1 Feb
2010
1 Feb
'10
8:19 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Yes, there never was an official 6809 copro from Acorn - although there have
been at least two homebrew ones (not including the linking of the Dragon).
No, there was no 'official' 6809 that I know of. My list of commercial ones is
as follows (notional OSes in square brackets):
Acorn 6502
Acorn 65C02
Acorn 65C102 (Master internal TUBE)
Acorn Z80 [CP/M]
Acorn ARM-1 AEK
Acorn ARM-1 A500 (*not* the standalone machine) [Arthur, ARX, RISC OS]
Acorn 32016 "small board" (256k/1M) [PANOS, poss. Xenix or ARX]
Acorn 32016 "large board" (1M/4M) [PANOS, poss. Xenix or ARX]
Acorn 32016 (Master internal TUBE) [PANOS, poss. Xenix or ARX]
Acorn 80186 (Master internal TUBE) 512K [DOS+/GEM]
Acorn 80186 (Master internal TUBE) 1M [DOS+/GEM]
Acorn 80286 [DOS+/GEM likely]
Torch Z80 "Communicator" [CP/N]
Torch Z80 "Tosca" (with local serial comms) [CP/N]
Torch 68000 "Neptune" [Uniplus, CP/N]
Torch 68000 "Atlas" [Uniplus, CP/N]
Torch 80188 "Graduate" [MSDOS]
Cumana 68008 "Upgrade" [OS-9]
PEDL Z80 [unknown]
Crombie Anderson Associates 68000 "Casper" [FLEX]
And known "homebrews":
Dragon/beeb hybrid 6809
Graham Toal's 6809
Jonathan Harston's PDP-11
Acorn's VAX*
Sprow's ARM7
* I have confirmation that it really did exist, but nobody seems to recall
exact details. Near as I can tell, it ran a serial link between the BBC micro
and the VAX though (rather than TUBE or 1MHz bus), so it's perhaps a loose
definition of coprocessor...
Hi! When I
designed the N8VEM 6809 host processor it is loosely based on an
article I read for the BBC computer called "Dragon in the tube". I am not
THe Dragon was, of course, the most common 6809-based computer in the UK. very familiar
with the UK microcomputers but apparently 6809 "coprocessors"
were fairly common peripherals on their Z80 and 6502 designs. I used a
Were they? I've never heard of one.
Acorn never (AFAIK) made a 6809 second processor for the BBC micro. The
original series of second processors (in 'chesse wedge' cases to fit
alongside the BBC micro) were the 65C02, Z80A, 32016 (originally 16032
:-)) and ARM 1. There was also a 32016 board with 4 times as much RAM
that was used in the Acorn Cambridge WOrkstation Is this article available on-line anywhere? Or do you
have a reference to
it? It sounds as though it might be worth reading.
I have it, but I'm only finding scans of the second part on the server right
now (from Electronics and Computing Monthly, September 1985). I think the
first part of the article from the previous month's issue is buried in an
email somewhere - if nobody else has it (& you don't happen to have those
magazines anyway) I can go hunting for it.
The software (FLEX, customised for the BBC/Dragon hybrid) had to be sent away
for, and I never could find a copy - if someone has it, I'd love a copy for
the archive... (not least because hooking one of my Dragons to a beeb would be
a fun project one day :-)
cheers
Jules