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Submit YOUR Parallax Story in August — Parallax Forums

Submit YOUR Parallax Story in August

Comments

  • MicksterMickster Posts: 2,609

    Not ready dammit :lol:

    Forces beyond my control but if this thing actually works, it'll be the most kick-butt industrial controller ever.

    P2 X 1
    P1 X 1
    RP2040 X 5

    Got a 5 axis machine to bring alive with this thing :+1:

  • ElectrodudeElectrodude Posts: 1,621

    @Mickster said:
    P2 X 1
    P1 X 1
    RP2040 X 5

    Got a 5 axis machine to bring alive with this thing :+1:

    What are the RP2040s for?

  • MicksterMickster Posts: 2,609
    edited 2022-08-24 05:40

    @Electrodude said:

    @Mickster said:
    P2 X 1
    P1 X 1
    RP2040 X 5

    Got a 5 axis machine to bring alive with this thing :+1:

    What are the RP2040s for?

    RP-1: Talks to the HMI (via Bluetooth) which is an Android device
    RP-2: 12 digital-ins + VGA for local diagnostics
    RP3, 4, 5: 12 digital-ins + 12 digital-outs + Click sockets

    The RP2040s are all linked on a serial bus and are loaded with the MicroMite (PicoMite) BASIC interpreter.
    IOW, programmable I/O expansion (PLCs) for the Props.

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,250

    TYVM for the hijack.

    Back on track, Ken wants your story, how you came to Parallax. Time-sensitive matter.

  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers Posts: 2,161

    Well I posted this one, about two weeks earlier:
    "In my case I first discovered Parallax in an advertisement in a sadly now closed magazine in 1993, it was showing the Stamp 1 and described how to make use of it. I’ve been using them ever since to support my interests in digital logic and once or twice into robotics. While I don’t have any videos, I can certainly supply photos of working gadgetry. I should also add that I found the help in making that Stamp One work very supportive. And even when we were making use of email via the Yahoo Groups idea also. In fact the Forum does an extremely good job at it. 35 years? Wow. And yes I did see an Elev at the World Maker Faire in NYC that year."

    The following was not supported by the mascot who was asleep at the time.

  • Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514

    I posted but encountered some glitches:

    1. It looks like the window of opportunity for editing expires rather quickly. A day later, I felt like I needed to make a clarification, but the icon for editing was gone.
    2. One's avatar covers up the first few words of the post.
    3. There's no indication what the + 0 - thing is all about. I thought it might be to make the text bigger or smaller, so I clicked +. By doing so I managed to upvote a comment.

    -Phil

  • MicksterMickster Posts: 2,609

    @erco said:
    TYVM for the hijack.

    Because this forum (especially this thread) is sooooo busy.

    No-wonder people are leaving.

  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,187

    I had known of Parallax since the launch of the Stamp but never looked for them until I heard about the Propeller in 2007. I think it was a Hippy post on another forum actually.

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,250

    You can also email your story directly to Ken at kgracey@parallax.com .

    I just emailed Ken late yesterday and he replied quickly, asking for photos too. I'm Parallax poster child for today!

  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,511
    edited 2022-08-31 23:49

    I think I learned about Parallax back in the days of the BASIC stamp but I looked at its specs and decided I wasn't interested. At the time I was working on interpreters and the BS didn't have enough memory to port any of mine. Later I heard about the P1 but I didn't understand it well and since each COG only had 2K bytes of RAM I again thought it wasn't useful for my purposes. It was only when I saw Andre' LaMothe's Hydra at a Vintage Computer Festival that I started looking closer at the P1 and saw how people were able to make use of hub RAM to run much larger programs. I ended up working with Andre' on several other projects including his XGS and Chameleon boards all of which used the P1. When I got the Hydra and started looking at P1 languages I found Catalina and that made me think that GCC might be possible for the P1 using LMM like Catalina used. I had worked with Eric Smith and Ken Rose at VM Labs and knew they would be able to get GCC working on the P1 so I enlisted their help and that resulted in PropGCC. Later, I started following Chip's ideas for a successor to P1 and got involved in the P2 discussions. At one point I suggested that it might be possible to execute P2 code directly from hub memory by making use of a small cache in the COG and eventually Chip implemented hub execution for the second incarnation of P2 although his implementation isn't quite what I had proposed. It still works quite well though and I'm anxious to work with P2 given the much larger hub memory and the ability to execute code natively from it. Unfortunately, my spare time to do any P2 work is limited but I still hope to get back to it some day. In the process of all of this I got to know a number of people at Parallax at least a little. I've worked with Ken and Chip and Jeff Martin and a little with Andy Lindsay. They're all great people and I'd love the opportunity to work with any or all of them again. I've also met many helpful people here on the forum including Steve Denson (jazzed) and Bill Henning who no longer seem to be around as well as lots of you who are still here. It's a great community and very supportive of new users. More so than any of the other microcontroller forums I've found.

  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,187

    Hubexec makes the Prop2 feel finished. The amusing part is it cost very few transistors. The FIFO was already there for the streamer's use. On the other hand, I don't remember when the streamer hardware came to be.

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