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Prop2 FPGA files!!! - Updated 2 June 2018 - Final Version 32i - Page 116 — Parallax Forums

Prop2 FPGA files!!! - Updated 2 June 2018 - Final Version 32i

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  • thejthej Posts: 232
    edited 2017-12-28 23:39
    jmg wrote: »
    I can understand the Computer History Nerds getting excited about this, but the wider market ?

    I'm looking directly at the Education and Maker markets but a system that allows rapid and interactive dev of UI and program logic would be very valuable in many markets.
    Touch screens with usable GUI's anyone !?!
    thej wrote: »
    With source code available and plenty of OS reference guides available, a “work-a-like” of Lisa OS could be made to run on the resources available on the P2. I don’t think a “port” makes sense. Rather, adapt what is useful.
    jmg wrote: »
    Easily said, but you missed the bits implicit in Lisa, but NOT 'available on the P2' like keyboard/mouse/display.
    It also sounds like Lisa had a great many bugs/gotchas, which is part of why it never took off.

    KB/mouse could run from USB which IS available on the P2. A PCB would, of course, have to support a display connection.

    It wasn't bugs of gotcha's that killed Lisa. It was it's redonkulous price tag!!! $9,995 US in 1983 !!
    Also, the CPU was way too slow and the floppies (twiggy's) were super flaky. And just to throw a wrench in things, Steve Jobs released the Mac a year later at a substantially lower price.
    The Lisa OS was, and still is, quite astounding ! NASA bought quite a few and ran them long after they had been discontinued.

    I am NOT suggesting a "port". I'm saying that components such as the GUI, Memory Manager, Processes and the API could be layered on top of TACOZ for a Lisa OS "work-a-like". Only just enough of the API would be needed to support existing applications and the development of new apps. TACOZ already does a lot of what the foundational Lisa OS does and thus would not need to be converted.
    jmg wrote: »
    You could run a 68000 emulator, and start booting Lisa, but you need to duplicate the hardware exactly, if you want to see a working system.
    Once you start trying to slice and dice the software/hardware, you are probably better putting the effort elsewhere...

    Emulating the Lisa isn't an option. There are at least 3 different processors on the MB and four 6522 VIA's, not to mention the copy protection system and probably other oddities too.
    Lisa OS was "modelled" after the UNIX systems of the time and it's subsystems are quite modular.
    jmg wrote: »
    See the Embedded Project Oberon info I added to another thread.
    Neatly avoids the keyboard/mouse/display conundrum... - and will fit comfortably in a P2 (and fits in FPGA emulation memory too).

    I also see ultibo is ticking over nicely, - bare metal pi, that started with no graphics, but recently they added 'full support for the VideoCore IV GPU in all models of the Raspberry Pi.'
    https://ultibo.org/news/
    https://ultibo.org/make/
    https://ultibo.org/wiki/Main_Page

    I have followed the Oberon thread. Very interesting, but does Oberon even have any software? Other than its compiler that is.
    I have also seen the Ultibo project; very cool stuff !!! I'll have to get up to date on it again.

    J

  • v30a is only just a tweak on V30, it fixed a hub bug. Bah Hub Bug I say. However I loaded up PNut_V30a.exe and it works just the same.

    I prefer TACOS too, but it's still early days, we will see what everyone thinks of it first, the name second.
  • v30a is only just a tweak on V30, it fixed a hub bug. Bah Hub Bug I say. However I loaded up PNut_V30a.exe and it works just the same.

    I prefer TACOS too, but it's still early days, we will see what everyone thinks of it first, the name second.
    Hmmm... I'm not sure what's going wrong for me. I get that syntax error when I try to load it. I'll try downloading from DropBox again.

  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2017-12-29 00:04
    The Lisa was a fine machine. I did all my schematics on a Lisa using the Draw package for a couple of years before using a Macintosh. It was sometime before there were any pcb schematic programs except for possibly the PERQ which was extremely expensive by comparison.

    While it was expensive, it came complete with five (5) Office style programs, making it a cheap computer for business. Programs: Word, Spreadsheet, DataBase, Drawing, and IIRC there was some form of scheduling program.

    Internally, Apple decided that slots were going to be removed from their products, which also made them cheaper. So there were designing the replacement Macintosh and the Apple //c. The Apple //e and /// replacements were terminated. The //e replacement was much later reinstated as the //gs.

  • David Betz wrote: »
    v30a is only just a tweak on V30, it fixed a hub bug. Bah Hub Bug I say. However I loaded up PNut_V30a.exe and it works just the same.

