I just put BST 0.184 onto the comp (WinXPSP3) and no change on the LHS directories, BUT ...
I didn't jot down the figures but now the NOV30 arch shows onlr 76 longs free. So do different versions report this way, do you have to pick a version that suits ???
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Post Edited (Toby Seckshund) : 1/1/2010 12:49:45 PM GMT
Thanks, I see the versions on the web but something is not right here. I was playing with nops in latch routines only yesterday, or the day before, and now I can't. I have tried going back to 0.18 as I never had the latest anyway.
I feel one of those "New Year Formats" brewing. Its only a 2.53 P4
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Toby I just have to comment, I look at those boards and if you are building them yourself ,, my friend I envy your talent I am just blown away I tried to etch my own board it had maybe 8 components total and it looked like Smile I do not have an artistic bone in my body detail stuff has always come very hard for me,, funnier still my mom is a very popular artist and very good ,, I can not draw a stick person with a gun held to my head. Anyway I just wanted to compliment you sir very impressive.
DR_A the 3 row of pins I am talking about is upper left right under the DB9 connector and right above it it says ""F TERM DO"" something right underneath that print is a 3 rows of 16 holes right next to each other I need to know what goes there?? It looks like some kind of header???
and right to the right of these 3 rows of holes is the MAX232 chip socket...No I have not booted mine yet I am having a hard time getting some of the parts. so I have not finished it yet, I am dying to get this working .. I did get a VGA connector the DB9
I need the Sram, The Max232, LM2574HUN???/, The SD card socket. but my biggest problem is I can figure out where everything goes ,, If anyone has a picture of the top of there board complete they can share with me it would be awesome
DR_A I only SD cards that are the full size I do not have any of the minis can I just use a full size SD card I have so many 1Gig ones it would be easy Thanks for all the Help
Happy New Year guys
Thanks. It has taken me about two years to get to this level,with toner tranfer, an it is really only good for 0.1" stuff ( 60 mill pads, 15-20 mill tracks with 10 mill guards ) 50 mill can be done but size has to be kept down. Dozens of paper sorts were tried and in the end it was the cheapest supermarket "value" sort that gives the least worse results. I have been building electronics for over 40 years, and now feel lost in the stuff that is so small I can't focus on it. The boards are tolerable for my use, but through hole plating would just be so wonderful !!!
I should have taken the plunge and learnt a real PCB layout program, but I have got into the habit of FreePCB which has poor libraries, but I know my way around its way of things now. Viewmate does the gerber to print bit and mirrorings of the layers. The printer is a cheap HP1018 lazer and the "free" joke catridge that came in it lasted for 2 years. The new one does seem to give a better coverage than the old one ever did.
I must get around to photo ething at some point
And above all, just remember that the photos hide a million sins !
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
40 years???? I am an old man myself I got my BSEE a very long time ago the Heath Kit ET3400 was like the second coming "I mean no offense" but really my class was so in awe I built one myself and added 8K ...8K!!!!! I was worshiped by my classmates LOL
Of course what the heck could you possibly want with 8K even basic programs where maybe 20-50 lines and you saved those on your Radio Shack cassette tape player.
Toby I am in the same boat I have so many awesome designs I have made for multi processor MCU boards I have Eagle Pro and Express PC I have never had a board made but seeing what everyone here has done I am going to have some of mine made if I can figure out how.
Dr_A has been a big help and I am going to post one of my designs the schematic anyway that was done in Eagle Pro I am told there is some way to take the schematic and have it make the PC board automatically I don't know I will find out.
Toby PM me if you want to try one of those programs
Re Cluso "Drac: Unless you choose options to leave out unused code, bst should compile exactly the same as PropTool."
I think that might be the answer - I'm at work at the moment but I think there is a setting in one of the IDE menus that leaves out code that isn't ever used. So this saves some space. It is in the options somewhere and I think that should free up the memory needed.
Re mikediv, I'm still not sure where you mean. On one side of the max232 is two resistors. On the other side is lots of holes that are not used for anything. When I get home I'll post a link to the Eagle overlay for the board as that might explain it better. Or if you have Eagle already, www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller and near the bottom of the text is the link for the eagle files. Have you got all the parts on order yet?
1) I can compile so it is 152 longs short. And to fix that, in the IDE version of BST, Tools/Compiler Preferences/Optimisations/Eliminate unused spin methods.
There probably is a switch that does that for the command line version (? -or , but it doesn't seem to work, though -ox does) Maybe one day I will go through and actually remove the code. But some of it is things like .hex output methods that are very handy to quickly use when debugging, then comment them out again.
