17 Oct
2007
17 Oct
'07
3:25 p.m.
On 10/17/07, dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> wrote:
I have a S100 board made by N* that is a math board
but it
doesn't have a FPU. It has a 2901 and some ROM chips.
It only has the one 2901.
Hmm... that sounds interesting - a 4-bit ALU math co-pro? Obviously
it must be running many machine cycles to be digesting numbers a
nybble at a time.
It's not a general-purpose thing, but the Atari vector game hardware
(Battlezone, Star Wars...) has an 8-bit main CPU and a 16-bit
2901-based "math box". It's been mentioned on the list before, but
essentially, the 8-bit CPU feeds shaps to the 16-bit math
co-processor, which does transforms to calculate the 2D vector
endpoints to render the shapes as they tumble and rotate.
-ethan