    I prefer TACOS too, but it's still early days, we will see what everyone thinks of it first, the name second.
    Hmmm... I'm not sure what's going wrong for me. I get that syntax error when I try to load it. I'll try downloading from DropBox again.
    I just downloaded from DropBox and was able to load that version. How do I talk to it? I tried connecting to the USB serial port of the Prop123 board but I'm not sure what baud rate to use.

  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,161
    David Betz wrote: »
    TACOS looks better to me as well.
    TACOS may 'look better', but google also reports this "About 140,000,000 results", so it is not a great choice for any identifier name, if you want to avoid being swamped...

    TAQOZ searches better, and TAQOZ Language comes to this forum...
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2017-12-29 00:18
    David Betz wrote: »
    David Betz wrote: »
    v30a is only just a tweak on V30, it fixed a hub bug. Bah Hub Bug I say. However I loaded up PNut_V30a.exe and it works just the same.

    I prefer TACOS too, but it's still early days, we will see what everyone thinks of it first, the name second.
    Hmmm... I'm not sure what's going wrong for me. I get that syntax error when I try to load it. I'll try downloading from DropBox again.
    I just downloaded from DropBox and was able to load that version. How do I talk to it? I tried connecting to the USB serial port of the Prop123 board but I'm not sure what baud rate to use.

    The default baud rate is 3M but all those constants are in the first few lines and easy to change. PNut or more correctly, the downloader seems to run fine under Wine in Linux now but when I was on Windows I used TeraTerm and had the baudrate set to 921600. There is no need to add any kind of delays if you are sending or pasting source code.

    BTW, I've added TACOS.spin2 to that folder and the only difference is the change of name and prompts internally, just to get a feel of it.
  • David Betz wrote: »
    David Betz wrote: »
    v30a is only just a tweak on V30, it fixed a hub bug. Bah Hub Bug I say. However I loaded up PNut_V30a.exe and it works just the same.

    I prefer TACOS too, but it's still early days, we will see what everyone thinks of it first, the name second.
    Hmmm... I'm not sure what's going wrong for me. I get that syntax error when I try to load it. I'll try downloading from DropBox again.
    I just downloaded from DropBox and was able to load that version. How do I talk to it? I tried connecting to the USB serial port of the Prop123 board but I'm not sure what baud rate to use.

    The default baud rate is 3M but all those constants are in the first few lines and easy to change. PNut or more correctly, the downloader seems to run fine under Wine in Linux now but when I was on Windows I used TeraTerm and had the baudrate set to 921600. There is no need to add any kind of delays if you are sending or pasting source code.

    BTW, I've added TACOS.spin2 to that folder and the only difference is the change of name and prompts internally, just to get a feel of it.
    I set it to 115200 and it seems to work fine. Now I just have to learn how to use it. Do you have any kind of manual for it yet or even some sample code I can look at?
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,134
    I think TAQOZ is fine. At least, it's unique. It does have kind of a Southwestern (New Mexico / Arizona) 1980's flare to it. If it comes up cleaner on searches, that is significant.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    cgracey wrote: »
    I think TAQOZ is fine. At least, it's unique. It does have kind of a Southwestern (New Mexico / Arizona) 1980's flare to it. If it comes up cleaner on searches, that is significant.
    +1

    And it has an "Ozzie" feeling as well ;)
  • TonyB_TonyB_ Posts: 2,159
    edited 2017-12-29 02:01
    cgracey wrote: »
    TonyB_ wrote: »
    How about splitting COGID into separate COGID and COGSTAT? Then there'd be no gaps.

    They are the same hub instruction code %0010. The differentiation only comes from WC. There's no means (without big reorganization) to break them apart. I think they are fine.
    I prefer SCL/SCLS to SCA/SCAS. There are other mnemonics with no vowels. The 'L' in SCL/SCLS is in same position as MUL/MULS and is a hint that multiplication is involved. Also I find it easiest to pronounce SCL and SCLS as "SCuL" and "SCuLS".

    I kind of like SCA/SCAS, since I changed them. They cannot be confused with the old names (SCL switching meaning).
    I've been studying the instruction set very studiously and here are a few more suggestions.

    1. GETRND
    Should be a CZL instruction in the instructions.txt file to match spreadsheet:
    EEEE 1101011 CZL DDDDDDDDD 000011011        GETRND  {D}         {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    

    Fixed it. Thanks.
    2. POLLxxx, WAITxxx, ALLOWI/STALLI, TRGINTx, NIXINTx
    These are D# only instructions but the CZL opcode bits [20:18] are CZ0 or 000, indicating registered D only. Shouldn't these be CZ1 or 001?

