I never could figure out why the price has not changed much in 20 years. I have·kept my 20 year old GNT 4601 through 5 moves because of the price. It only has about 8 total hours on it. It came off one of our demo·PC board design stations at Gerber; used for drill data output. I fired it up a couple of years ago only to be greeted with the sound of·3 or 4 Tantalums giving·up the magic smoke. Guess it's time to get that fixed!
Now..why did I throw out that perfectly good ASR 33 Teletype?· (Kicks self one more time.)
Speakin' of DEC's...how about a uVAX?
potatohead said...
Just checked in on the cost of a puncher... HOLY Smile!! Those things are not cheap!
Someone mentioned an HP-71...lots of fun!
A couple years back when I was 14 or so, I used one my dad found somewhere around the house to practise my basic skills. Managed to get a bad prime number searcher and a little man that would run back and forth along the screen working. Great stuff!
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UC Berkeley '12 EECS
CalSol: UC Berkeley Solar Car http://calsol.berkeley.edu
KJ6AWU
With a sufficiently large supply of paper tape holes, you can fire a brick kiln. But I digress...
What are the practical limitations of the Propeller when it comes to emulating another processor? For example could the 68000 or the 8086 be emulated? Is there hope of running a simple MS-DOS program like Bluebeard Chess on a Prop? Or would it be better to emulate a risc-like processor such as the Transputer? Since the cogs are 32 bit devices, would one achieve greater efficiency emulating a 16- or 32-bit processor as opposed to an eight-bitter?
I suspect that you would get far greater efficiency by emulating a 32 bit machine than an 8 or 16 bitter. If I were to attempt writing an emulator I would take maximum advantage of the existing prop instructions, architecture, and current LMM's.
Use the cogs and PASM to execute an LMM+ interpreter consisting of current prop instructions plus a few additional "macro instructions".
Load the interpreter in the upper area of cog ram and use the lower area as PC, SP, and general purpose registers (at least 30 gp registers).
Use the hub memory as the stack for storing cog state information. Assign each cog a different area as it is started.
Have a multiplexed 32 bit address/data bus. Speed up access by using both edges of the clock pulse. Rising edge of first clock outputs 16 msb's of address, falling edge outputs 16 lsb's. Rising edge of second clock reads/writes 16 msb's, falling edge reads/writes 16 lsb's.
I/O could be memory mapped or use separate strobe lines.
Sinclair ZX-81 (1982 vintage)
The stock model had 2k ram, but you could get piggy-back extended ram up to 64k.
I remember how thrilled I was to upgrade to the 16k module.
I see that QUANTA, the QL Users and Tinkerer's Association, that Brian Pain and I formed about 24 years ago, is holding a meeting in Birmingham in a few days. I went to their 21st year bash in Portsmouth.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
I think that would doom it right from the start. The only C5 I ever saw apart from test drives that were made available at a ZX Microfair was at Hammersmith; the unfortunate owner was pushing a broken-down one into Hammersmith Broadway underground station, perhaps he was hoping to get home with it via the tube. A nephew of mine had a friend with rich parents who got several of them as toys a few years later, the kids rode around in them in the large garden. The motors were available cheaply for many years and were sometimes used for driving small machine tools, IIRC, like the Peatol/Taig lathe.
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Comments
Now..why did I throw out that perfectly good ASR 33 Teletype?· (Kicks self one more time.)
Speakin' of DEC's...how about a uVAX?
Post Edited (David Jensen) : 4/3/2010 11:38:04 PM GMT
A couple years back when I was 14 or so, I used one my dad found somewhere around the house to practise my basic skills. Managed to get a bad prime number searcher and a little man that would run back and forth along the screen working. Great stuff!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
UC Berkeley '12 EECS
CalSol: UC Berkeley Solar Car
http://calsol.berkeley.edu
KJ6AWU
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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
What are the practical limitations of the Propeller when it comes to emulating another processor? For example could the 68000 or the 8086 be emulated? Is there hope of running a simple MS-DOS program like Bluebeard Chess on a Prop? Or would it be better to emulate a risc-like processor such as the Transputer? Since the cogs are 32 bit devices, would one achieve greater efficiency emulating a 16- or 32-bit processor as opposed to an eight-bitter?
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
I suspect that you would get far greater efficiency by emulating a 32 bit machine than an 8 or 16 bitter. If I were to attempt writing an emulator I would take maximum advantage of the existing prop instructions, architecture, and current LMM's.
Use the cogs and PASM to execute an LMM+ interpreter consisting of current prop instructions plus a few additional "macro instructions".
Load the interpreter in the upper area of cog ram and use the lower area as PC, SP, and general purpose registers (at least 30 gp registers).
Use the hub memory as the stack for storing cog state information. Assign each cog a different area as it is started.
Have a multiplexed 32 bit address/data bus. Speed up access by using both edges of the clock pulse. Rising edge of first clock outputs 16 msb's of address, falling edge outputs 16 lsb's. Rising edge of second clock reads/writes 16 msb's, falling edge reads/writes 16 lsb's.
I/O could be memory mapped or use separate strobe lines.
The stock model had 2k ram, but you could get piggy-back extended ram up to 64k.
I remember how thrilled I was to upgrade to the 16k module.
http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html
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________________________________
Fred
Work:www.vhf.ca··Play:www.Costalegre.ca
I think only an Xmos could do that
whatever happened to my old QL ?
Mike
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Post Edited (Leon) : 4/4/2010 5:01:31 PM GMT
you are an absolute treasure.
How about we Old English gits start a new thread about the next generation of prop.
can we ask chip to call it the C5 ?
Mike
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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Post Edited (Leon) : 4/4/2010 5:44:26 PM GMT
maybe Hoover make better motors these days.
can you imagine what Sir Clive would do with nanotechnology these days ?
I worked at GI in Glenrothes for a short spell when they were designing the worlds fisrt pocket calculator, red leds and all.
that was when they designed the Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC), my word, how 1974 has flown by
Mike