13 Nov
2005
13 Nov
'05
4:19 p.m.
Allison wrote:
What do you mean by "Well what about them?"?
Tell me more about them! Non 8 bit word length computers.
Really! theres more stuff about smallC than ever on
line. Maybe back
then life was hard but now with the 'net and Google I'm getting to try
and use those things that back then were either too exotic or hard to
find and maybe even too expensive [especially hardware]. Even Minix
has evolved (V3.x now).
All my small C stuff is stored safe in my bitbucket. It has too many
8080 design gotya's
to generate code for the cpu design I have now. I don't have register
to regsister addressing
and indexing from the A register.
My last employer went downhill as did my job with it so I have time and
very little expendable cash. However with junk, spares and imagination
I achieve a lot with near nothing. PCs I find costly and less productive.
Maybe I'm more of the do it and don't tell me how it's hard person. I'd
be dangerous if I had gobs of cash and free time converge.
Out here all the junk is dead PC's. :(
Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49,
strap EA
(uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and
some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of
your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow
(8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang
ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have
anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes
of internal ram (8049). Those 8048s and 49s are common and
easily found in keyboards (LK201 has the faster better 8051!)
and is a cool old cpu to work with.
That is a nice idea!
Allison
.