Bean, yes, in the version I put up last, on the file selection menu, you just press 'B' it will perform a cold start on the ZX Spectrum, and you can write you're own basic programs, there is yet no way to save them though, I will be working on that [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Hello, this is my first messagge here, so please be patient
I'm really impressed with all of your works, so i would like to run the spectrum emulator.
But i'm a little confused about the hardware: in you message i see a lot of different boards (dracbalde of dr_acula, morpheus from bill henning, triblade from cuso99), this emulator works on all of them? Or can i buy the parts to make a board from the Parallax shop?
The emulator was developed on the dracblade. from Dr_Acula, but I think it works on a few systems, I don't have the other systems to try it on, so I couldn't say for certain which other devices it would run the emulator on.
mau_rizio: Firstly, welcome to the world of the propeller chip. You will find great support here.
As for your question about developing your own board...
You could buy a proto board from parallax and wire your own. However, because you are adding an SRAM there are lots of wires and noise can become a problem. If you were just interested in a normal board there are heaps to choose from. But, if you are into emulations you require external RAM. There are many boards to choose from and most of these boards have full schematics to build your own if you so desire. I helped Drac and he in turn helped some others.
I am unsure if my boards work with the Spektrum emulation as they are designed to be multi-processor versions for speed. Baggers could answer if the I/O (including video) emulation can be split onto a separate prop chip. If not, then currently the DracBlade would most likely be the only pcb you can buy that will work.
FYI The TriBlade is no longer available as the pcbs were so expensive to produce. I do have a replacement in the works. My RamBlade (comes preassembled as it is a tiny matchbox sized SMT board) was designed as a replacement to the main guts of the TriBlade (the prop with SRAM section) and to plug into a Prop ProtoBoard or other equivalent for the I/O processor. I overclock my boards to 104MHz (from 80MHz) with expectation that I will verify them working to 108MHz in the future (they are shipped with a removable xtal and an extra 13.5MHz xtal for 108MHz). I don't think baggers and coley have built their RamBlade or TriBlade that I sent them.
I desperately want to get this to work on the tiniest PCB I can.
My first computer was a 48k ZX Spectrum, the first languages I learned were Spectrum Basic and Z80 asm. This is where I started and I've love a hardware implementation of it to get nostalgic over.
Guess I need to parse the docs to find out what the minimum hardware requirement would be and, if possible add an on-board LCD screen ;-)
__red__ once the P2 comes out, it'll have enough HUB RAM and also be fast enough to emulate a 48K and a 128K speccy at full speed and faster. ;D so you'll be able to put it on a very tiny board indeed
Edit: Or you could just add SRAM to a prop, via a couple of latches to reduce SRAM pin count and add TV, keyboard and SD and you should be good to go with a P1!
The Spectrum was my first computer too. But, I think I had the original black&white version. Was just reading how the color version used 8x8 tiles that shared a common foreground and background color: Sounds familiar, right?
I'm thinking about if my current PSM3 project could be useful for this... It has ~100kB of free RAM. Maybe that could be used to implement a 48kB version of Spectrum emulator...
Think I could fit the display plus virtual keyboard on 320x240 screen... Something to think about...
@mau_rizio, sorry, for some reason I only just saw your post. IIRC, it's only the speaker that was emulated, as it's only the 48K games that are emulated.
Rayman, the ZX81 was black and white and had 8x8 tiles, the Spectrum was colour and had a 256x192 bitmap display. but yeah you should be able to get it in + virtual keyboard on 320x240 although 4 lines of virtual keys in 48 pixels isn't going to be much finger space
I'm glad to see you are still active on this thread. I want to have a look at porting this to run on the Micromite, but not really using any of the Micromite hardware (it's just the board I have).
I understand the main restriction I face is the SD card and Z80 objects are hardcoded to require extra memory via the DracBladeProp, RamBladeProp or TriBladeProp. I plan to stick a 23lc1024 (or two) on the breadboard and access them as the additional memory. However, the above boards seem massively over complicated as they appear to require more than one prop.
Is there no easy way of changing the codes just to simply access the SRAM chip? There are only 5 open IO lines on the Propeller side of the Micromite.
PS I am a newbie to the prop scene so please go easy on me
Thanks for confirming that Jim. I would have had no way of proving that until I'd gone to all the trouble of converting it over.
So would QuadSPI be fast enough, or are you pushing it with a full 8 data lines?
No worries, QuadSPI probably won't be fast enough either, the problem is you're still having to bit bang the address etc, plus like you guessed, it's pushing it with 8 data lines as it is.
@Rayman, yeah, Speccy was ace! Not that ZX81 was bad though, it still had some awesome games, 3D Monster Maze, Mazogs, Catacombs, 3D Defender etc.
