Did they really say all that? You have an up hill struggle...
"these chips are expensive, hard to get and slow"
Perhaps hard to get. Not even so easy here in Finland. Slow, compared to what?
"Spin is crappy, soft in spin wastes processing power"
So it is interpreted and slow but it does allow packing of a lot more functionality into the available memory space.
The PASM in COGs takes care of speed critical stuff.
"there are noo tools to play with these processors"
What? How about:
The Prop tool from Parallax.
BST, a Prop tool clone for Win, Mac and Linux.
The HomeSpun compiler in C#. Works on ARM under Linux and mono
The Catalina C compiler.
The new Propeller GCC C/C++ compiler
Jazzeds SimpleIDE for the above
The list goes on...all free, some open, source all good.
"instruction set is bad, ARM9 has better, better get a STM32 or LPC17xx"
Nah. One of the nicest instruction sets I have ever used.
"memory controller is bad, they, who projected this chip worked hard about what else to screw in it"
Memory controller is good. Very deterministic.
"Where are interrupts?"
OK, they clearly do not get the idea.
Interrupts are not required if you have cores to handle incoming events as the Prop does. See also XMOS devices.
Interrupts make you code complex, inflexible, unpredictable non-deterministic and hard to extend.
Interrupts were invented as a cludge to get around the fact that traditionally CPU's were big and expensive.
The Props multiple cores without interrupts makes it trivially easy to mix and match software modules from OBEX
or elsewhere confident that any new module you throw in will not upset the timing of you existing code.
"a lot of silicon wasted for bootloaders and spin interpreter" "they should write C compiler for it instead"
See Catalina and propgcc.
Turns out this may not be optimal in all cases as C compiled to PASM produces bigger code for the same functionality
than Spin byte codes. But if you need the speed there it is. For Prop II it will be great.
"this processor is a motor of Lamborghini put into Polish version of Fiat125 on tractor's wheels"
There are places where you really would not want to be driving your Lamborghini, and a tractor is more appropriate.
"if you want parallel processing, better buy 8 LPC1112 chips $1.5 each and connect them with SPI, then Propeller will be slower than this"
They really don't understand.
If the CPU in the LPC1112 is taking care of the inter processor communication via SPI or whatever that is seriously going to bugger
up the execution rate of the processor and destroy it's timing determinism. Determinism is critical for many real time tasks.
Besides by the time you have built a board with 8 ARM chips on it you have spend a lot more money than on a single Prop.
YOU and others might suggest to Parallax that the Propeller2 provide a complete International set of characters. After all, we have people from all over the world. I don't expect Arabic, Hewbrew, Chinese, or Japan - but the alphabetical could be enhanced.
In the meantime, there is likely a way to overlay details onto existing Parallax characters to make the full Polish alphabet.
The Lamborghini's horsepower is more well-suited for a tractor than the modern highway. The reality is most of these fast sportcars are fated to become sudden auto wrecks as people just don't realize they cannot react fast enough at high speeds. The best thing to do with one is to put it in the garage and watch it appreciate in price.
The Propeller's Video abilities (with color) exceed ARM chips. There are lots of people that misunderstand and resist the Propellerk rather than see the differences as an intellectual challenge with great rewards. ARMs may be feature rich, but the features actually can collide and conflict with eachother - while on the Propeller that is not the case.
If you are willing to provide some great Kielbasa, I suspect many of the items you need can be paid for in sausage.
In the meantime, there is likely a way to overlay details onto existing Parallax characters to make the full Polish alphabet.
Character set starts at $8000. These are 16 characters, 16x32, 256 longs, 1 kB, I think I can define them from $7B00 to $7FFF getting a contiguous character table., then use 9 bits (still fits in PASM immediate) to address a character. It seems to be simpler than making overlays in real time. If only there is a way to get spin stack start in lower addresses, I still don't know details having a Propeller only in my head.
YOU and others might suggest to Parallax that the Propeller2 provide a complete International set of characters. After all, we have people from all over the world. I don't expect Arabic, Hewbrew, Chinese, or Japan - but the alphabetical could be enhanced.
Propeller 2 seems to be ready, isnt't it too late?
As I understand it P2 won't have the extensive ROM P1 has. A suitable character set, maybe 8x8 to be compact, can be part of a standard load. P2 will boot from various things, and it's up to the user from there.
Many of us just provide characters, and it's been done various ways. We have 8x8 drivers, and other sizes, so it's not difficult to go and fetch some set from an 8 bit computer (I did that, Atari set), or DOS, etc... on P1.
I added an article about Propeller in Polish on my home pages (still in construction), using some pictures from Parallax pages. I hope I can use them in this article simply to show what it looks like; when clicked, they links to Parallax store.