2) Re mikediv "DR_A the 3 row of pins I am talking about is upper left right under the DB9 connector and right above it it says ""F TERM DO"" something right underneath that print is a 3 rows of 16 holes right next to each other I need to know what goes there?? It looks like some kind of header???"
Yes that is the prototyping area. You don't need to connect anything there, but maybe one day you might want to add something to the board and you could build it there.
The prototyping area looks like three headers because, well, it is. They were just a convenient library part in Eagle to build a prototyping area. Sorry about the confusion.
LCD working now, well sort of. Still thinks that it's your 4x20, not 2x16. But at least I have characters.
Leaving all the copper on looks nice, does the ground plane wonders but without a solder mask those pesky little solder hairs really are rascals. All right I'm a cak handed ....
Dr_A What exactly is SuperSUB V1.1 ( and no witties about large speakers, or yellow things )
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
If you feel keen you could have a look at the LCD driver code, an go through and change any 20s to 16 and any 19 to 15 etc, and any 4 to 2 and it should be fairly easy to reconfigure to a 16x2.
Re supersub, that is the autoexec program and one day you might want to auto run something when the prop starts up (eg some sort of networking where it finds nearby boards). It is easier to leave it in there even if not used. The history is that SUBMIT was the original program and someone wrote a better one that was SuperSUB. SUBMIT files evolved into batch files in DOS and they work in a very similar way - just a list of commands.
DR_A Looking at the photo of your board on your website the area I am talking about is totally blank it looks like you don't put anything in that area so I am all set thank you
Dr_A I have had a few dabbles at the LCD code and it seems to bring the wholeboard crashing down. You have commented that "bizzare overwrite ...." so I assume you have had some problems too.
I thought 80 chars (4x20) buffer was OTT so 40 was tried, CRUNCH, even the VGA output stopped. Still a puzzle is there, so it must be pondered upon.
I tried a 74hc(t)238 and some 74hc373s to see if the mem would select, but it wouldn't and "Spacebar " again, perhaps it was the (t) bit. It does add in another set of inverters on the output of the decoder but I was wondering if the transparent latch would allow more of an address window. I will have to sit down and see if any of this is true, or useful. I have noticed that the "Spacebar " specter is based on not seing the RAM. The first version Drac_blade_01 had three latches but the baby one only the two. I have never seen the "Spacebar on the baby one but had assumed it was something to do with the way I had the 3.3V reg chained off of the 5V reg, which I have changed on baby. On "spreadout" one I have tried it with two latches and three and the "Spacebar" only crops up sometimes with the third latch being there. All this could be a problem I have given myself by "randomizing" the addressing to suit the layout.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
However, if you compile it from the graphical program BST.EXE then it compiles fine
I spotted this in the bst thread. Try using -Oa instead of -Ox and see if it compiles.
-Ox enables extensions, but there are a lot of other optimisation flags that can save space (particularly constant folding and unused SPIN method removal) that will all be enabled with -Oa (-h will give you a detailed printout of what does what).
I'm back, but it's going to take me a couple of days to catch up, I've got about 9,000 E-mails sitting in my various boxes.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Life may be "too short", but it's the longest thing we ever do.
Re BST, one solution is use the IDE interface rather than the DOS interface. This was something Cluso showed me as I never realised until recently that there was an IDE. So - set that setting once on the IDE for removing unused code, and you never have to look at it again.
But that Oa command does work:
C:\Propeller\zicog92\Dracblade version 2 Nov 28>bstc -p2 -d COM3 -e -Oa -or Main_Dr_Acula.spin
Brads Spin Tool Compiler v0.15.3 - Copyright 2008,2009 All rights reserved
Compiled for i386 Win32 at 08:17:48 on 2009/07/20
Loading Object Main_Dr_Acula
Loading Object Zicog_Drac
Loading Object fsrwFemto
Loading Object sdspiFemto
Loading Object VGA_1024_VT100
Loading Object vga_Hires_Text
Loading Object keyboard
Loading Object Dracblade
Loading Object DracLCD
Loading Object timing
Loading Object pcFullDuplexSerial4FC
Program size is 26432 longs
31 Constants folded
Compiled 6065 Lines of Code in 1.093 Seconds
We found a Propeller Version 1
Propeller Load took 9.781 Seconds
The only real catch with the IDE is the little arrows that drop down on the prop IDE to indicate what repeats and ifs etc belong where. But I'm getting used to spin and only occasionally need to open a file in the original prop IDE to see how the arrows line up.
@ mikediv - I'm looking forward to seing a board. How long ago did you order those parts?
@ Cluso, I bought a paper today off your brother-in-law. He said you were very excited about this whole propeller thing but he didn't understand a word you were saying!
@ Toby. Ah - I see what you are doing - non inverted decoder and different latching for the 373. I tried that too at one stage in the design - mainly because for some reason I have a shed full of HC373s. But the polarity of the memory chip /WR and /RD is active low, and if you add another inverter it slows things down, so the memory chip sets the polarity which in turn sets a 138 instead of a 238 and that in turn sets 374s instead of 373s.
Re 20x4 vs 16x2, that would be a bit complicated. There is the line command numbers in Redraw, different pointers in Printline, a different array map for Newline, different code for Backspace and some minor things in Out.
Am I allowed to suggest getting a 20x4? They are very cheap on Ebay and the extra lines make it much more meaningful - I've even used CP/M on a 20x4...
Yes I agree that putting a 16x2 onto the beasty is a little pointless for steering the CP/M bits, but there was a port there and I have a handful of 16x2s off of old video printers and DVD duplicators. As always the only trully new stuff on this one is the PCB, the solder, two of the 74HCs. Everything else is "recycled". It's been years since I have seen rainbow wire.
As soon as something comes into the workshop, that has a decent display on it, I am told "No, you can't scrap it !!!". They just do not understand.
Mem /rd and /wr, DOH! I was so fixated on the latches ...
I even looked at a 8255, it wouldn't save any space but it might cut back the chip count (again only because I've got some) I also wonder about dynamics using /ras and /cas but it's years since I have touched them and I can't remember if they both latch for your multiplexings.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Toby: "I agree that putting a 16x2 onto the beasty is a little pointless for steering the CP/M bits"
You should do it for historical reasons. The first ever CP/M prompt from the Propeller appeared on a 16x2 LCD. Believe it or not I did not have a VGA or TV in the house at the time[noparse]:)[/noparse]
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
For me, the past is not over yet.
If I try to use a dynamic ram, then the ugly issue of refresh comes up. If only we had a Z80 handy.
Seriously though, Has any body played with the more modern dynamics. They often have "self refresh" stated on the datasheets, does that mean that they a "psudo static" or do they have to be cycled just the same?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Hi guys I could use some help with my board I got all the IC sockets soldered I do not have the connector for the SD card , I do have a full size SD card adapter that lets you put a mini SD card into the full size SD card adapter can I use that if yes can you guys please tell/show me how to connect it???
I just had a crazy idea (which would save $3.95). That card you are holding is the adaptor and I can see it has the micro card in it. If you had a second one like that (and the whole thing is only $8) then you could use the adaptor as the socket. Solder 9 wires on and connect to the 9 pads. Glue the holder down with glue. Not ideal, but then again if you are chopping up 40 pin sockets to make 32 pin ones then it would work.
But you would need a second adaptor so you can take the micro sd card out and program it.
I suppose that leads to another question - how are you going to be programming the cards - do you have a programmer? (I got one off ebay for $5, but then discovered my wife's laptop takes sd cards directly).
Re male and female D9, the way you have the board photographed the female one is on the left and the male one is on the right. But you could leave the male one off for the moment - I've not completely finished writing the code for that anyway. (I keep thinking of clever things to do with spin underneath CP/M but with only a few Longs left, I think it will probably end up just passing bytes directly to and from CP/M).
In the UK, at one of the £1 shops they do a USB card reader. It has full size, micro and a couple of other on the other side. They might not be the best of quality but they are cheap, inexpensive and don't cost much.
It's wonderful to see the look on their little faces, when you buy a bunch at once.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Off on a tangent here, but I want to do video capture with the propeller. There are lots of propeller objects to display things, but I don't think there are objects to see things. And robots need to be able to see!
I've got a uCam www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=76from 4dSystems working capturing a JPEG (various sizes) and uploading it via serial. This is working with vb.net and is about 250 lines of code.
I think this is where CP/M might be quite useful as it is hard to add several hundred more lines of spin code when the memory is full already with sd/vga/keyboard/ram drivers. But there is plenty of room in CP/M and I've already done translations from vb.net to sbasic and mbasic in the past.
The pictures could be stored on a sd card and displayed on one of those picture frame viewers. Or one of 4dsystems display. Or on a TV screen +/- a small part of a vga screen. Or uploaded to a PC via xmodem. Or (what I'm working towards), chopped up into packets and sent wirelessly between propellers and then uploaded to a PC and hence the internet.
