Thanks for the info! I wish the pages/docs/etc were translated to english, the bits of it that I can understand makes it look like a really nice system.
Google Translate worked fine for 95% of the material, the Hive Forum helped with the rest. It was easy and I never soldered to a bare board before.
And probably wont be unless someone gets truly inspired to finish the Inter-Prop Channel software.
So ... don't hold your breath.
Hive TriOS does this; also
PropForth Multi-core does this at clock speed with protocol, result is continuous exchange of 96 bit packet using 1 cog an 1 I/O per prop.
Hi! Is the propeller retrocomputer idea still alive, dead, or moved on to somewhere else?
Thanks!
Andrew Lynch
Hive TriOS is under continuous development by the Hive.de community. It is linux-like in appearance.
PropForth runs on the Hive boards, but the design is old-school and way over-kill for propforth, the propforh multi-processor is easier and only requires simple serial lines instead of 8 or 16 bit parallel channels (of course your could easily implement them, it is forth). The propforth JupiterACE standalone computer will run on any prop with a VGA and key board. One could emulate any retro computer using forth, and while the emulation will be slow, it will still be faster than the original (based on my biased napkin-back calculations).
So you have at least to choices: 1) Hive if you want linux and can solder, 2) propforth JupiterACE if you are lazy and want to go cheap, and can use forth.
AS I said, I have 10 bare R14 boards that I have built, the R13 from the previous build cycle is still fine fo me. PM me if you are interested. I can also post my build notes if needed.
PM send.. I'd love to display one of these at the UPEW show.
Any chance of getting a couple boards? If you had a completed unit I could get you to loan or sell, we could give the HIVE a good showing off this year. (I doubt there is time to assemble a unit in time for UPEW)
The P112 was mentioned earlier in this thread. Those interested in getting one should know that there is a Kickstarter project going to fund new kits: http://661.org/p112/
Propforth on a demoboard is a bit cheaper and easier. You can add vga+keyboard to a quickstart and it will also work, but is eaiser just to buy something with the connectors already built on.
Yes, a little cheaper, but this DE0 Nano board has 32 MB SDRAM and a lot of GPIO pins. FPGA can give acces to this RAM for the Propeller, then you can add a SD card via FPGA. 64 KB eeprom on Quickstart board can contain all basic stuff like font definitions etc. There are a lot of ideas, FPGA is a powerful chip which can do a lot of useful stuff. And you can still use a Propforth to control all of this.
Now I have bigger FPGA board, DE1 (to learn this stuff, from my university, it is not my own) and maybe I will try to make such connection, simply to learn. DE1 has VGA output (12 bits - Amiga compatible color space), flash ROM and SD card slot, then some SRAM and SDRAM. Very good candidate to retrocomputing. You can of course use NIOS processor, but the Propeller is simpler to program, need no license to use it and you save over 6000 logic blocks.
Just a few impressions....
I'd be happy to use SMT boards that are pre-tinned if I had to and there was a leaning toward larger SMT components. The reality is drilling hole and plating through holes are expensive operations.
IT would also be acceptable to do what SchmartBoards has done and have much of the board pre-assembled with major components remaining to be attached or components that are multi-options to remain for the enduser to acquire and solder.
Regarding 'retro' computers....
When I think back to what my little CP/M did, I'd rather NOT go backwards. And I don't want a TRS80 Color computer with cassette driver for memory either. So I am certainly not a purist about retro, I like reliablity too much.
But that doesn't mean that there are not some items in our past that could be very useful to revive. One is obvious = the VT100 terminal offers up a lot of utility. But what is not so obvious is systems with resident interpreter software languages allowed an awful lot of us to learn a computer language by poking a keyboard and seeing immediate results on a screen. With the TRS80 it was Color Basic and with the JupiterACE it was Forth.
Maybe a combination of the 'best of retro' would be most appealing, but no floppies and multiple resident languages selectable by switching boot EEROM, maybe even allowing the selectable boot EEROMs to include games. It would certain be wonderful in a Wii Nunchuck could be an input device as weill as keyboard, mouse, and joystick.
