25 AM (GMT -8)

I forgot to mention:

The 256 color VGA mode is using the 3R 3G 2B format, and should be decent at displaying photo's.

TrapperBob
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2004
Total Posts : 38

Posted 6/30/2009 7:31 AM (GMT -8)

Bill,

Please put me on the list for a board and notify us when the boards are ready to purchase! Let us know how much $ / and how to pay (paypal)!

TrapperBob

Bill Henning
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 962

Posted 6/30/2009 7:48 AM (GMT -8)

Hi TrapperBob,

Done

Boards are available now, full kits available in a week or so. The BOM and initial build instructions will go up on my site by the end of the week.

Bare board prices:

Morpheus $29.95 + s/h
Mem+ $24.95 + s/h
"Bundle" of Morpheus and one Mem+ board $49.95 + s/h

I am trying to keep prices as low as I can, however I have to leave a little room for quantity discounts for distributors. Distributors will be asked NOT to charge more than the MSRP's above, and anyone can contact me if they need a lot of boards or want to sell them. There will be educational discounts for schools.

Payment is by PayPal, but I need exact shipping address (should be same as PayPal address, no PO boxes please) so I can figure out the shipping :)

s/h will be as low as I can manage but has to cover the packaging materials and shipping cost.

Best,

Bill

TrapperBob said...
Bill,

Please put me on the list for a board and notify us when the boards are ready to purchase! Let us know how much $ / and how to pay (paypal)!

TrapperBob

www.mikronauts.com - my site my 6.250MHz custom Crystals for running Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller
Please use mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com to contact me off-forum, my PM is almost totally full

Post Edited (Bill Henning) : 6/30/2009 4:07:17 PM GMT

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