    No. These cause harmless register reads. To set that L bit to '1' would trigger AUGD, which is not wanted. It's the actual instruction bits that are used, anyway, not D.
    3. Simplified encoding/decoding
    Self-explanatory, I hope.

    Proposed:
    EEEE 1101011 CZ0 DDDDDDDDD 000010000    *   RFVAR   D           {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    EEEE 1101011 CZ0 DDDDDDDDD 000010001    *   RFBYTE  D           {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    EEEE 1101011 CZ0 DDDDDDDDD 000010010    *   RFWORD  D           {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    EEEE 1101011 CZ0 DDDDDDDDD 000010011    *   RFLONG  D           {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    EEEE 1101011 CZ0 DDDDDDDDD 000010100        RFVARS  D           {WC/WZ/WCZ}
    
    EEEE 1101011 00L DDDDDDDDD 000010101        WFBYTE  D/#
    EEEE 1101011 00L DDDDDDDDD 000010110        WFWORD  D/#
    EEEE 1101011 00L DDDDDDDDD 000010111        WFLONG  D/#
    
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100000 000100100        ALLOWI
    
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100001 000100100    *   TRGINT1
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100010 000100100    *   TRGINT2
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100011 000100100    *   TRGINT3
    
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100100 000100100    *   STALLI
    
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100101 000100100        NIXINT1
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100110 000100100        NIXINT2
    EEEE 1101011 001 000100111 000100100        NIXINT3
    
    

    Interesting. What is your rationale for moving RFVAR?
    More to come unless you want me to stop.

    Keep thinking, please.

    OK, I'll keep thinking and I won't let ignorance or lack of understanding hold me back! :)
    For example, why there is a gap between COGID and COGSTOP in instructions.txt and the spreadsheet. Or why CZ1 would trigger AUGD for POLLxxx, WAITxxx, etc., but does not for RET/RETA/RETB/MODCZ.

    Rationale for moving RFVAR is so that:
    (1) RFVAR and RFVARS differ by only one bit, S[2], 0 for zero-extend, 1 for sign-extend.
    (2) RFxxxx and WFxxxx have same S[1:0], 01 for byte, 10 for word, 11 for long.

    Similar rationale as (2) for moving STALLI, D[1:0] = 01 for INT1, etc. Also ALLOWI/TRGINTx are "do INT" instructions, STALLI/NIXINTx are "don't do INT".

    Earlier versions of the documentation had useful Instructions section at the end showing encoding / fields, but that seems to be missing in later versions. Perhaps better if added to instructions.txt and/or spreadsheet. Also no mention yet in doc of WCZ.
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    cgracey wrote: »
    Boy, this forum has been quiet.

    Is anyone still thinking about Prop2? I'm feeling especially exuberant about it right now. OnSemi is set to do a very thorough job of bringing it through to production and I feel like the design is nicely refined now.........

    Still looking forward to it with great anticipation.
  • It is kind of funny to tweak the encoding, some manager would say 'not worth the time', but I think @TonyB_ does a wonderful job going thru this.

    Maybe it's the German in me, liking things orderly, or just the programmer liking patterns, I am not sure. Nobody would do this nowadays but I programmed Z80 and 6502 in HEX since I had no assemblers for them. And the Z80 was way nicer to remember.

    One thing why I fell in love with the P1 was the overall beauty of concept and language. P2 is still overwhelming to me, but I still hope to get my hands on one before I leave this planet.

    And @Peter's TAQOZ is shaping up nice, I am very happy about the decision to have a extensible, yet over-writable Soft-ROM. Even not being a FORTH fan I can see how easy it can be to integrate a P2 by throwing serial commands at it.

    Sadly my BIOS attempt seems to find no followers. My thinking was, that on the P1 multiple attempts to find a standardized way to switch say TV against Serial, against VGA... failed

    I still hope that we could set some standards, from the beginning, to allow general interoperability between different languages. Just basics. Redirectable stdin/out/err. Maybe SD access. Some jump table on top of the ROM usable as HUBEXEC call from any language.

    anyways,

    Mike
  • T ChapT Chap Posts: 4,223
    edited 2017-12-29 05:35
    I think anything micro related that has a direct pseudonym or inference of a food product included is just plain bad. I dread the visual association of a taco with the Prop2. Surely there is some acronym that is not stigmatized.

    Tachyon is a great name. No stigma. Tach-OS rolls off the tongue like tach(ometer) Oh Ess
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,134
    T Chap wrote: »
    I think anything micro related that has a direct pseudonym or inference of a food product included is just plain bad. I dread the visual association of a taco with the Prop2. Surely there is some acronym that is not stigmatized.