Also there are possibilities with capturing tiny raw bitmaps and doing image processing on the prop itself.
Hopefully I can get this working on the dracblade soon.
Dr_A LMAO I can not believe you caught that. Actually I did chop up a 40 pin socket but if you look closely all the sockets are very expensive Wire Wrap sockets I soldered them up and then chopped off the long legs , I really want to get my board working
It was really stupid becuase I have to wait for the parts,,mem,74hc273 to come in so I just wasted about 11 dollars in sockets for no reason. I am slowly but surely getting my board built Dr_A or anyone can anyone tell me what the SIP is on my board the text is cut off so I cannot see some of the wording looking athe schematic are they 10K I just want to make sure. Dr I goign to wait to get the right SD card adapter I was just trying to be inpatient again.
Oh yes my laptop programs SD cards directly as well I also have a few adapter like you said 5 bucks at targets I bought a bunch thinking I could take the differant SD card sockets out and use them but when you try to de-solder they just get trashed.
Who hasn't chopped up sockets? I know I have. (there, I feel better already...)
Re: "I have to wait for the parts,,mem,74hc273 to come in ..."
They are HC374, not HC273. Just to double check you have ordered the right ones!
The SIL resistor network is 10k. (on the board version 4 I've gone back to discrete resistors. Maybe a retrograde step but I'm trying to minimise unusual components).
I used to scrimp and save on sockets, but since I found futurlec with sockets for a few cents www.futurlec.com/SockIC.shtml I now have at least 10 spare of each size ready to go if needed. Some of the chips on that board have been through several projects in the past.
Re getting the board working, you could focus on just the propeller first, so that would be the max232, the xtal, prop, eeprom and a few components around those chips, and if you can get it to the point of the proptool software recognising the prop, then build it up from there.
Comments
I didn't jot down the figures but now the NOV30 arch shows onlr 76 longs free. So do different versions report this way, do you have to pick a version that suits ???
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Post Edited (Toby Seckshund) : 1/1/2010 12:49:45 PM GMT
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
Is that any help? I can post a zip of the code if you like. One would like to think newer versions are compiling the code more efficiently...
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
I feel one of those "New Year Formats" brewing. Its only a 2.53 P4
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
and right to the right of these 3 rows of holes is the MAX232 chip socket...No I have not booted mine yet I am having a hard time getting some of the parts. so I have not finished it yet, I am dying to get this working .. I did get a VGA connector the DB9
I need the Sram, The Max232, LM2574HUN???/, The SD card socket. but my biggest problem is I can figure out where everything goes ,, If anyone has a picture of the top of there board complete they can share with me it would be awesome
DR_A I only SD cards that are the full size I do not have any of the minis can I just use a full size SD card I have so many 1Gig ones it would be easy Thanks for all the Help
Happy New Year guys
I should have taken the plunge and learnt a real PCB layout program, but I have got into the habit of FreePCB which has poor libraries, but I know my way around its way of things now. Viewmate does the gerber to print bit and mirrorings of the layers. The printer is a cheap HP1018 lazer and the "free" joke catridge that came in it lasted for 2 years. The new one does seem to give a better coverage than the old one ever did.
I must get around to photo ething at some point
And above all, just remember that the photos hide a million sins !
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Of course what the heck could you possibly want with 8K even basic programs where maybe 20-50 lines and you saved those on your Radio Shack cassette tape player.
Toby I am in the same boat I have so many awesome designs I have made for multi processor MCU boards I have Eagle Pro and Express PC I have never had a board made but seeing what everyone here has done I am going to have some of mine made if I can figure out how.
Dr_A has been a big help and I am going to post one of my designs the schematic anyway that was done in Eagle Pro I am told there is some way to take the schematic and have it make the PC board automatically I don't know I will find out.
Toby PM me if you want to try one of those programs
I think that might be the answer - I'm at work at the moment but I think there is a setting in one of the IDE menus that leaves out code that isn't ever used. So this saves some space. It is in the options somewhere and I think that should free up the memory needed.
Re mikediv, I'm still not sure where you mean. On one side of the max232 is two resistors. On the other side is lots of holes that are not used for anything. When I get home I'll post a link to the Eagle overlay for the board as that might explain it better. Or if you have Eagle already, www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller and near the bottom of the text is the link for the eagle files. Have you got all the parts on order yet?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 1/2/2010 3:24:27 AM GMT
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
1) I can compile so it is 152 longs short. And to fix that, in the IDE version of BST, Tools/Compiler Preferences/Optimisations/Eliminate unused spin methods.