This is still fresh internet site, English version is planned too, some articles translated, but now hidden. I will need someone to help in removing errors from these translation. My English is far from ideal.
Be sure to get downloads of several important documents to get off to a good start. Sorry, but they are all in English.
1. Phil Pilgrim's Tips and Traps are very important
2. The Propeller Tutorial for SPIN in the version 1.01 Propeller Manual is excellent (removed from later versions)
3. Propeller Assembly Manual Programing for intermediate and advanced users by deSilva
4. Propeller Assembly for Beginners by Potatohead
Ask for help to locate these as they may be located in various web pages.
"this processor is a motor of Lamborghini put into Polish version of Fiat125 on tractor's wheels"
P.S. By the way Lamborghini make some seriously sexy tractors:
Lamborghini started out making tractors. Then the big boss himself bought a 'sports car'(Italian of course), but wasn't satisfied with the performance and especially the clutch(they wear out super fast) and tried to talk to the boss of the car company. When he was told to 'You don't know anything about this, go back to building tractors', he got a bit ticked off... and the first Lamborghini sportscar was born...
This is something everyone who builds things should remember.
Sometimes, not only does your customer knows what he talks about, but he may also make you eat your own words...
(And steal some of your customers at the same time. )
Also, that sometimes a fresh approach may be useful...
The amount of current depends on what sort of loads you put on it (like LEDs). I would suggest you use a power supply that can provide 7.5V at currents up to 1A. 250mA should be enough for most simple uses and you can use a supply voltage as low as 6V as long as it doesn't drop below that under load. If you use higher voltages (up to 9V), the 5V voltage regulator may get hot. You could use higher voltages, maybe as high as 12V, but the 5V regulator will get quite hot and won't be able to supply much current due to the heat.
The amount of current needed by the Propeller itself is very variable. See the Propeller datasheet for graphs. Figure on under 15mA for a single cog running at 80MHz. With 8 cogs running, the current needed is around 100mA. Other components on the Demo Board include an EEPROM and a stereo headphone amplifier, both of which use very little current when idle.
Downloaded BST for Linux, Turbulence .eeprom, loaded and run.
1A, 7.5V PSU with suitable plug was unavailable, I had to buy expensive universal PSU with switchable voltage and set of different plugs.
Edit: Loaded and tested some demos from Windows propeller tools. Vocal tract demos - jaw dropped.
Edit 2:
I read already all of this
I saw these demos on youtube
I know whai is possible with a propeller
After looking at all these demos, with real hardware in real time I am in real shock.
Time to stop all these demos and write something, but stopping sidcog (now playing via serial) seems to be impossible
Working with linux, sidplayer works in Wine, wine com1 mapped to /dev/ttyusb0, all of this slows it down, sometimes it plays too slow, but still I simply cannot switch it off and start doing something useful...
Comments
Did they really say all that? You have an up hill struggle...
"these chips are expensive, hard to get and slow"
Perhaps hard to get. Not even so easy here in Finland. Slow, compared to what?
"Spin is crappy, soft in spin wastes processing power"
So it is interpreted and slow but it does allow packing of a lot more functionality into the available memory space.
The PASM in COGs takes care of speed critical stuff.
"there are noo tools to play with these processors"
What? How about:
The Prop tool from Parallax.
BST, a Prop tool clone for Win, Mac and Linux.
The HomeSpun compiler in C#. Works on ARM under Linux and mono
The Catalina C compiler.
The new Propeller GCC C/C++ compiler
Jazzeds SimpleIDE for the above
The list goes on...all free, some open, source all good.
"instruction set is bad, ARM9 has better, better get a STM32 or LPC17xx"
Nah. One of the nicest instruction sets I have ever used.
"memory controller is bad, they, who projected this chip worked hard about what else to screw in it"
Memory controller is good. Very deterministic.
"Where are interrupts?"
OK, they clearly do not get the idea.
Interrupts are not required if you have cores to handle incoming events as the Prop does. See also XMOS devices.
Interrupts make you code complex, inflexible, unpredictable non-deterministic and hard to extend.
Interrupts were invented as a cludge to get around the fact that traditionally CPU's were big and expensive.
The Props multiple cores without interrupts makes it trivially easy to mix and match software modules from OBEX
or elsewhere confident that any new module you throw in will not upset the timing of you existing code.
"a lot of silicon wasted for bootloaders and spin interpreter" "they should write C compiler for it instead"
See Catalina and propgcc.
Turns out this may not be optimal in all cases as C compiled to PASM produces bigger code for the same functionality
than Spin byte codes. But if you need the speed there it is. For Prop II it will be great.
"this processor is a motor of Lamborghini put into Polish version of Fiat125 on tractor's wheels"
There are places where you really would not want to be driving your Lamborghini, and a tractor is more appropriate.
"if you want parallel processing, better buy 8 LPC1112 chips $1.5 each and connect them with SPI, then Propeller will be slower than this"
They really don't understand.
If the CPU in the LPC1112 is taking care of the inter processor communication via SPI or whatever that is seriously going to bugger
up the execution rate of the processor and destroy it's timing determinism. Determinism is critical for many real time tasks.
Besides by the time you have built a board with 8 ARM chips on it you have spend a lot more money than on a single Prop.
Good luck.
P.S. By the way Lamborghini make some seriously sexy tractors:
http://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/en-EN/r8en.html?identitytypecustomfields=DESCR_OVERVIEW&idproduct=4
So putting a Lamborghini motor on tractor wheels turns out to be an excellent idea:)
In the meantime, there is likely a way to overlay details onto existing Parallax characters to make the full Polish alphabet.
The Lamborghini's horsepower is more well-suited for a tractor than the modern highway. The reality is most of these fast sportcars are fated to become sudden auto wrecks as people just don't realize they cannot react fast enough at high speeds. The best thing to do with one is to put it in the garage and watch it appreciate in price.
The Propeller's Video abilities (with color) exceed ARM chips. There are lots of people that misunderstand and resist the Propellerk rather than see the differences as an intellectual challenge with great rewards. ARMs may be feature rich, but the features actually can collide and conflict with eachother - while on the Propeller that is not the case.
If you are willing to provide some great Kielbasa, I suspect many of the items you need can be paid for in sausage.
Character set starts at $8000. These are 16 characters, 16x32, 256 longs, 1 kB, I think I can define them from $7B00 to $7FFF getting a contiguous character table., then use 9 bits (still fits in PASM immediate) to address a character. It seems to be simpler than making overlays in real time. If only there is a way to get spin stack start in lower addresses, I still don't know details having a Propeller only in my head.
Propeller 2 seems to be ready, isnt't it too late?
Many of us just provide characters, and it's been done various ways. We have 8x8 drivers, and other sizes, so it's not difficult to go and fetch some set from an 8 bit computer (I did that, Atari set), or DOS, etc... on P1.
Actually if the Prop is a car, I say it's an Ariel Atom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom
http://eksperymenty.webh.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=125&lang=pl
Title means "What is Parallax Propeller"
This is still fresh internet site, English version is planned too, some articles translated, but now hidden. I will need someone to help in removing errors from these translation. My English is far from ideal.
1. Phil Pilgrim's Tips and Traps are very important
2. The Propeller Tutorial for SPIN in the version 1.01 Propeller Manual is excellent (removed from later versions)
3. Propeller Assembly Manual Programing for intermediate and advanced users by deSilva
4. Propeller Assembly for Beginners by Potatohead
Ask for help to locate these as they may be located in various web pages.
Lamborghini started out making tractors. Then the big boss himself bought a 'sports car'(Italian of course), but wasn't satisfied with the performance and especially the clutch(they wear out super fast) and tried to talk to the boss of the car company. When he was told to 'You don't know anything about this, go back to building tractors', he got a bit ticked off... and the first Lamborghini sportscar was born...
This is something everyone who builds things should remember.
Sometimes, not only does your customer knows what he talks about, but he may also make you eat your own words...
(And steal some of your customers at the same time. )
Also, that sometimes a fresh approach may be useful...
It arrived.
Now I need a power supply. Tomorrow I will buy it.
The amount of current needed by the Propeller itself is very variable. See the Propeller datasheet for graphs. Figure on under 15mA for a single cog running at 80MHz. With 8 cogs running, the current needed is around 100mA. Other components on the Demo Board include an EEPROM and a stereo headphone amplifier, both of which use very little current when idle.
Downloaded BST for Linux, Turbulence .eeprom, loaded and run.
1A, 7.5V PSU with suitable plug was unavailable, I had to buy expensive
Edit: Loaded and tested some demos from Windows propeller tools. Vocal tract demos - jaw dropped.
Edit 2:
I read already all of this
I saw these demos on youtube
I know whai is possible with a propeller
After looking at all these demos, with real hardware in real time I am in real shock.
Time to stop all these demos and write something, but stopping sidcog (now playing via serial) seems to be impossible
Working with linux, sidplayer works in Wine, wine com1 mapped to /dev/ttyusb0, all of this slows it down, sometimes it plays too slow, but still I simply cannot switch it off and start doing something useful...