This is an area where one board that supports the efforts of an 'association' of contributor/developers would really get a lot more attention and interest than merely trying to emulate a 'once upon a time' machine.
Must have items.
A. A real time clock
B. ADC chip
C. DAC chip
D. 8 bit parallel i/o
E. two or more RS233 / RS485 serial ports
F. keyboard plug
G. mouse plug
H. SDcard plug
and maybe a couple of USB ports to support more exotic modern devices.
So there goes the 'retro'. Let's just call it what it is - The first REAL Propeller mother board.
Just a few impressions....
I'd be happy to use SMT boards that are pre-tinned if I had to and there was a leaning toward larger SMT components. The reality is drilling hole and plating through holes are expensive operations.
IT would also be acceptable to do what SchmartBoards has done and have much of the board pre-assembled with major components remaining to be attached or components that are multi-options to remain for the enduser to acquire and solder.
Regarding 'retro' computers....
When I think back to what my little CP/M did, I'd rather NOT go backwards. And I don't want a TRS80 Color computer with cassette driver for memory either. So I am certainly not a purist about retro, I like reliablity too much.
But that doesn't mean that there are not some items in our past that could be very useful to revive. One is obvious = the VT100 terminal offers up a lot of utility. But what is not so obvious is systems with resident interpreter software languages allowed an awful lot of us to learn a computer language by poking a keyboard and seeing immediate results on a screen. With the TRS80 it was Color Basic and with the JupiterACE it was Forth.
Maybe a combination of the 'best of retro' would be most appealing, but no floppies and multiple resident languages selectable by switching boot EEROM, maybe even allowing the selectable boot EEROMs to include games. It would certain be wonderful in a Wii Nunchuck could be an input device as weill as keyboard, mouse, and joystick.
This is an area where one board that supports the efforts of an 'association' of contributor/developers would really get a lot more attention and interest than merely trying to emulate a 'once upon a time' machine.
Must have items.
A. A real time clock
B. ADC chip
C. DAC chip
D. 8 bit parallel i/o
E. two or more RS233 / RS485 serial ports
F. keyboard plug
G. mouse plug
H. SDcard plug
and maybe a couple of USB ports to support more exotic modern devices.
So there goes the 'retro'. Let's just call it what it is - The first REAL Propeller mother board.
@Bill Henning
Thanks for the heads up. No, I have not taken a look at this. It called a PropCade.
I haven't kept up with all the various boards for the Propeller. It is difficult to do so.
Must have items.
A. A real time clock
B. ADC chip
C. DAC chip
D. 8 bit parallel i/o
E. two or more RS233 / RS485 serial ports
F. keyboard plug
G. mouse plug
H. SDcard plug
To me either one represents a nice retro system. Uses old school CPU with modern refinements and programmable logic to get a much better machine, and that is still understandable by mere mortals and hobbyists.
Must have items.
A. A real time clock
B. ADC chip
C. DAC chip
D. 8 bit parallel i/o
E. two or more RS233 / RS485 serial ports
F. keyboard plug
G. mouse plug
H. SDcard plug
I'm getting there with a new design. Should be able to say yes to all of those. The motherboard is a propeller and a single latch, with an 8 bit data bus, and the latch is 8 bits for an address bus. Then add a /rd and /wr line and it is a simple 8080 style bus. 8+8+2 = 18 pins so use a 20 way header. Uses 11 propeller pins and the rest are free.
Then add extra boards to do the things you want. For instance, there is a board with two 8255 chips that gives you 48 I/O pins on a 50 way header. That can then drive a Z80 board and the Z80 board is just a Z80, ram chip and clock. Or you can use propellers as slave boards. I keep running out of code space due to the overheads of display plus sd plus keyboard taking 80% of the code space, so why not offload those onto a slave board? And adding things such as external memory are trivial using such a bus.