There probably is a switch that does that for the command line version (? -or , but it doesn't seem to work, though -ox does) Maybe one day I will go through and actually remove the code. But some of it is things like .hex output methods that are very handy to quickly use when debugging, then comment them out again.
2) Re mikediv "DR_A the 3 row of pins I am talking about is upper left right under the DB9 connector and right above it it says ""F TERM DO"" something right underneath that print is a 3 rows of 16 holes right next to each other I need to know what goes there?? It looks like some kind of header???"
Yes that is the prototyping area. You don't need to connect anything there, but maybe one day you might want to add something to the board and you could build it there.
The prototyping area looks like three headers because, well, it is. They were just a convenient library part in Eagle to build a prototyping area. Sorry about the confusion.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 1/2/2010 11:26:01 AM GMT
Leaving all the copper on looks nice, does the ground plane wonders but without a solder mask those pesky little solder hairs really are rascals. All right I'm a cak handed ....
Dr_A What exactly is SuperSUB V1.1 ( and no witties about large speakers, or yellow things )
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Re supersub, that is the autoexec program and one day you might want to auto run something when the prop starts up (eg some sort of networking where it finds nearby boards). It is easier to leave it in there even if not used. The history is that SUBMIT was the original program and someone wrote a better one that was SuperSUB. SUBMIT files evolved into batch files in DOS and they work in a very similar way - just a list of commands.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
I thought 80 chars (4x20) buffer was OTT so 40 was tried, CRUNCH, even the VGA output stopped. Still a puzzle is there, so it must be pondered upon.
I tried a 74hc(t)238 and some 74hc373s to see if the mem would select, but it wouldn't and "Spacebar " again, perhaps it was the (t) bit. It does add in another set of inverters on the output of the decoder but I was wondering if the transparent latch would allow more of an address window. I will have to sit down and see if any of this is true, or useful. I have noticed that the "Spacebar " specter is based on not seing the RAM. The first version Drac_blade_01 had three latches but the baby one only the two. I have never seen the "Spacebar on the baby one but had assumed it was something to do with the way I had the 3.3V reg chained off of the 5V reg, which I have changed on baby. On "spreadout" one I have tried it with two latches and three and the "Spacebar" only crops up sometimes with the third latch being there. All this could be a problem I have given myself by "randomizing" the addressing to suit the layout.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
I spotted this in the bst thread. Try using -Oa instead of -Ox and see if it compiles.
-Ox enables extensions, but there are a lot of other optimisation flags that can save space (particularly constant folding and unused SPIN method removal) that will all be enabled with -Oa (-h will give you a detailed printout of what does what).
I'm back, but it's going to take me a couple of days to catch up, I've got about 9,000 E-mails sitting in my various boxes.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Life may be "too short", but it's the longest thing we ever do.
Re BST, one solution is use the IDE interface rather than the DOS interface. This was something Cluso showed me as I never realised until recently that there was an IDE. So - set that setting once on the IDE for removing unused code, and you never have to look at it again.
But that Oa command does work:
The only real catch with the IDE is the little arrows that drop down on the prop IDE to indicate what repeats and ifs etc belong where. But I'm getting used to spin and only occasionally need to open a file in the original prop IDE to see how the arrows line up.
@ mikediv - I'm looking forward to seing a board. How long ago did you order those parts?
@ Cluso, I bought a paper today off your brother-in-law. He said you were very excited about this whole propeller thing but he didn't understand a word you were saying!
@ Toby. Ah - I see what you are doing - non inverted decoder and different latching for the 373. I tried that too at one stage in the design - mainly because for some reason I have a shed full of HC373s. But the polarity of the memory chip /WR and /RD is active low, and if you add another inverter it slows things down, so the memory chip sets the polarity which in turn sets a 138 instead of a 238 and that in turn sets 374s instead of 373s.
Re 20x4 vs 16x2, that would be a bit complicated. There is the line command numbers in Redraw, different pointers in Printline, a different array map for Newline, different code for Backspace and some minor things in Out.
Am I allowed to suggest getting a 20x4? They are very cheap on Ebay and the extra lines make it much more meaningful - I've even used CP/M on a 20x4...
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 1/3/2010 1:53:33 PM GMT
As soon as something comes into the workshop, that has a decent display on it, I am told "No, you can't scrap it !!!". They just do not understand.
