USART on Propeller 2

8Steves

This is late in the game, but if I could make a request for inclusion in the Propeller 2 it would be for multiple versatile buffered USARTs as configurable options for several I/O lines beyond the port used for programming.

Async ports are common in printers, keyboards, mice and PC data links (though PCs are changing to USB). Synchronous ports are very common for SPI and other protocals to communicate with I/O devices, other processors, etc. Though I'm new to the propeller world, I think a cog's resources would be much better spent supporting the I/O devices at a higher level than just bit banging serial streams and setting buffer status flags. These are common versatile chips around since the early uP days, they can help simplify code, clean up communication, and handle fast bursts. The polling mode of the propeller is much better suited to capturing a less frequent message event than every bit or potential bit on an I/O line IMHO.

Ale

All that can be done in software. And AFAIK is the idea behind the propeller. In the propeller 1 you can have something like 4 UARTS per COG. In the Prop 2 I can only imagine how many due to the 8x speed increase . I only hope the prop2 shows up soon, really soon.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

IIRC, and there's been a lot of water over the dam since, there is a plan to incorporate a high speed synchronous input complement (deserializer) to the video out circuitry. But anything more specialized than that would violate the spirit and intent of the Propeller's design philosophy.

-Phil

Ale

Chip also said something about "some extra hw" to control a SDRAM. Initialization and so on will have to be done in sw, though.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Visit the home of pPropQL, pPropQL020 and OMU for the pPropQL/020 at omnibus.uni-freiburg.de/~rp92