No need for a backplane/motherboard either as you can put lots of 20 pin IDC connectors on a single length of ribbon cable.
My motivation for designing this was a system that can do VGA, TV and touchscreen using the same motherboard. I'll post some schematics soon - just need to put the finishing touches on the touchscreen design.
I'm getting there with a new design. Should be able to say yes to all of those. The motherboard is a propeller and a single latch, with an 8 bit data bus, and the latch is 8 bits for an address bus. Then add a /rd and /wr line and it is a simple 8080 style bus. 8+8+2 = 18 pins so use a 20 way header. Uses 11 propeller pins and the rest are free.
Then add extra boards to do the things you want. For instance, there is a board with two 8255 chips that gives you 48 I/O pins on a 50 way header. That can then drive a Z80 board and the Z80 board is just a Z80, ram chip and clock. Or you can use propellers as slave boards. I keep running out of code space due to the overheads of display plus sd plus keyboard taking 80% of the code space, so why not offload those onto a slave board? And adding things such as external memory are trivial using such a bus.
No need for a backplane/motherboard either as you can put lots of 20 pin IDC connectors on a single length of ribbon cable.
My motivation for designing this was a system that can do VGA, TV and touchscreen using the same motherboard. I'll post some schematics soon - just need to put the finishing touches on the touchscreen design.
Would be great to see this board/system. Could be just what I was looking for so many pages ago in this thread.
Comments
Thanks!
Andrew Lynch
Google Translate worked fine for 95% of the material, the Hive Forum helped with the rest. It was easy and I never soldered to a bare board before.
Hive TriOS does this; also
PropForth Multi-core does this at clock speed with protocol, result is continuous exchange of 96 bit packet using 1 cog an 1 I/O per prop.
I have ten (10) bare R14 boards (and not time) if anyone is interested, please PM me.
Hive TriOS is under continuous development by the Hive.de community. It is linux-like in appearance.
PropForth runs on the Hive boards, but the design is old-school and way over-kill for propforth, the propforh multi-processor is easier and only requires simple serial lines instead of 8 or 16 bit parallel channels (of course your could easily implement them, it is forth). The propforth JupiterACE standalone computer will run on any prop with a VGA and key board. One could emulate any retro computer using forth, and while the emulation will be slow, it will still be faster than the original (based on my biased napkin-back calculations).
So you have at least to choices: 1) Hive if you want linux and can solder, 2) propforth JupiterACE if you are lazy and want to go cheap, and can use forth.
AS I said, I have 10 bare R14 boards that I have built, the R13 from the previous build cycle is still fine fo me. PM me if you are interested. I can also post my build notes if needed.
Any chance of getting a couple boards? If you had a completed unit I could get you to loan or sell, we could give the HIVE a good showing off this year. (I doubt there is time to assemble a unit in time for UPEW)
OBC
With only 17 backers(it was 16 a few minutes ago...) I have my doubts that they can get the funding in time...
*crosses fingers*
http://www.parallax.com/Store/Microcontrollers/PropellerDevelopmentBoards/tabid/514/ProductID/748/List/0/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName,ProductName
to this:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=139&No=593&PartNo=3
Propforth on a demoboard is a bit cheaper and easier. You can add vga+keyboard to a quickstart and it will also work, but is eaiser just to buy something with the connectors already built on.
Now I have bigger FPGA board, DE1 (to learn this stuff, from my university, it is not my own) and maybe I will try to make such connection, simply to learn. DE1 has VGA output (12 bits - Amiga compatible color space), flash ROM and SD card slot, then some SRAM and SDRAM. Very good candidate to retrocomputing. You can of course use NIOS processor, but the Propeller is simpler to program, need no license to use it and you save over 6000 logic blocks.
http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/blue-screen-of-basic.html
http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/pocket-mini-computer-kit.html
Jeff
I asked him about offering complete kits, and seems like he changed his mind.
I'd be happy to use SMT boards that are pre-tinned if I had to and there was a leaning toward larger SMT components. The reality is drilling hole and plating through holes are expensive operations.
