and three other objects, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. From what I can tell, all production from http://www.micromegacorp.com/ has been on hold.
The only place I can find the 64 bit products are in France, which I am trying to precure as we speak.
Coley and myself did the Hybrid console, one prop for maim code and one add on PropGFX board, which was a dedicated Prop graphics 40pin DIP device lots of retro graphics modes. Lots of videos on YouTube look for PropGFX.
Coley and myself did the Hybrid console, one prop for maim code and one add on PropGFX board, which was a dedicated Prop graphics 40pin DIP device lots of retro graphics modes. Lots of videos on YouTube look for PropGFX.
This looks interesting, however all links referring to www.propgfx.co.uk seems are not working anymore (redirects to a web hosting page).
Do you have a new site ?
Anyway, what are some dual Propeller designs you've seen?
My IBM 1130 emulator uses 2 Propellers.
The main Propeller emulates the CPU, card reader, line printer, and disk. All 8 cogs are used.
The secondary Propeller emulates the console keyboard/printer. It controls a Brother SX-4000 electronic typewriter by manipulating the keyboard scan signals (the typewriter has no serial or other external communication ports). At least 4 of the cogs are used.
Nothing fancy for communicating between the Propellers; just RS-232.
Coley and myself did the Hybrid console, one prop for maim code and one add on PropGFX board, which was a dedicated Prop graphics 40pin DIP device lots of retro graphics modes. Lots of videos on YouTube look for PropGFX.
This looks interesting, however all links referring to www.propgfx.co.uk seems are not working anymore (redirects to a web hosting page).
Do you have a new site ?
Not yet, it was put on hold, it will be re-awakened after P2 is out.
My five channel stepper motor driver board uses two propellers and two Altera PLDs for IO expansion.
A new four-channel version I currently design even uses four propellers.
This is a bit more expensive but I found out that the common ground domain causes a bit of noise. Not enough to cause any malfunction but you can hear it because the motor coils act as speakers. By separating the ground domains an using separate voltage regulators I hope I can avoid that noise.
I LOVE seeing the Prop used in industrial control products.
Hey, remember those encoder line-drivers that you sent to me when I was in Italy? Wow, what a great solution. Swapping-out those encoders was simply not an option. Thanks to this forum, I had visited your site and remembered that product. I think you are the only one that provides this solution....Your price is too low! :-D
I am supposedly getting a lot more of the same control-retrofit business and I intend to fit those things right from the get-go.
Last year we developed a dual P8X32A PCB for our marine instrumentation project. Originally the area for the 2nd MCU was allocated to a MicroMega FPU. Ultimiately realising the MicroMega FPU is a PIC32, we've replaced that chip with a second P8X32 dedicated to FPU / FANN (Fast Artificial Neural Network) co-processing for the primary P8X32A.
One of my first projects was a 12-channel "pill counter" which verifies and counts or rejects 12 channels of pills flying down the conveyor belt into two fill conveyors. I used two Props in the sensing heads so that each channel had one cog devoted to it and I had one main control Prop plus an I/O Prop that handled solenoids and switch sensing and timing etc. So that was 4 Props in total and it also included an SD card, LAN, RS485s, and CANbus etc.
Now I have a project that uses about 80 Props all tied together in a huge double pallet sized cabinet, each Prop has its own microSD as well.
@ManAtWork: Very nice work, looks great! You sure are the "Man at Work"
P.S. Ooops, looks like an older thread and I've mentioned some of this stuff before, but nonetheless, good work ManAtWork, love the DB9s for the stepper motors
One of my first projects was a 12-channel "pill counter" which verifies and counts or rejects 12 channels of pills flying down the conveyor belt into two fill conveyors. I used two Props in the sensing heads so that each channel had one cog devoted to it and I had one main control Prop plus an I/O Prop that handled solenoids and switch sensing and timing etc. So that was 4 Props in total and it also included an SD card, LAN, RS485s, and CANbus etc.
Now I have a project that uses about 80 Props all tied together in a huge double pallet sized cabinet, each Prop has its own microSD as well.
Would love to see some good quality pics, if you have any(?)
Just lurking. I would guestimate that qz80 (on Drac's board design) trundled along about the eqivulent of a 2MHz Z80, based on my feeble memories of my much missed Nascom. Using dual Props allowed for better ram access and probably kicked the speed up to nearer 3.5 - 4MHz.
But then I saw the artical by Grant Searle about putting it all into an Altera board that was £13 ish and branched off into that, 16 - 20MHz was possible then. I must get that stuff back out again and do some more work on it.
I always cheat. It saves a lot of thinking - as you know I have great difficulties in thinking.
I have been asked to make something that would read Longitudinal Time Code and count how many selling opportunities had been taken in any one hour slot, any more than 4x(3 minute) in any (clock) hour and people get all shouty around here. I found some Arduino code for the LTC reading but that didn't seem to leave much cycle time for the rest of the job - if only I had a multi-cored proc. I looked at the Arduino -> Spin in OBEX but I wouldn't have the time to add in another complication...
I am sure that a Prop would do it all, give numerous debug serial outs and a neat little VGA screen too.
Grant's original love seems to have been 6502, I reckon, he did a UK101 as a self contained on the baby Altera board, I have a slightly better board that I have added a SRAM, but I do struggle ... too tired ...too old ... too thick (not in the American sense: actually probably the British and the American ...)
... retro computer that had an entire Propeller just for video/SRAM support.
Anyway, what are some dual Propeller designs you've seen?
This actually has three props, but its similar to your original retro request:
www.hive-project.de
Google translate does a good enough job on the german
These extra ram, ethernet, a special prop based operating system, and even a version of forth.
I sent all the extra boards I had to OBC. If anybody wants to build one from scratch he may have some left. It wasn't difficult to build and get working.
Comments
http://www.micromegacorp.com/umfpu64.html
Unfortunately, Cam Thompson, who authored a good floating point object in the OBEX:
http://obex.parallax.com/object/233
and three other objects, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. From what I can tell, all production from http://www.micromegacorp.com/ has been on hold.
The only place I can find the 64 bit products are in France, which I am trying to precure as we speak.
This looks interesting, however all links referring to www.propgfx.co.uk seems are not working anymore (redirects to a web hosting page).
Do you have a new site ?
My IBM 1130 emulator uses 2 Propellers.
The main Propeller emulates the CPU, card reader, line printer, and disk. All 8 cogs are used.
The secondary Propeller emulates the console keyboard/printer. It controls a Brother SX-4000 electronic typewriter by manipulating the keyboard scan signals (the typewriter has no serial or other external communication ports). At least 4 of the cogs are used.
Nothing fancy for communicating between the Propellers; just RS-232.
Walter
Not yet, it was put on hold, it will be re-awakened after P2 is out.
A new four-channel version I currently design even uses four propellers.
This is a bit more expensive but I found out that the common ground domain causes a bit of noise. Not enough to cause any malfunction but you can hear it because the motor coils act as speakers. By separating the ground domains an using separate voltage regulators I hope I can avoid that noise.
I LOVE seeing the Prop used in industrial control products.
Hey, remember those encoder line-drivers that you sent to me when I was in Italy? Wow, what a great solution. Swapping-out those encoders was simply not an option. Thanks to this forum, I had visited your site and remembered that product. I think you are the only one that provides this solution....Your price is too low! :-D
I am supposedly getting a lot more of the same control-retrofit business and I intend to fit those things right from the get-go.
Cheers!
That's the best looking set of props I have seen! Congratulations!
@ManAtWork, I second that, those are some nice looking board's.
Now I have a project that uses about 80 Props all tied together in a huge double pallet sized cabinet, each Prop has its own microSD as well.
@ManAtWork: Very nice work, looks great! You sure are the "Man at Work"
P.S. Ooops, looks like an older thread and I've mentioned some of this stuff before, but nonetheless, good work ManAtWork, love the DB9s for the stepper motors
Would love to see some good quality pics, if you have any(?)
What devices do you use for driving solenoids?
Just lurking. I would guestimate that qz80 (on Drac's board design) trundled along about the eqivulent of a 2MHz Z80, based on my feeble memories of my much missed Nascom. Using dual Props allowed for better ram access and probably kicked the speed up to nearer 3.5 - 4MHz.
But then I saw the artical by Grant Searle about putting it all into an Altera board that was £13 ish and branched off into that, 16 - 20MHz was possible then. I must get that stuff back out again and do some more work on it.
Alan
Hi, how have you been Long time no see.
That is very distressing news about giving up the Prop for an FPGA. That's cheating
I have been asked to make something that would read Longitudinal Time Code and count how many selling opportunities had been taken in any one hour slot, any more than 4x(3 minute) in any (clock) hour and people get all shouty around here. I found some Arduino code for the LTC reading but that didn't seem to leave much cycle time for the rest of the job - if only I had a multi-cored proc. I looked at the Arduino -> Spin in OBEX but I wouldn't have the time to add in another complication...
I am sure that a Prop would do it all, give numerous debug serial outs and a neat little VGA screen too.
Grant's original love seems to have been 6502, I reckon, he did a UK101 as a self contained on the baby Altera board, I have a slightly better board that I have added a SRAM, but I do struggle ... too tired ...too old ... too thick (not in the American sense: actually probably the British and the American ...)
This actually has three props, but its similar to your original retro request:
www.hive-project.de
Google translate does a good enough job on the german
These extra ram, ethernet, a special prop based operating system, and even a version of forth.
I sent all the extra boards I had to OBC. If anybody wants to build one from scratch he may have some left. It wasn't difficult to build and get working.
Morpheus, made six years ago....
http://www.mikronauts.com/parallax-propeller/morpheus/
I still have some PCB's left, and I've cut prices.
I no longer stock kits due to Raspberry Pi and other cheap ARM boards.