On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Michael Hart wrote: Once in a while I unearth a CompuPro 68000 board for sale. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Michael Hart wrote: A few years ago someone in comp.os.cpm posted that he had some stuff to give away, among them a couple IMSAI 8080 machines. The catch was that I also take away a moving-van full of other stuff in his backyard shed. That makes up the bulk of what I sell on ebay. It's not organized very well, so I'm never sure when I'll find something really good. I've found four of these 68k boards so far. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Michael Hart wrote: I wasn't fully aware of the sheer size of the collection at the time. I thought I could drive out there over a few weekends to get it all. For the third trip I rented a uhaul truck. This was stuff collected by Don Harris and Rlee Peters out in Ridgecrest. You can browse through the CDROM assembled by Rlee at http://z80cpu.eu/ among other places. I included with the P112 kits (which will be offered again when I get the time/space). -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:57 AM, Michael Hart <imsaicollector at yahoo.com> wrote: I'm interested in hearing more about your Linux port. I don't have any S-100 stuff (I gave away everything I got from Software Results years ago), but I do still have a pile of our 68000 and 68010-based products, the schematics, PAL equations, application and firmware source, etc. I have enough boards that if there was something interesting to do with them (besides being intelligent Qbus, Unibus and VAXBI synchronous serial controllers), I could blow some new firmware and turn them into hobby boards. As it is, all of our products were designed to have a "payload" application dumped onto them when starting a new serial link, so the ROM code is pretty much only smart enough for simple diagnostics and receiving a new "front end program". We didn't have an OS, just a monolithic app for each board and serial protocol (HASP, 3780, and SNA PU Type 2). The earliest boards (c. 1982) really just run a state machine written in assembler to pump serial streams out the serial chip and blocked data over the Unibus DMA interface, and occasionally something out the printer port. Later stuff got much more involved and had much more memory, more ports, etc. With all that time spent in that realm, I'm always interested in hearing what folks are doing with the 68K. -ethan

Hi Ethan ?? The LINUX port is for a very practical purposes. That being, the ability to show a high level of competence in LINUX kernel and LINUX device driver development. Hopefully this will make it easier for me to get contract doing that type of work. It is an area of software development I would like get back to. I have too many years in the financial industry and would like to get back to my roots for the rest of my career even if it means taking a significant pay cut. Actually what I would love getting into is one of those interesting DOD/DOE project. Finally it will be a fun project for me putting the last of my unused IEEE-696 boards to use. I have not intension of becoming a pack rat like so many of my fellow collector of this old stuff.? If I did not have that rule my apartment would become cluttered with lots of stuff I never get around to using. You can get a feel to what my work space looks like now by viewing URL ?http://www.michael-george-hart.com/computerscience/index.html The ALTAIR 8800b in the page is probably the only thing I may not get to by years end. Well, that is all there is to it. Michael. , the unwilling, was led by the unqualified, to do the unbelievable for so long with so little, that I attempted the impossible with nothing......" --- On Fri, 3/20/09, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> Subject: Re: CompuPro CPU-68000 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 1:52 AM On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:57 AM, Michael Hart <imsaicollector at yahoo.com> wrote: S100 bus for my upcoming LINUX port. The amount of headache I am having getting what I want is becoming a bit too much. I'm interested in hearing more about your Linux port. I don't have any S-100 stuff (I gave away everything I got from Software Results years ago), but I do still have a pile of our 68000 and 68010-based products, the schematics, PAL equations, application and firmware source, etc. I have enough boards that if there was something interesting to do with them (besides being intelligent Qbus, Unibus and VAXBI synchronous serial controllers), I could blow some new firmware and turn them into hobby boards. As it is, all of our products were designed to have a "payload" application dumped onto them when starting a new serial link, so the ROM code is pretty much only smart enough for simple diagnostics and receiving a new "front end program". We didn't have an OS, just a monolithic app for each board and serial protocol (HASP, 3780, and SNA PU Type 2). The earliest boards (c. 1982) really just run a state machine written in assembler to pump serial streams out the serial chip and blocked data over the Unibus DMA interface, and occasionally something out the printer port. Later stuff got much more involved and had much more memory, more ports, etc. With all that time spent in that realm, I'm always interested in hearing what folks are doing with the 68K. -ethan

Contact? Michael Louie <gohim at att.net> of Microcomputer? Solutions for the Disk 3. The will give you a good price. I think that he said that he still have one in it original bag along with all its documentation. He definitely has two RAM-22. The other 3 he is holding for me at this time and given my thought of late to design and build my own 16 MB NV RAM I may be giving up my claim on those 3 RAM 22 boards. Michael is a very good source for new and used CompuPro Boards. I have a Super I/O Controller board that I got bought from Harte. It has EIDE interface and tera byte drives a cheap these days about $90 for a terabyte drive. The board that will be the core of the port are INTERFACER 4, System Support 1, Disk 1A and Super I/O Controller. The CPU type I have not settled on yet. I am hoping it will be 680x0 Currently I am doing research on porting LINUX to a non-pc platform. The project is not slated to start until after the "Trenton Computer Festival" next month. I am hoping to find some boards of interest there. I haven't been there in more than 16 years but I hear you can still get lucky. I will be documentation how I do the port, if that is going to be helpful. Michael --- On Fri, 3/20/09, Steven M Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> wrote: From: Steven M Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> Subject: Large S-100 systems (was Re: CompuPro CPU-68000) To: "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 5:40 PM Michael Hart wrote: <ears perk up> Interesting... On my list of fun ideas is porting some flavor of *NIX to a CompuPro 32016-based system. I've got the CPU board stashed away, and enough other CP/Viasyn parts to make a go of it, except perhaps mass storage. I'd have to borrow the DISK3 from an 8/16 system, or puzzle out one of the random "SCSI" cards I picked up along the way... Finding a 1MB RAM24 would be tough, let alone more than one. I recall seeing other large boards advertised in Micro Cornucopia in the late 80s, but haven't ever run across that generation (386 era) of S-100 gear since or in person. I might play along at home on a big RAM board project. --Steve.

HA! ?? I just did another proof of my last web document. Hopefully I will do a better job on the first cut of my write up on porting LINUX. ? I will make the correction to my web site later this week. Michael --- On Mon, 3/23/09, Steven M Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> wrote: From: Steven M Jones <classiccmp at crash.com> Subject: Re: Large S-100 systems (was Re: CompuPro CPU-68000) To: "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Monday, March 23, 2009, 11:46 AM Michael Hart wrote: for the Disk 3. Michael Louie sold me my 32016 board and a number of other bits. I agree he's a good guy and would happily deal with him again. Consider this another recommendation from a satisfied customer. Sometimes I'm just plain slow. I read about that board with great interest, but somehow managed to avoid the notion of using it for this kind of project. Drive cost aside, don't overlook the fact that this could be better documented, with more FOSS sample code in circulation for the chips involved, than any S-100 SCSI board. Not to mention availability of the board for anybody else who'd want to play along. I think it will be interesting and instructive, even for people who don't intend to do anything similar. --S.

You know the hiring managers I normally talk to have no knowledge of hardware design. So even if I am showing off my electrical engineering prowest by implementing a IEEE-696 memory board. I have the Protel product (www.protel.com), a $4500 piece of software back in 1999/2000 which became Altium (http://www.altium.com/) used to design the most sophisticated hardware. The manufacturing of the boards I understand have become quite cheap. Anyway thank for URL. But remember I am primarily as very senior software developer with lots of hardware know how. So how would that hardware know how be exploited in getting me contracts? At least that has not been the interest when people look at me. But still it is a skill I would one day like to exploite in getting a contract Michael --- On Fri, 3/20/09, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote: From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> Subject: Re: CompuPro CPU-68000 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, March 20, 2009, 5:57 PM On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Michael Hart wrote: collecting dust. Actually I just gave away 60 lbs box of boards and misc parts. So these days I have exactly the boards I use along with a large collection of IC to fix the boards. I am a minimalist if it is not used regularly, out the door it goes S100 bus for my upcoming LINUX port. The amount of headache I am having getting what I want is becoming a bit too much. Think about it this way: the act of designing and producing your own memory board will be good experience to cite when shopping a resume around. If you start with a prototyping S100 board to get all the live testing done, then you probably won't need to make more than one or two PCB prototypes. Furthermore, check out sparkfun.com for their batchpcb.com service. The turnaround time is long, but it's cheap. They don't do gold fingers though. Wasn't someone talking about making S100 prototype cards some time ago? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On 21 Mar 2009 at 19:13, Tony Duell wrote: Nowadays many "hardware" positions seem to rely on one's ability to spew Verilog or VHDL and not know which end of the soldiering iron is the hot one. --Chuck

Ok, now what? I had most of the 8 bits' computers avaiable in Brazil I had most of the 16 bits' computers avaiable in Brazil I had most of the 32 bits' computers avaiable in Brazil I had most of the 64 (!) bits' computers avaiable in Brazil I'd like to find a new journey. I was thinking about S100 computers, but it is too expensive to play. I cannot find S-100 connectors here in Brazil and boards to play are almost inexistent here. Any suggestion of a nice project to keep me entertained? :o) Thanks Alexandre

Most of latin america stuff was made or created in Brazil :o) I was willing to something more down to the ttl-only level... Thanks! Alexandre, PU1BZZ

Coding ... Getting a development environment setup for a machine can be fairly intensive. Especially if the machine had a few vendors that provided environments. Once you are setup, nothing teaches you more about the machine than trying to wring something useful out of it. ;-0 My favorite example .. the TCP/IP stack that I wrote for DOS. It is part of a long process to put a BBS on my PCjr. I missed the opportunity 20 years ago to have a dialup BBS, so I'm making up for it with a multi-user Telnet BBS. Getting the development environment setup, writing code that works and is stable, and wringing the performance out of it has put me a lot closer to the machine that just powering it on once in a while. Given your collection, you could spend a few lifetimes doing software. Mike

On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:06:19 -0300 "Alexandre Souza" <alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br> wrote: Build your own computer from TTL chips. You may prototype it with a FPGA implementation. Build new peripherals for old computers. E.g. a QBUS MSCP disk and tape controler for VAXen and PDP-11s that uses SD-Cards as backing storage. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Monday 23 March 2009 12:00:04 Bryan Pope wrote: I can go one better than that, http://kaput.retroarchive.org/pong.html :D Alexis

Alexis wrote: Funny, I was just rejuvenating this last month: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/pongtronics/index.html (Built it as a kid in 1976 from Pop. Electronics articles.) Coincidence, or is it time for a pong revival?

When I get some intro in VHDL, surely I will :) VHDL is something that is simple enough to the point I can get a source in VHDL and understands what it does, but cannot create from scratch :oP I did that for MSX for ages :)

David Griffith wrote: ... I'm sure the bandwidth of the electron beam is many times greater than what you could achieve with a laser. Unless you get really exotic, displacing the laser spot would be through mechanical means, wouldn't it? I guess the advantage is you can project the beam on a wall or something, but it seems like a lot of work to get an inferior result.

On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 23:20 -0700, David Griffith wrote: That would be LaserMAME, which is (was, I don't know) a port of MAME that drove a Pangolin card to control a laser spiro. Gordon

On Monday 23 March 2009 16:39:20 Jim Battle wrote: Yes, but the bandwidth of an LED laser is still pretty high. There are a few laser projectors on the net, but this one goes into the detail of making your own galvos. http://elm-chan.org/works/vlp/report_e.html Just slightly off topic, this is a good foundation for a mechanical television projector. Modulate the laser to a video source and attach the galvos to two synchronized sawtooth generators. For PAL, you could get away with a 5MHz bandwidth (about 250 vertical lines visible). Mind you the horizontal galvo will be screaming along at 15625Hz, which is pretty darn fast, faster for NTSC, and I reckon the laser would have a hard time keeping up. Maybe a Scophony system would be more appropriate. :) In any case, an oscilloscope will work by far better for TV and for vector displays, even if the screen is smaller. They usually all have a Z axis input at the back. Alexis

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Alexis <thrashbarg at kaput.homeunix.org> wrote: I've looked at that project in the past - impressive. Unfortunately, I don't come close to the right tools to build one. I can do all the electronics and the mechanical support fabrication, but I don't have a lathe to make the spindle and I don't have a water-cooled grinder to shape the magnets. I could probably find a friend locally to make the spindle - one friend makes darts from billets, another makes table-top steam-engine parts. Magnet grinding, though, sounds a little esoteric. Personally, I already have the Scientific American volume that's a collection of Amateur Scientist columns on light and lasers. Some of the contents are obsolete for anything other than entertainment (how to make a couple of gas lasers, a dye laser, etc), but there is also an applications section for things to use your laser for - most memorably is holograms and a laser projector. The holograms bit is mostly about how to set up your own light bench (mass and stability) and how to rig up a light path for the elements for a monochrome laser-readback hologram. With a good bench, it seems simple. The laser projector is the type made from speaker elements and would be good for "Laser Floyd" type displays, not LaserMAME. I almost made a laser projector last year, but I was having problems sourcing mirror material at the South Pole. One thought was gutting a laser printer or a copier (ISTR there's a front-surface mirror in there somewhere that's as wide as the paper path), but there was nothing suitable scrapped while I was down there. Now that I'm home, I'm keeping an eye out for a cheap/free printer to scavenge. I already have the semiconductor laser, naturally - the grocery store was selling laser levels for less than the cost of lunch. If anyone gets far deep enough into the idea of a laser projector to start making galvanometer servos and wants to trade parts, let me know. As I said, I can do the electronic bits and assembly but need help with the shaping of the core parts. -ethan

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:07:40 -0300, Alexandre Souza wrote: The near paper width fixed mirror you are thinking of, is used to fold the light path. Horizonal scan is easly is creared by a spinner and I can think of several winchester drives that could provide the mechanical energy for doing vertical scan. I understand the idea of repurposing a classic diskdrive may be repulsive to some on this list :-) Back under my rock Bob Bradlee .. the other Bob

You can use 2 orthogonally mounted speakers, and mirrors for a XY drive. some tinkertoy sticks as levers to increase the displacement, mount the mirrors on the ends of the sticks. Randy _________________________________________________________________ Get quick access to your favorite MSN content with Internet Explorer 8. http://ie8.msn.com/microsoft/internet-explorer-8/en-us/ie8.aspx?ocid=B037MS…

Scanning wrote: It may have originated from an acronym, but it is now in just about any dictionary as a word. Language is DEscriptive, not PREscriptive. When a technical term enters the common language to the point it has an entry in Webster's, we have to yield to the rest of the people on the planet who speak English. We don't get a say in it anymore. Just like those of you who pounce on people who use the word "ironic" to mean what it means in that famous song. You're wrong: you need to look up in a modern dictionary what the word means, not some 1960's one. The words "solid state laser", uncapitalized, even if it may offend you, is now (in 2009) perfectly acceptable written English. Unless your deLorean is going 88 MPH, it is arguably you who is doing it wrong by insisting it's an acronym. It may have originally been one: it is now an actual word.

Fred Cisin wrote: I don't object to you using anachronistic forms of words, if that is what you are in to. However, don't insist you are right, and belittle or demean those who use the language according to commonly accepted patterns. I used to fight "baud" vs. "bps". Not only was it not worth the breath I wasted, in the end it became irrelevant, as datacom speeds accelerated to the megabits per second now seen on home DSL/cable connections.

feedle wrote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, you be jammin, so like supposably you maybe like moving like dater and like idears eck setra. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I read, some years ago, about the opinions of a modern UK chief lexicographer. He discussed various nuances he found in American slang. He discussed the transition of words from slang to mainstream language. It was very interesting. His interpretations of the nuances he referred to were wrong. Perhaps he will get a job at Treasury (or exchequer). I still use MOSFETs and HexFETs. Perhaps the use of descriptive terminology is archaic and we should just call everything, everywhere, "stuff"? By so doing, we can get more people excited about what we are doing and not cause any confusion amongst people who do not know the (previously) correct terminology. The need to teach might be reduced, thus saving valuable government funds to bail-out foolish "financial people" while purchasing a formal tux for the emperor. No one would be discriminated against on the basis of trivialities such as knowledge and ability.

Tony> ...So? The data rate makes no difference to the concepts. 1 Mbps Tony> is not the same thing as 1Mbaud. Indeed. It is especially annoying when people intentionally mix up the two for marketing purposes. For example, Ethernet is quoted in Mbps or Gbps. So is Fibre Channel. But in the case of FC, the numbers are not bps at all, they are baud. And because of the 8b/10b encoding, this means that the actual speed is 20% less than what you were led to believe. The same happens in other places; for example, SAS and SATA storage channel speeds are really speeds in baud even though they pretend to be bps. (Same conversion factor because they too use 8b/10b code.) paul

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009, Chuck Guzis wrote: How about those people who confuse "broiled" with "boiled"? A brother of mine has (had) a habit of saying "cadmium" to sound like "kitty yum". He appears to have cleaned his speech up because he got tired of being offered cat snacks when he though he was asking me for rechargable batteries. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Just for your curiosity, in portuguese "speed" and "velocity" has the same meaning - "velocidade". Maybe the correct term for velocity would be "acelera??o" which means "acceleration" in english Oh, wish I speak a good english :)

----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 2:57 PM Subject: language misuse (Was: laser scope Versus 1,000,000? or versus 1,048,576? Jim

Indeed. Personally I prefer 2^20 (1048576), particularly for things addressed by a number of 2-stste lines (like all random-access stores, including most ROMs, etc). For things like disks I _prefer_ 2^20 for consistency, but I can see the justification for 10^6 (1000000). I can see no justification for 1024000 Ypu have to have new words for new ideas/concepts/devices, etc. That is not the problem. The prolem comes when there's a perfectly good word with a precise meaning and j-random-luser insists on misusing it to mean something differnt (for which there is also a perfectly good word already) -tony

Scanning wrote: Shall all those kids get off your lawn now? Peace... Sridhar

iPods, you mean? On 3/29/09, Scanning <steven.alan.canning at verizon.net> wrote: -- Marcin Wichary Sr. user experience designer, Google Graphical User Interface gallery >> www.guidebookgallery.org

Oh no. Acceleration is a different thing again. Both speed and velocity are a measure of rate of change of distance. The differnce is that speed is a scalar quantity, while velocity is a vector. In fact speed is the asolute value of the velocity. An object moving in a circle may have constant speed (meaning it takes the same time to cover each centimetre of the circumfernce of that circle), but it can't have constant velocity (since the direction of motion is changing, the velocity must be changing) You must have different words for these 2 quantites in Portugese, surely? Acceleration, at least as used by scientists in England, is also a vector, the rate of change of velocity. -tony

On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 20:48 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: Like the word "spastic". I went to uni with a guy called "Jim the Spastic". As he said, he didn't like being called a "cerebral palsy sufferer" which was what the politically-correct term was at the time. Great fun getting into clubs with him, whenever he got the KB from the doorman ("Sorry sir, I think you've had enough") he'd start with the "What? I'm not drunk, I walk thith way an' talk thith way becauth I'm a *THHHAPPPAAAAAATTTHHHHTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCC*!!" while flapping his arms in a particularly theatrical spastic way - devastating if he was holding his crutches at the time. Takes all sorts. Gordon

On Monday 23 March 2009 09:16:44 pm Fred Cisin wrote: I still speak of "hacking on" something these days. If the person I'm speaking to wants to take that the wrong way, well, then I guess I'll just deal with their misunderstanding.. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Tony Duell wrote: Well, I would hope that the all of the members on classiccmp would use the (*sigh*) "old" definition of hacker, unless the word was used in the mainstream press. Cheers, Bryan

On Apr 28, 2009, at 7:53 PM, Tore Sinding Bekkedal wrote: Pretty much everyone I know uses "hacker" in the old definition. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Yes, but mechanically moved mirrors aren't the only option for beam deflection. I seem to recall reading of a crystal whose index of refraction could be changed electrically. A wedge of such a substance could serve as a beam-deflecting element; I don't know how fast it responds, but I'm fairly sure it's substantially faster than mechanically moving a mirror. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Sunday 12 April 2009 02:33:33 Scanning wrote: In fact, this is exactly what some early mechanically scanned televisions used to use. It's called a mirror drum. Have a look at http://www.televisionexperimenters.com/mirrdrum.html The major issue with this is the drums have to be aligned properly, and they can't be adjusted while the drum is spinning. The Mihaly-Traub Scanner gets around this shortcoming by effectively turning the mirror drum inside out: http://www.televisionexperimenters.com/mhalytrb.html On Tuesday 24 March 2009 05:56:23 Tony Duell wrote: I've done that :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fNnSO5G6hM -- Alexis

Sounds like a Kerr cell. I think those switch in nanoseconds, maybe less. paul

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:58:55 -0700 (PDT) David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote: Several years ago I build a simple one axis laser deflection systen using the voice coil assembly from an old harddisk and the speaker amplifier from an old radio. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

Agreed. There seems to be very little difference between programming and making a CPU these das. --- On Sat, 3/21/09, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> Subject: Re: CompuPro CPU-68000 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Saturday, March 21, 2009, 3:50 PM On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: ability to The modern process is easy... o Pick up the soldering iron o Does it hurt? o If so, put it down and pick it up somewhere else o Repeat as necessary -ethan

---------------------------------------- Hi The problem is that things like VHDL and Verilog are really just maps of the silicon territory. They are not a complete definition. When pushing silicon to the speed limits with engineered circuits, there are times when the circuit just doesn't map everything into a descriptive language. Most people think that the ASIC flow is the primary method of creating new processors. That is only true if your not interested in creating the ulimate processor. As mentioned, this flow is great for a large number of embedded processors. The speed needed for these is typically at the lower end of things. I work for a company that creates processors, although we use a high level language to describe the architecture, we create many cicuits that could not be created by an automatic process. We use standard cells when performance isn't needed but many man years goes into optimizing the key circuits. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Get quick access to your favorite MSN content with Internet Explorer 8. http://ie8.msn.com/microsoft/internet-explorer-8/en-us/ie8.aspx?ocid=B037MS…

Michael Hart wrote: Recently, I've been playing with Xilinx's Spartan-3E Starter kit. It was $150, which includes on-board programming(ie no programming cable req'd), and gives access to several different features via onboard features: Ethernet Serial VGA External 40-pin FX2 connector Switches, rotary encoder LEDs LCD And then has multiple types of memory like DDR SDRAM, flash The board is based on a Spartan-3E XC3S500E FPGA, and also has a CPLD, and a PROM. The FPGA is a ~500K gate model. The only downside is that that memory is DDR which is a PITA in which to interface. Other boards have easier to access SRAM. I bought my board here http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavTop=2&NavSub=423&… they also have a $79 Basys board which lacks some of the flashier options but is cheaper. There really isn't any other cables/power supplies/software to buy. Xilinx gives their webpack ISE (basically an IDE) to download for free. The ISE is basically all you need. (if you go xilinx route, make sure to turn off your virus scanner prior to installing webpack ise -- it really makes a difference. The install will take 4 hours otherwise) I will say that coming from a limited electronics background, but wholly comfortable with microcontrollers, that going to FPGA-related technology has been a completely larger step up. I'm in the process of learning Verilog and while the syntax is close to C, the approach of stored program execution vs hardware description is miles apart. There is definitely a learning curve involved, but the limited payoffs so far has made it worth it. Xilinx and Altera are the two big FPGA companies, and I chose Xilinx and Verilog because a very cool Amiga-on-an-FPGA board that is out there was based in that. The site http://www.fpga4fun.com is a pretty nice beginners site. Good luck Keith P.S. I was amazed when I first got the free ISE software and installed it. I created a schematic, dropping and dragging logic gates, assign switches and leds. Start the compilation, and voila the design was instantly created, realized, alive, and working. Look ma, no wires! :)

On Mar 21, 2009, at 12:38 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Well, if the position is for designing ASICs or SOCs then it really is more important to know how to write Verilog/VHDL. The likely hood of actually having to "mod" the board is small, and they'll have "technicians" for that and special stations with the fine temperature controlled soldering irons plus optics to actually see the work. If you're dealing with BGAs then reworks require fairly sophisticated equipment (including being able to do X-Ray scans of the board to check that all of the balls on the BGA are attached properly). There's still a need to "dead bug" some fixes but that's becoming more and more rare. In reality most HW design these days is either with micro-controllers or FPGA/ASICs. The traditional discrete TTL designs are pretty much gone because the designs require small size/high integration or high speed, which you can't really do with discrete TTL (or pick your logic family). And if you're building a number of "widgets" you don't have to have too high volumes before it really is cheaper to do FPGA/ASICs rather than discrete. I'm becoming a big fan of FPGAs for my designs for two principle reasons. One is that I can simulate the design before committing it to actual HW. This finds a huge number of issues. I can also write comprehensive test cases that would be hard to do with actual hardware. The other one is that if I do find something that slips past the simulation then it's a simple problem to update FPGA image. And no you don't have to have megabucks to do this. There are some free (which is what I use) Verilog simulation tools that are quite good (in my very limited experience) and each of the FPGA vendors have free versions of their tools (they are after all trying to sell the parts). Also, many part vendors (non-FPGA, ie RAMs, etc) provide pretty comprehensive models for their parts to be used in simulation so it isn't that hard to simulate an entire design encompassing many different parts. TTFN - Guy

Jim Battle wrote: Some of the new asic/fpga development have been using C for hardware design, we started using a derivative of C before getting rif'd from Lucent -- saves many lines of code. But nothing beats a schematic :) =Dan [ = http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ]

Not for nothing, but NOBODY could read the dotted color codes on older capacitors. There was a standard, but pretty much none of the manufacturers stuck to it. The best anyone could hope for was to find two of the dots that looked reasonable (for example, a blue and a grey next to each other), and go from there. Then punt. -- Will

On 21 Mar 2009 at 17:27, Michael Hart wrote: Are you perhaps thinking of Handel C? Here's a link: http://www.agilityds.com/products/c_based_products/dk_design_suite/han del-c.aspx Cheers, Chuck

On Saturday 21 March 2009 06:31:32 pm Chuck Guzis wrote: I don't, for some of the ones I'd like to use, but presumably I'll fix that by the time I get that particular round tuit... I always did like the 3-dot ones better. :-) I remember people using that word a lot, but they also called a fridge "the icebox"... I remember some discussion about just that very thing not long ago, perhaps on another list. BTDT too, though it was probably pine and not mahogany. I remember Octal sockets you could invert (solder lugs up) and still plug the tubes into them, which came in handy for that kind of a setup. And inform the younguns when they need a little help now and then, because they don't have quite the necessary grasp on the basics. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Jim Battle wrote: yes. And I certainly hope that never ends, because it creates a (seemingly) endless number of consulting opportunities for me! I love it when "I've never actually used a scope" people run into trouble with their fpga's :-) call me! please! :-) On problem seems to be that there are not as many "generalist" these days who can span hardware, hardware debug and software. Those skills seem so "old school" to many people. But then they try to synthesize & fit their design, and then make it work, they start to appreciate that it's helpful to understand how the transistors connected to the pins actually work. -brad

Thank you. Exactly my point. --- On Sat, 3/21/09, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: From: Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: CompuPro CPU-68000 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Date: Saturday, March 21, 2009, 3:13 PM Where the heck do you find employers who actually want people who can design hardware for vintage computers ? One of those would solve several of my problems... -tony