Comments
If you made changes, you can just cvs ci -m "Comment for the changes" and the repository will be updated.
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Pullmoll's Propeller Projects
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
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Could this be used as an embedded basic system ?
Bean
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Use BASIC on the Propeller with the speed of assembly language.
PropBASIC thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=867134
March 2010 Nuts and Volts article·http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/cols/nv/prop/col/nvp5.pdf
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There are two rules in life:
· 1) Never divulge all information
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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. [noparse][[/noparse]RUSH - Freewill]
Cheers,
Jim.
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http://www.propgfx.co.uk/forum/·home of the PropGFX Lite
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I'm really impressed with all of your works, so i would like to run the spectrum emulator.
But i'm a little confused about the hardware: in you message i see a lot of different boards (dracbalde of dr_acula, morpheus from bill henning, triblade from cuso99), this emulator works on all of them? Or can i buy the parts to make a board from the Parallax shop?
Thank you.
mau
Welcome to the forum
The emulator was developed on the dracblade. from Dr_Acula, but I think it works on a few systems, I don't have the other systems to try it on, so I couldn't say for certain which other devices it would run the emulator on.
Cheers,
Baggers.
As for your question about developing your own board...
You could buy a proto board from parallax and wire your own. However, because you are adding an SRAM there are lots of wires and noise can become a problem. If you were just interested in a normal board there are heaps to choose from. But, if you are into emulations you require external RAM. There are many boards to choose from and most of these boards have full schematics to build your own if you so desire. I helped Drac and he in turn helped some others.
I am unsure if my boards work with the Spektrum emulation as they are designed to be multi-processor versions for speed. Baggers could answer if the I/O (including video) emulation can be split onto a separate prop chip. If not, then currently the DracBlade would most likely be the only pcb you can buy that will work.
FYI The TriBlade is no longer available as the pcbs were so expensive to produce. I do have a replacement in the works. My RamBlade (comes preassembled as it is a tiny matchbox sized SMT board) was designed as a replacement to the main guts of the TriBlade (the prop with SRAM section) and to plug into a Prop ProtoBoard or other equivalent for the I/O processor. I overclock my boards to 104MHz (from 80MHz) with expectation that I will verify them working to 108MHz in the future (they are shipped with a removable xtal and an extra 13.5MHz xtal for 108MHz). I don't think baggers and coley have built their RamBlade or TriBlade that I sent them.
I will contact Drac for one his board, i don't have the skills to make a pcb.
Cludo99: you multiprocessor board makes me dreaming, but for now i will just try to make the spectrum emulator running
@Baggers: is the audio emulated? Now i'm testing some demos and the emulation quality seems to be really good.
OBC
Baggey
My first computer was a 48k ZX Spectrum, the first languages I learned were Spectrum Basic and Z80 asm. This is where I started and I've love a hardware implementation of it to get nostalgic over.
Guess I need to parse the docs to find out what the minimum hardware requirement would be and, if possible add an on-board LCD screen ;-)
Edit: Or you could just add SRAM to a prop, via a couple of latches to reduce SRAM pin count and add TV, keyboard and SD and you should be good to go with a P1!
I'm thinking about if my current PSM3 project could be useful for this... It has ~100kB of free RAM. Maybe that could be used to implement a 48kB version of Spectrum emulator...
Think I could fit the display plus virtual keyboard on 320x240 screen... Something to think about...
Rayman, the ZX81 was black and white and had 8x8 tiles, the Spectrum was colour and had a 256x192 bitmap display. but yeah you should be able to get it in + virtual keyboard on 320x240 although 4 lines of virtual keys in 48 pixels isn't going to be much finger space
I'm glad to see you are still active on this thread. I want to have a look at porting this to run on the Micromite, but not really using any of the Micromite hardware (it's just the board I have).
I understand the main restriction I face is the SD card and Z80 objects are hardcoded to require extra memory via the DracBladeProp, RamBladeProp or TriBladeProp. I plan to stick a 23lc1024 (or two) on the breadboard and access them as the additional memory. However, the above boards seem massively over complicated as they appear to require more than one prop.
Is there no easy way of changing the codes just to simply access the SRAM chip? There are only 5 open IO lines on the Propeller side of the Micromite.
PS I am a newbie to the prop scene so please go easy on me
Sorry to say, but the simple reply to this is...
If you use ram that is accessed serially then it'll be far too slow to access to emulate the speccy at any decent speed.
Cheers,
Jim.
So would QuadSPI be fast enough, or are you pushing it with a full 8 data lines?
Mine was Sinclair ZX81. Spectrum looks a lot nicer...
No worries, QuadSPI probably won't be fast enough either, the problem is you're still having to bit bang the address etc, plus like you guessed, it's pushing it with 8 data lines as it is.
@Rayman,