Mem /rd and /wr, DOH! I was so fixated on the latches ...
I even looked at a 8255, it wouldn't save any space but it might cut back the chip count (again only because I've got some) I also wonder about dynamics using /ras and /cas but it's years since I have touched them and I can't remember if they both latch for your multiplexings.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
You should do it for historical reasons. The first ever CP/M prompt from the Propeller appeared on a 16x2 LCD. Believe it or not I did not have a VGA or TV in the house at the time[noparse]:)[/noparse]
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
For me, the past is not over yet.
If I try to use a dynamic ram, then the ugly issue of refresh comes up. If only we had a Z80 handy.
Seriously though, Has any body played with the more modern dynamics. They often have "self refresh" stated on the datasheets, does that mean that they a "psudo static" or do they have to be cycled just the same?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
Please see attached.
Oh are the 2 DB9 connectors female or male
I just had a crazy idea (which would save $3.95). That card you are holding is the adaptor and I can see it has the micro card in it. If you had a second one like that (and the whole thing is only $8) then you could use the adaptor as the socket. Solder 9 wires on and connect to the 9 pads. Glue the holder down with glue. Not ideal, but then again if you are chopping up 40 pin sockets to make 32 pin ones then it would work.
But you would need a second adaptor so you can take the micro sd card out and program it.
I suppose that leads to another question - how are you going to be programming the cards - do you have a programmer? (I got one off ebay for $5, but then discovered my wife's laptop takes sd cards directly).
Re male and female D9, the way you have the board photographed the female one is on the left and the male one is on the right. But you could leave the male one off for the moment - I've not completely finished writing the code for that anyway. (I keep thinking of clever things to do with spin underneath CP/M but with only a few Longs left, I think it will probably end up just passing bytes directly to and from CP/M).
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Links to other interesting threads:
· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)
· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBladeProp is: www.bluemagic.biz/cluso.htm
It's wonderful to see the look on their little faces, when you buy a bunch at once.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
I've got a uCam www.4dsystems.com.au/prod.php?id=76from 4dSystems working capturing a JPEG (various sizes) and uploading it via serial. This is working with vb.net and is about 250 lines of code.
I think this is where CP/M might be quite useful as it is hard to add several hundred more lines of spin code when the memory is full already with sd/vga/keyboard/ram drivers. But there is plenty of room in CP/M and I've already done translations from vb.net to sbasic and mbasic in the past.
The pictures could be stored on a sd card and displayed on one of those picture frame viewers. Or one of 4dsystems display. Or on a TV screen +/- a small part of a vga screen. Or uploaded to a PC via xmodem. Or (what I'm working towards), chopped up into packets and sent wirelessly between propellers and then uploaded to a PC and hence the internet.
Also there are possibilities with capturing tiny raw bitmaps and doing image processing on the prop itself.
Hopefully I can get this working on the dracblade soon.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 1/4/2010 1:18:38 PM GMT
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Style and grace : Nil point
It was really stupid becuase I have to wait for the parts,,mem,74hc273 to come in so I just wasted about 11 dollars in sockets for no reason. I am slowly but surely getting my board built Dr_A or anyone can anyone tell me what the SIP is on my board the text is cut off so I cannot see some of the wording looking athe schematic are they 10K I just want to make sure. Dr I goign to wait to get the right SD card adapter I was just trying to be inpatient again.
Oh yes my laptop programs SD cards directly as well I also have a few adapter like you said 5 bucks at targets I bought a bunch thinking I could take the differant SD card sockets out and use them but when you try to de-solder they just get trashed.
Re: "I have to wait for the parts,,mem,74hc273 to come in ..."
They are HC374, not HC273. Just to double check you have ordered the right ones!
The SIL resistor network is 10k. (on the board version 4 I've gone back to discrete resistors. Maybe a retrograde step but I'm trying to minimise unusual components).
I used to scrimp and save on sockets, but since I found futurlec with sockets for a few cents www.futurlec.com/SockIC.shtml I now have at least 10 spare of each size ready to go if needed. Some of the chips on that board have been through several projects in the past.
Re getting the board working, you could focus on just the propeller first, so that would be the max232, the xtal, prop, eeprom and a few components around those chips, and if you can get it to the point of the proptool software recognising the prop, then build it up from there.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
I'm up for trying some image capture and basic processing. I have a couple of the 4D camera modules (at least one of each type) to play with...
I wonder whether 4D couldn't do a special version of the uDrive to buffer all the captured images in between?
cheers
tubular