    Tachyon is a great name. No stigma. Tach-OS rolls off the tongue like tach(ometer) Oh Ess

    I agree. Tachyon is fine.

    Just as long as it's not a coffee/Italian name.
  • Hard not to get excited about the Propeller 2.
    I seem to live, eat and breathe it now.

    I struggle now going back to other micros, so Propeller 2 is important for my sanity.

    Propeller 2 - Resistance is futile! :)
  • T Chap wrote: »
    I think anything micro related that has a direct pseudonym or inference of a food product included is just plain bad. I dread the visual association of a taco with the Prop2. Surely there is some acronym that is not stigmatized.

    Tachyon is a great name. No stigma. Tach-OS rolls off the tongue like tach(ometer) Oh Ess
    Yes! I like Tachyon much better than TAQOZ. I guess it could cause some confusion if the ROM version is different from Peter's full version though.

  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2017-12-29 12:44
    TAQOZ is nice and short and works well as a prompt. The main difference between TAQOZ and Tachyon is simply that it is a compact version that includes FAT32 all in one PNut file, ready for testing, and ready for ROM. All the little goodies that would prove handy in testing P2 hardware are being included and that also means too that it is very easy to test user hardware. Beyond testing hardware it can of course do so much more, but maybe that's where a full version of Tachyon gets loaded up. Nonetheless, there will be more development choices for P2 then there were with P1.
  • T ChapT Chap Posts: 4,223
    edited 2017-12-29 14:11
    That’s why I suggested TACH-OS. Sounds like Tak-OS And is in the spirit of tachyon. Stay away from cheap gimmicky associations to taco. On the same note parallax should stay away on the chip from propeller and beany hats: associations of a toy hat to the outside world. Plus a propeller is not high tech and sounds antiquated. Associations can affect perceptions to the outside. This thing should have powerful associations only.
  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2017-12-29 15:14
    P2 is a polycore RPU or Realtime Processing Unit since it can handle signals in realtime due to the "no interrupts required" nature of the architecture, the "peripheral per pin" hardware, and the many (poly) cores that can be dedicated to a critical realtime operation.

    Maybe call it RiPPr - Realtime integrated Polycore Processor
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    "TAQOZ" is great. It's short and sweet. It has links to it's origin in Tachyon, to tacos, to Australia, to the fine quality of Compaq. It's unique for a google search. It's original.

    "TACH-OS" is terrible. It's ugly with that hyphen. It's unnecessarily long, with the hyphen and the silent H.

    Are we "bikeshedding" now? That might be a good sign, nothing important left to decide in the design :)
  • TAQOZ IS great... if you want a gimmicky hobby sounding toy product association. How about a beany hat with a taco on top!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    "gimmicky", "hobby sounding toy" ? This is not the 1950's, the world has lightened up since then.

    Probably the most important technological thing in my life is called "Debian", short for Debora and Ian. It is a version called "Stretch". Previous versions were "Jessie" and "Wheezy" etc. All named after characters from Toy Story. It is very professional, it runs all our business machines as well as my "hobby" things.

    God help those Ubuntu users (what is that?) whose latest OS version is called "Artful Aardvark".

    A good proportion of the world rely on a thing called "Android" for their communications. Others have an "Apple", whatever that is. Are they unprofessional?

    Nevermind that most of those are built on top of "Linux"

    So, I don't buy the "gimmicky", "hobby sounding toy" thing. Anyway to my ear TAQOZ is a lot less gimmicky, hobby sounding than a lot of product names in use today. On the contrary it has an air of professionalism and wealth, like Nasdaq :)

  • So does anyone get to have an opinion besides your CORRECT opinion?
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    No :)

    I did not say anything about my opinion being correct. If that were the case it would be a fact not an opinion. I only state my opinion. Which I believe is allowed around here.

  • ErNaErNa Posts: 1,751
    What about TachyonRealtimeUniversalMulticoreProcessor? Would look as if sun rises from the west, seen from good old europe?
  • Heater. wrote: »
    Are we "bikeshedding" now? That might be a good sign, nothing important left to decide in the design :)

    God bless every word of that phrase, Mr. Heater! :smile:
  • Well, the name is less important to me than that the interpreter is in ROM. Call it what you want, it's going to be a powerful addition the P2!
  • Chip, I'm still here and excited to see the P2 finally getting done, can't wait to have the real chip on a board in my hands.

    Peter/Others: I like the name TAQOZ for all the reason stated above by others, but more importantly (like David said) I am just glad we are getting some nice functionality built into the ROM with Peter's (and Cluso99's) work.
  • Same as Roy. If it's done soon, it could potentially go into a product.

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