I've never heard of any other company telling users how the design of a new device is going. They usually keep it completely under wraps until they have working silicon, which seems a sensible approach.
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Mike Green said...
For what it's worth, I think a newsletter or other source of official updates would be a terrible mistake. As with the Prop I, this is a project produced by a very small team lead by a single individual. Most of the design is new. There are all sorts of foreseen and unforeseen issues that come up and various solutions have to be tried and retried and discarded and revised. The designer is very principled and has a history of developing products that are not released until they are "ready" and have shown themselves to be of very high quality with very long functional lifetimes.
1) I think it's a very poor use of Parallax's limited time and resources to product such a newsletter
2) I think there's a potential risk of putting undue pressure on the design team to produce a less than ideal product despite the best of intentions
3) Parallax has been very good to date at sharing information that makes sense to share through existing mechanisms (like this forum).
4) Be patient. Clamoring for information or for features, particularly those already discussed and discarded is not helpful.
I think you're exaggerating a bit. Propeller 2 is an expected product in years, as promised. A little information every 30 days for example, does no harm.
Leon said...
I've never heard of any other company telling users how the design of a new device is going. They usually keep it completely under wraps until they have working silicon, which seems a sensible approach.
Leon
The difference is that Parallax has filled us with enthusiasm and anxiety for years. If they say "Propeller II within 8 years", no problem, but it was announced that would be available in about 1 or 2 years.
Meanwhile, I'm playing with the AVRs (Tiny13), and I was surprised how easy it is to program, and included peripherals like ADC, in a package so small and so cheap.
Others are playing in big leagues (xmos), which would not have happened if Propeller II had been on time.
Just a bit of information indicates that the objectives are being achieved.
For Propeller III simply did not announce a departure date or even report that will be manufactured.
Most well funded companies (micros being a tiny subset) set an expected due date for new products then miss it by 3 months or so ... it's a PM/Investor relations/Marketing/Engineering art form. Think different is never an excuse. Not a bad deal for customers considering the alternatives.
Wow, lots of complaining in here. I haven't used up the Propeller I yet.
Why not add another Prop, and get 64 pins and 64K RAM and 16 cogs.
PoS terminal? How does it stuff up 32K? Suggestions: Stack SRAMs on your EEPROM, and .
compress your strings, use variable length, and 4 or 5 or 6 bits per character,
and find and use the text driver with the on-cog video buffer.
I'm "almost" running 3D video on the Prop1 internal RAM alone.
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I should be typing in Spin now.
Coming soon. My open Propeller Project Pages and favorite links index.
BigFoot: You must be using the wrong chip. This is a microcontroller, not a microprocessor, so it does not have an external address/data bus. There are not many microcontrollers with 48KB of ram internal to the chip (yes 32KB hub + 8 x 2KB = 48KB).
The problem is we are using other features in the prop chip, so we have attempted to use the chip outside it's original design intentions and now we complain it does not do the job. If I bought a small car and then complained it didn't go offroad, do you think anyone would care!
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Comments
Leon
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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Post Edited (Leon) : 2/7/2010 6:38:33 PM GMT
I think you're exaggerating a bit. Propeller 2 is an expected product in years, as promised. A little information every 30 days for example, does no harm.
The difference is that Parallax has filled us with enthusiasm and anxiety for years. If they say "Propeller II within 8 years", no problem, but it was announced that would be available in about 1 or 2 years.
Meanwhile, I'm playing with the AVRs (Tiny13), and I was surprised how easy it is to program, and included peripherals like ADC, in a package so small and so cheap.
Others are playing in big leagues (xmos), which would not have happened if Propeller II had been on time.
Just a bit of information indicates that the objectives are being achieved.
For Propeller III simply did not announce a departure date or even report that will be manufactured.
I am with you, even the Z80 could address 64K of memory before bank switching.
We are having a hard time with our latest PoS Terminal because of the 32K hub
ram limit. I had to use two slow I/O chips to get an extra 32 I/O lines.
Russ
Why not add another Prop, and get 64 pins and 64K RAM and 16 cogs.
PoS terminal? How does it stuff up 32K? Suggestions: Stack SRAMs on your EEPROM, and .
compress your strings, use variable length, and 4 or 5 or 6 bits per character,
and find and use the text driver with the on-cog video buffer.
I'm "almost" running 3D video on the Prop1 internal RAM alone.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
I should be typing in Spin now.
Coming soon. My open Propeller Project Pages and favorite links index.
Sounds cool. 3D as in Doom 1st person shooter, or 3D as in Avatar? Either way I'm intrigued.
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www.smarthome.viviti.com/propeller
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cmapspublic3.ihmc.us:80/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1181572927203_421963583_5511&partName=htmltext
Hello Rest Of The World
Hello Debris
Install a propeller and blow them away
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cmapspublic3.ihmc.us:80/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1181572927203_421963583_5511&partName=htmltext
Hello Rest Of The World
Hello Debris
Install a propeller and blow them away
The problem is we are using other features in the prop chip, so we have attempted to use the chip outside it's original design intentions and now we complain it does not do the job. If I bought a small car and then complained it didn't go offroad, do you think anyone would care!
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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)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz