Now that the P2 - era begins - is there an EOL for P1 planned ?
headcrash
Posts: 12
in Propeller 1
Don't get me wrong - I am excited about the Propeller 1 in DIP 40 .
I even write a book about it that is planned for easter 2020.
I just would like to know if a new book in German (maybe in English too) about the P1 will pay off at all ...
Greetings !
I even write a book about it that is planned for easter 2020.
I just would like to know if a new book in German (maybe in English too) about the P1 will pay off at all ...
Greetings !
Comments
P1 will keep going for a VERY long time, and certainly as long as customers keep buying it.
This has been stated many times by Parallax.
You should proceed with your book- and please share the details here when you are ready to publish !
Best wishes for your project.
The P1 uses a significant less power than P2, it's smaller, and has its' own market.
The P2 will carve out new markets that the P1 could not go into. But that certainly does not mean it will replace P1.
Just my 2c.
Thanks a lot for your quick and clear answer !
Yeah I will need some English readers with know-how in advance ;-)
Greetings !
That question deserves it's own thread. Why not start a new one.
I recently converted the ENC28J60 ethernet chip drivers and networking software to FastSpin for P2. It went very easily, but your problem will not be the Spin code so much as any I/O objects you are using; the replacements are likely to be different, or you may need to roll your own. In my case instead of launching a cog to do fast PASM SPI comms, I translated all that PASM code into Spin too. FastSpin generates PASM object code which runs via hubexec, so it's faster than P1 Spin (even at the same clock rate) but somewhat more bloated (again, 512K instead of 32K helps a lot with this). So now I have a single cog instead of a two-cog driver that is all in Spin instead of mixed Spin and PASM, and it's close to maxing out the ENC28J60 for speed. Translating the Spin only took a couple of hours but the low-level I/O had to also be translated, and even though it was much simpler in final Spin form it has to be understood in its original PASM form to be translated.
Yeah! I am happy to hear this!!
The P1 has always lacked good documentation, so there should be a market for P1
books. But I don't believe the books on the Propeller have been very successful.
Bill M.
-Phil
I personally feel it is a good & hopefully profitable effort for you. Propeller, though been widely used in west, is still not very popular Asia, particularly in Singapore. Is your book going to be based on SPIN/Assembly or C? Will your book includes examples on projects that might be relevant to current trends? Example autonomous robotic surveillance etc?
Yes, the Propeller manual and this very forum contain almost all information one'd ever need.
I agree, the P1 documentation is not good - it is excellent.
yes
On the other hand you would be lucky to find a book on the Propeller in a
bookstore.
I still remember the original Propeller manual and it's compound function calls. It
may have been easy to understand from an experienced programmer's point of view,
but it was a big step over Pbasic and SX-B. It certainly wasn't supported like the Basic
Stamp, and it's many books. The original manual or Propeller education kit made it
look more difficult than it was.
The only books that I was aware (3-4 books) and of that, two were published in 2010,
one never made it to the book stores, and one recently in 2018. I own two Propeller
books.
There were a handful of YouTube video-authors, a dozen or so app notes, and Nuts n Volts.
I would have preferred less projects, in trade for more in depth information about the chip,
protocols, spin and pasm.
For example: I believe Andre LaMothe wrote the first half of one book, but the second half
was filled with advanced projects that did not interest me. So I didn't purchase the book.
I had ideas for my own projects, and I wanted more info than the short app notes provided
and more commented code from the OBEX, and maybe details on how to write my own virtual
peripherals for the Propeller.
IMO, a lot of those early experiments could have been completed with one Propeller emulating
different protocols, acting as both the slave and master , a few leds and the PST.
Bill M.
So I cite this to me important speech
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
Today created is a narrative, that everything has to be and is easy, even programming. That definitely is not the case. The way up is always difficult to go.
With the thinking applied to conventional microcontrollers and their IDE's, the potential of the P1 can never be aroused.
But it seems, the world has changed to a state, where emancipation is an evil and some just do what they can to keep people in their native state. Drugs have many faces, but always one goal. Addiction. Being addicted to P1 or P2 is worth living ;-) But there is no gateway drug.
Sincerely,
Discovery
https://www.amazon.com/Propeller-Programming-Using-Assembler-Spin/dp/1484233530
https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Customizing-Multicore-Propeller-Microcontroller/dp/0071664505
https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Propeller-Spin-Processing-Electronics/dp/0071716661
Sure, it's not as many as are available for Arduino or RasPi, but they are there.
https://www.parallax.com/sites/default/files/downloads/32360-Hydra-Game-Dev-Manual-v1.0.1.pdf
Massimo
Have you tried one of these 2 objects?
Bill M.
Design it into your products and count on a steady supply! The only reason P1 would cease to exist would be a worldwide absence of foundry business. Even if that obscure situation were to occur we would have a lifetime stocking situation to consider.
And if you're still concerned about supply, I'll use our history to validate my point above. The SX was introduced in 1997 and was abruptly ended due to a lawsuit settlement. Even though, we had the opportunity to purchase a lifetime supply - and we still offer some SX chips for sale to our customers ten years after we promised.
Does anybody need a BS1-IC? We've been manufacturing them for 28 years!
Ken Gracey
Documentation can be elusive and often requires digging. I noticed that Jon Titus' "Experiments for Propeller QuickStart" is listed among the documentation for the quickstart, but when you click on the link for the pdf, it simply gives you back the link, not the text. Gordon McComb's (rip) "Microcontroller KickStarts" applies to the QuickStart, but it is not listed on the QuickStart page, but it is found at http://learn.parallax.com/KickStart. The Learn site has lots of info and does go into great detail. Applied project tutorials are often the best way to learn, and as a starting point for your own departures.
Capt Quirk said, "I had ideas for my own projects, and I wanted more info than the short app notes provided and more commented code from the OBEX, and maybe details on how to write my own virtual peripherals for the Propeller." In depth exposition is more elusive than project tutorials. It is much harder to write for a general audience. OBEX objects, what they are good for , what are their lIimitations and why, how they work -- we wish! The best info does require digging back through the collective memory on the forum.
On the other hand, documentation of the P1's hardware functionality, particularly the counter/timers and video generator, is sparse to nonexistent. You are pretty much forced to reverse engineer OBEX code to do anything creative, and much of that (I'm looking at you Chip) is not commented. Brilliantly written, important example code like FullDuplexSerial and the original NTSC and VGA drivers is entirely uncommented as to how or why it works. It took me weeks to figure out how video drivers worked well enough to write my own, and I am not exactly a newcomer to programming. I bought Andre's Hydra book hoping it would shine some light on that and was bitterly disappointed.
And this was with everyone pretty much forced into a common programming environment so at least I was writing code in the same language as the guy who wrote the example. I worry that with P2 there will be no such commonality. The benchmark examples need to be explained -- why was this number written into a register, how was it constructed, what modes are being selected for the control registers and why. Yes it is instructive to figure that out for yourself but it's a steep climb most people won't be able to make without some help, especially if we are going to be having to also translate from one development environment to another to use such examples.
Don't make this mistake again. Someone, somewhere, needs to write a detailed explanation of how common but complex things like USB and HDMI drivers work so that people who want to roll their own will have a basis from which to start. This has always been missing for P1. And I say that as someone who loves the chip, has used it a lot, and who has climbed that mountain by several routes.
In fact, P1 has the advantage over P2 in regards to ease of implementation. It requires a single supply voltage and has much less pins. The DIP-40 version is breadboard version by itself.
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço