Help for falf
kwinn
Posts: 8,697
@falf
Sorry you are having such a hard time struggling with English for learning PASM. The code snippet below will get you started.
By the way, from a list of total number of speakers of languages on wikipedia:
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers )
English: 1.5 Billion, Mandarin: 1.025 Billion, Spanish: 390 Million, Portugese: 193 Million
If you were starting a business in an English speaking country what language(s) would you provide your initial documentation in ?
@g3cwi
RE: Here in England I would also prefer documentation in English. However, as it is never likely to be available I am prepared to make do with Parallax's native language instead.
LOL
Sorry you are having such a hard time struggling with English for learning PASM. The code snippet below will get you started.
By the way, from a list of total number of speakers of languages on wikipedia:
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers )
English: 1.5 Billion, Mandarin: 1.025 Billion, Spanish: 390 Million, Portugese: 193 Million
If you were starting a business in an English speaking country what language(s) would you provide your initial documentation in ?
@g3cwi
RE: Here in England I would also prefer documentation in English. However, as it is never likely to be available I am prepared to make do with Parallax's native language instead.
LOL
CON
_clkmode = xtal1 + pll16x 'Standard clock mode * crystal frequency = 80 MHz
_xinfreq = 5_000_000
PUB start
cognew(@entry, @hello)
DAT
hello byte "HELLO"
'***********************************
'* Assembly language goes here *
'***********************************
org
' Your assembly language program goes here starting after entry
' Lets see if you can get it to display the word HELLO on a 5 digit
' 7 segment led display. Should be a breeze for an assemby guru
' @entry is where your program starts and @hello is address of
' the ascii text to be translated to 7 segment data bits
entry
Comments
Alan ( the owner of a mild(ish) west country accent)
just an example out of my german experience: For kids at a good age to start playing with Parallax products (~12 years) it IS some kind of a massive blocker to read/understand a manual in English. It is not easy to struggle with the language AND the technical questions in parallel.
Parallax seems to be working on this, Simple Ide is translated......
The language barrier is very real, and can be insidious. Parallax has managed to get volunteers to translate a lot of the documents, such as the WAM course for the BasicStamp. But no one has been willing to translate the BasicStamp Syntax and Reference Manual. And of course, the IDE is not in foreign languages either.
If the key documents and the IDE are not in the target language, Parallax is vastly narrowing its market abroad as you are only going to sustain sales with customers that are bilingual.
I do realize that this is a rather daunting task as there are so many languages and cultures --- AND without sales supporting the costs of translation it is an unwanted expense.
Still there are some target languages that are important -- particularly Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Hindu; just because these markets are so big. And of course, Japanese, Korean, and German may justify translation as a cost because there are more technical savy buyers with adequate income to buy these items.
Actually, I wonder if Arduino was just very lucky to start out in Italian or it was planned. From Italian, one tends to easily reach Spanish markets that are global; and it is rather easy to Italian translated to English and any other European language. Not all translation pathways are equal that they play significant roles in this kind of hobby.
Sadly Parallax missed the boat on that with the closed source Propeller Tool and non-standard Spin language.
Just see what happened when Parallax created the Propeller GCC target and other opensource tools. All of a sudden people are crawling out of the woodwork to help with translations and the like.
This all bodes well for the Propeller and especially Propeller II.
Still, I recently bought a full introduction to the Arduino in Traditional Chinese and see that it is getting translated into other languages faster than Propeller publications. Also, more is being written independently for the Arduino at this point. Publications and translations are of the utmost importance to any micro-controller's popularity. I started with Parallax because their material was head and shoulders about the field and that is much of what the BasicStamp's success story in about.
Apparently Propeller2 will have internal ADCs and one cog can be an RTC, so that should level the playing field somewhat. But good publications and translation of critcal materials is still a big factor.
http://www.parallaxsemiconductor.com/Products/propeller2specs
He IS the translator for Portuguese on SimpleIDE, no? So if he wants translations, he know who to ask, no?
His previous complaint was lack of documentation, I believe in the beginning he could not find documentation in ANY language. We all know this is a common statement, and folk "eventually" figure out where to find what they need if they stick to it long enough, and ask the right questions of the right folks in the right way at the right time. So the information is there, somewhere, the issue remains getting it from the folks that have the knowledge to the folks that need the knowledge, in a timely manner. T
This last is very common, either there is too little information ("Where do I start?") or too much information ("Google Propeller chip"). There's been lots of attempts to index and/or organize the resources, but none has hit the nail on the head. Maybe the solution is not in organizing the references themselves, but in organizing the mentors, or how to access the mentors? Just a thought.
I mean really, having to find the right people in the right way and ask them as the right time to get what information that should have been in a book to begin with is nuts. That sort of garbage belongs in the dump with high school cliques.
I'm just glad I didn't run into the same attitudes when I learned Z80 and later other assembly languages. At least back then, people actually wrote books on how to code in assembly.
Back then there was no internet, or even bulletin boards.
The only help was the sparse documentation from Zilog/Intel and the advice of coworkers who were pretty much in the same boat.
Yes, there were a lot of books and magazine articles about the Z80. That's because it was a huge and growing field that autors and publishers felt they could profit from. That is not the case with today, especially withe the Propeller up against many other systems.
The 'Assembly Language Programming Manual' on my shelf runs to nearly 300 pages; the CPU manual to 80 pages and then 50-70 page manuals for each peripheral.
Do you have a link to any pdf or scan of that 300 page document? It might have helped with Zicog.
http://www.zilog.com/docs/z80/um0080.pdf
...which looks similar in terms of content and this ...
http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/zilog/z80/Zilog%20Z80%20assembly%20language%20programming%20classic.pdf
..which looks very close.
Thank you.
I am familiar with at least that first document you linked to and remember similar docs from back in the day.
Now, if you look at it, it is 100 or so pages of description of the Z80 architecture. Followed by 200 odd pages of instruction set specification.
Contrast with the Propeller manual. There the Propeller architecture is fully described in a few pages, because that is all it takes. Then the instruction set is described in equal detail.
By comparison I wonder what actually is it that people who complain about Propeller documentation are asking for?
As an aside: Decades after the Z80 both pullmoll and myself had a devil of a job getting the emulation of the Z80 DAA instruction working correctly in PASM emulation. The docs do not tell the full story.
As for confusion... I have to learn PIC now :-(
(Maybe Propeller II can that)
The application can detect user intention as well as define its own requirements. It's really going to save a lot of time in meetings.
More voices to have to listen too. Whats that mother ..