IT would also be acceptable to do what SchmartBoards has done and have much of the board pre-assembled with major components remaining to be attached or components that are multi-options to remain for the enduser to acquire and solder.
Regarding 'retro' computers....
When I think back to what my little CP/M did, I'd rather NOT go backwards. And I don't want a TRS80 Color computer with cassette driver for memory either. So I am certainly not a purist about retro, I like reliablity too much.
But that doesn't mean that there are not some items in our past that could be very useful to revive. One is obvious = the VT100 terminal offers up a lot of utility. But what is not so obvious is systems with resident interpreter software languages allowed an awful lot of us to learn a computer language by poking a keyboard and seeing immediate results on a screen. With the TRS80 it was Color Basic and with the JupiterACE it was Forth.
Maybe a combination of the 'best of retro' would be most appealing, but no floppies and multiple resident languages selectable by switching boot EEROM, maybe even allowing the selectable boot EEROMs to include games. It would certain be wonderful in a Wii Nunchuck could be an input device as weill as keyboard, mouse, and joystick.
This is an area where one board that supports the efforts of an 'association' of contributor/developers would really get a lot more attention and interest than merely trying to emulate a 'once upon a time' machine.
Must have items.
A. A real time clock
B. ADC chip
C. DAC chip
D. 8 bit parallel i/o
E. two or more RS233 / RS485 serial ports
F. keyboard plug
G. mouse plug
H. SDcard plug
and maybe a couple of USB ports to support more exotic modern devices.
So there goes the 'retro'. Let's just call it what it is - The first REAL Propeller mother board.
http://www.mikronauts.com/propcade/
Missing ADC/DAC, but I will soon have a module for that; and it has a lot more features than your list
Includes one RS232 port and one RS485 port
Runs SphinxOS
PropCade was specifically designed to be a stand alone Propeller computer / retro platform.
Thanks for the heads up. No, I have not taken a look at this. It called a PropCade.
I haven't kept up with all the various boards for the Propeller. It is difficult to do so.
I'm close to this with the PMC project..
A,B,C (I2C/Experimenter's Bus for these)
D. Nope
E. Experimenter's bus
F. check
G. check
H. check
In addition is a SRAM/Flash socket
Jeff
Here's a Z--80 based retro that doesn't skimp on capability. 20 mhz Z-80 with FPGA. 512K Ram, VGA/NTSC display capability.
http://www.retroleum.co.uk/v6z80p/
Examples of video:
http://www.youtube.com/v5z80p
If that one doesn't interest you he has another variant:
http://www.retroleum.co.uk/ez80p/
To me either one represents a nice retro system. Uses old school CPU with modern refinements and programmable logic to get a much better machine, and that is still understandable by mere mortals and hobbyists.
I'm getting there with a new design. Should be able to say yes to all of those. The motherboard is a propeller and a single latch, with an 8 bit data bus, and the latch is 8 bits for an address bus. Then add a /rd and /wr line and it is a simple 8080 style bus. 8+8+2 = 18 pins so use a 20 way header. Uses 11 propeller pins and the rest are free.
Then add extra boards to do the things you want. For instance, there is a board with two 8255 chips that gives you 48 I/O pins on a 50 way header. That can then drive a Z80 board and the Z80 board is just a Z80, ram chip and clock. Or you can use propellers as slave boards. I keep running out of code space due to the overheads of display plus sd plus keyboard taking 80% of the code space, so why not offload those onto a slave board? And adding things such as external memory are trivial using such a bus.
No need for a backplane/motherboard either as you can put lots of 20 pin IDC connectors on a single length of ribbon cable.
My motivation for designing this was a system that can do VGA, TV and touchscreen using the same motherboard. I'll post some schematics soon - just need to put the finishing touches on the touchscreen design.
Would be great to see this board/system. Could be just what I was looking for so many pages ago in this thread.
Unfortunately, he has miscalculated production time, and the units won't ship until mid-january sometime.