Confessions
![Ahle2](https://forums.parallax.com/uploads/userpics/074/n0CZWXG5H42YQ.jpg)
* Confession 1
I have secretly been sneaking around in the P2 threads.
* Confession 2
I own a DE2-115 board.
* Confession 3
I have something in the works.
I have secretly been sneaking around in the P2 threads.
* Confession 2
I own a DE2-115 board.
* Confession 3
I have something in the works.
Comments
MegaSID 2013???
I'm starting to suffer from FPGA envy.
Must stay away from digikey.com, must stay away from digikey.com.....
1) one DE0-Nano was not enough
2) got me some Raspberry Pi too
3) I am working on some P2 hardware and software...
I have a DE0-Nano that I bought a long time ago and finally have a good use for.
I have a DE2-115 that Parallax was nice enough to send me. It is running my blinking LED demo. :-)
Have only NANO.
Not so much money to DE2-115
I'm not sure what I'm doing with the P1 so I'm emulating being unsure on the P2!!
This is fun stuff!!
@All: Yeah, fun stuff.
I've been finishing up the "Using the Monitor Guide" Just about done. Wanted that really complete, easy and out of the way. Kind of a nice warm up for me. Besides that, I've been learning instructions and am eagerly awaiting the adapter boards that complete a few of the pin circuits... There are a few things in my blog that I really didn't think warranted discussion threads you might be interested in.
Following the goings on so far with great interest! Once the doc I'm working on is done tomorrow, I will launch into the C tools David has up and running. Kind of itching to try those out on the more roomy P2.
The way we've started out on these boards was good for me. I don't often use serial and that's been good to do.
Oh dear. The end of time, Christmas and the New Year all came and went. I still have a holiday until Monday. Despite all of that I have totally failed to write a line of code or fire up a soldering iron even once. No project progress at all.
I have an excuse only for part of that time, being deep in the Finnish forest with hardly a working internet connection and no equipment around.
I seem to have spent the past few days aimlessly watching science videos on YouTube.
Chemistry: http://www.periodicvideos.com/
Maths: http://www.numberphile.com/
Physics: http://www.sixtysymbols.com/
Perhaps I have been deeply disturbed by finding out the the sacred number Pi is actually the wrong fundamental value to use when dealing with circles:
Pi is wrong: http://tauday.com/
How will I ever get back to normality?
Those dark sunglasses must be keeping you from seeing shiny objects...
I've decided to lay out a few work goals over the next couple of weeks and if I meet them I'll allow myself the quilty pleasure of a DE2-115.
C.W.
Uncle Tungsten looks like a must-read.
I was also originally going to wait for the P2 to come out, since I didn't believe in was worth investing time and money porting software to a chip that still (AFAIK) has no official release date or documentation.
However, a kind and generous soul has just bought me a DE0_NANO ... so now I guess now will just have to port Catalina to the P2
Ross.
That's great news! I'm glad you have a way to run P2 code and are planning on porting Catalina. I think you'll find that you can get Catalina working very quickly because the P2 supports almost every P1 instruction. The only problem I ran into is that some of the opcodes are different in P2. In particular, JMPRET and its cousins have a different opcode for some reason. Once I got past that, I was able to run the standard PropGCC compiled code as long as I used a P2 assembler to assemble the compiler's output. Almost all of my time was spent extending GAS to support the zillions of new P2 instructions.
Good luck and I look forward to Catalina being available for the P2! Welcome to the fun!
David
Thanks David,
My job is actually much easier than yours. A port of Catalina should essentially be available as soon as there is a version of Spin available - I'm hoping to use Roy Eltham's open source Spin compiler when it supports the P2, but if someone else gets there first I'll use that instead.
But I plan to use the NANO to investigate possible performance improvements in the code generator and kernel.
Ross.
It will be interesting to see what you come up with for code generation strategies for P2. I haven't done anything with that yet. In fact, Eric Smith will probably do all of the PropGCC code generator changes for P2. I'm just working on the assembler and runtime support at the moment.
Like you, I expect my first P2 release will be a "naive" port - i.e. get something simple but fully functional working first, and then add the code generator/kernel optimizations to later releases.
Ross.
It was so simple to get the DE0-Nano running. I didn't even install the FPGA dev software, just the downloader. Once the FPGA is programmed, this is it. Just power down. Now every power up starts the P2 emulation and communicate via the expansion I/O to a propplug (check you mail tomorrow).
I am working on the spin interpreter (my faster version) atm. But to confess, I have not done much over the holidays as too busy with family. I also have taken ownership of the P2 Instruction Summary in the docs thread.
I've been assuming the same, but I'm not aware of any "official" information on this, other than an announcement some time ago that there would indeed be a version of Spin available for the P2.
Does anyone have any more info?
Ross.
I also expect support for the new features (more I/O, I/O configuration, video configuration etc).
Do you think that initially a restriction to using the lower 64KB hub space might be acceptable?
I've created another thread for spin-related questions.
Yes, I also was quite prepared to sit back and wait for the "real thing" to arrive. I expect we may see that happen sometime around the middle of the year.
However, a very kind and generous forum member (msrobots - thanks again!) has donated a DE0-NANO to the Catalina cause, and I now have it set up and executing (PASM only at this stage). It won't take long to get the various Catalina loaders and kernels working on the Prop 2 - but it may take a while before all the really useful objects we currently have available for the Prop 1 are ported to the Prop 2. We don't even have Spin yet, although I'm sure Chip won't take long to whip up a version when he puts his mind to it. I believe Cluso is also working on a version. I wonder who will get there first!
Ross.
All of this is mainly due to the fact that the P2 includes most of the P1 instruction set as a subset. In the case of PropGCC, the code generator doesn't emit any non-P2 instructions. A few opcodes have changed like JMPRET but mostly P1 code will compile for the P2. This makes it easy to do a quick port. However, making full use of the new P2 features will require additional thought and work. I haven't started that phase yet.
<crosses fingers>So not jealous!