On Dec 12, 2008, at 6:03 PM, bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote:
A simple
design with a real 68K processor isn't that hard to whip up
or debug - in fact not much harder than a simple 6502 or Z80 system.
SRAM, of course, is simpler to implement than DRAM, but DRAM can be
easier to expand over a couple of MB (for 1MB or less, I'd stuff in a
couple of JEDEC RAM sockets for a 16-bit RAM field). Let me amend
"simple" - simple is peripheral chips and memory that can keep up
with
the cycle time of your processor so that you don't have to handle
wait-states, etc., and can therefore tie DTACK to ground (as
advocated
by a famous newsletter, "DTACK Grounded". At 4MHz to 8Mhz, it
shouldn't be a problem these days unless you have a particular VLSI
chip you want to use for I/O (6821, 6522, etc.) and it isn't fast
enough. ROM and RAM that are fast enough shouldn't be an issue, even
with inexpensive parts.
Was not that newsletter for a APPLE II, co-processor board?
Did anybody ever use one, or any kind of general purpose co-processor
boards for the PC?
I used to use a CP/M board in my XT, back when an 8MHz 8088 was a
"real screamer". It had 64KB of onboard memory, and I had a little
program that ran from autoexec.bat on the XT which made my DOS-
available memory 704KB using that board. It otherwise sat idle when
DOS was running.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL