If this was a religious war per say in the realm of: Apple II vs Commodore Atari vs Amiga CP/M vs DOS I would be somewhat amused. But these constant Unix vs. X or Windows vs. X or Mac vs. X are quite annoying and if you go through the threads, you will see the same people over and over and over again. --- On Tue, 1/26/10, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at Update.UU.SE> wrote:

OS9 - the one true OS to rule them all! :P Dan. _________________________________________________________________ Say Happy New Year with Messenger for Mobile. http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9706117

Dan Gahlinger wrote: Now is that the 6809 version? PS: Other than GUI interfaces, has a OS better than the classic PDP-11 unix came out? Memory size don't count here.

AMOS! -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Experience only makes you more interesting and marketable. -- Judy Blackburn

Intel 8080 vs. 6502 vs. Z80 WGF (World Geek Federation) Three Way Mashup.. --- On Tue, 1/26/10, Jason McBrien <jbmcb1 at gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 09:44, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote: Interestingly enough a similar new fight in the same RISC vs CISC (if those labels are actually sill relevant in todays virtualisied on-the-fly recompilation processor architectures) wars seems to be the upcoming ARM-vs-Intel (Atom, or Pinetrail or whatever) flamewars! Already some skirmishes are happening on the smartphone/tablet borders, but fanboys on either side are prepping their keyboards on the emerging netbook front... Heavy casualties expected on all tech blogs. Civilians are asked to say well clear of the bleeding edge tech, as interesting hardware will no doubt to be deemed obsolete within a year, and can then be had second hand for a song :-) -- Joachim Thiemann :: http://www.tsp.ece.mcgill.ca/~jthiem

This is true. I was more referring to the Mac wars. And, of course, the last remnant Amigas are PPC (fwiw) and POWER chips own the game console market. But I'm still sore about Apple ditching it (and buying and then killing PA Semi just to twist the knife and beef up their ARM offerings -- otherwise we might all be using PWRficient PowerBook G5s). Coincidentally, so am I :) (but mine is in CodeWarrior 7 on Mac OS 9). -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- When in doubt, take a pawn. -- Mission: Impossible ("Crack-Up") ------------

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 1:18 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: I would guess it's ARM-core based stuff these days. I read somewhere that a billion ARMs end up in cell phones alone, every year.

Why is it so popular? g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On 1/26/10, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: I've certainly seen a lot of that. I've only been working with the 8051 recently (since 2001) and on a small number of projects (Spare Time Gizmos "Life", among others). Even though most of what I do these days is with AVR processors, I happen to be about to send off an AT80S52 board design for fabrication this week, my first 8051 design (selected because the prototype was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink 8051 board, picked by someone who has a long history with the 8051). I've only done a little 8051 assembler and do recognize that the memory model is a bit bizarre compared to most microprocessors, but the vast majority of my microcontroller code is low-performance and in C, which hides ugly details of the architecture. It does get fun, though, when you do have a critical task or have to delve into assembler for debugging. -ethan

On Jan 26, 2010, at 3:24 PM, Gene Buckle wrote: That's good stuff! The AVR architecture looks wonderful from the docs, though I've never programmed it myself. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Dave McGuire wrote: I bought one of Atmel's STK500 "beginner" kits last week. It looks pretty interestin, but I haven't had time to dig into it yet. Still building projectors for the sim. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

Dumb 8051ish related question.... Will 8040 code run on a '51? I have yet to find a definitive yea or nay :(

Does anyone know of a disassembler that will disassemble code for the family of processors that the 8040 is in? On 1/26/10 9:18 PM, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

Thank you :) for some reason I wasn't getting anything when I searched. On 1/27/10 11:12 PM, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:

Tony Duell wrote: The answer is, nay. As Tony said the 8050/40 is a version of the 8048/35 group that has 256bytes of internal ram and if rom is present 2k. FYI: 256 bytes is the addressing limit for ram in the part and the pointer register (R0, R1 or the secondaries are 8bit. 8048 is a 12bit max instruction address and 8bit data address Harvard machine. The code at the source level and be ported easily to 8051 if care is taken to limit interactions with the added features so notably the initialization code must be changed to reflect enviroment. The 8051 is a 16bit instruction address 16bit data address Harvard machine. The 8051 is very similar to 8048 in basic design but has greater addressing and larger instruction set. The 8051 also adds a significant number if internal peripherals that would require external chips in the 8048 design to approximate. NOTE: it is possible with a simple external hack (external rom and ram) to make both parts look like a VonNeuman like machine. It was a common hack to make instruction space and data space overlap. Allison

On the other hand, the 8041 shares its instruction set with the 8038/8048... series. There existed an EPROM version, the 8741. --Chuck

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:00:42 +0100 Jos Dreesen <jdr_use at bluewin.ch> wrote: You can add GPS receivers to this. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Jan 27, 2010, at 12:26 PM, Jochen Kunz wrote: Standard USB host controllers are (unless this has changed recently) based on an 8051 core. Very deeply embedded, sure, but that's kinda the point. ;) As I understand it, the very first prototype implementations were discrete-chip 8051s, but probably of some more modern incarnation, and that basic design hasn't had any reason to change. No, the host controller itself. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

All this beating up on the 8051. They are actually a fairly capable chip. We used them quite extensively in my work. ________________________________ From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wed, January 27, 2010 12:12:19 PM Subject: Re: Editor religious wars (was Re: Museums) On 27 Jan 2010 at 12:38, Dave McGuire wrote: To some extent, that may still be true for the devices themselves. I've still got a bunch of USB peripherals with Intel N82930A3 chips on them, which, I believe is nothing more than a specially-configured 8051. --Chuck

I know... certainly not by you. :) They take some finesse to program, but they do have several features that are beneficial in such a small MCU. ________________________________ From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wed, January 27, 2010 1:48:09 PM Subject: Re: Editor religious wars (was Re: Museums) Actually there hasn't been much beating up going on. -Dave On Jan 27, 2010, at 2:26 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote: --Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:38:00 -0500 Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: You mean UHCI? (As UHCI == intel & VIA. Everything else is OHCI.) Well. Why not? There are gigabit Ethernet controllers with dual MIPS R4000 cores inside... (Broadcom BCM570x) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

On Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:51:45 -0500 Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: I know that you don't have problems with 8051. But I have. It is just an other shitty intel chip. Well. Is there at least one non-shitty intel chip? ;-) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

Dave McGuire wrote: But looking now at history, Intel did not have a working 16/32 bit design at that time. That x86 was just a hack that worked well with the blessing of IBM. It seems only Motorola thought of 'home' computing more with 6809. Everything larger seems to have been designed to replace the mini-computer/main-frame market. Ben.

Chuck Guzis wrote: They tried so many times to kill this bastard ... iapx432, i860 (not sure if they really tried, titanic, didn't work out either I do recall our Intel sales guy When it was presented to us, I was just amazed that they compared it to our 11/780 which could be easily replaced by the iapx432. They only need a few of them It should definitely fit in a mid-size FPGA, but is there really any software out there for it ?

On Jan 28, 2010, at 1:00 PM, Ben wrote: I always wanted to program the 6809. I have a SWTPc 6800/6809 system that I built but I never fleshed it out with a disk drive and OS. Does anyone make a 6809 SBC that will run OS-9 these days?

On Jan 28, 2010, at 1:28 PM, e.stiebler wrote: I checked this out a while ago but I think it is just a 6809 coprocessor board that only works with their Z80 board. Thanks for the suggestion but I was hoping for something actually had a 6809 chip on it.

You could do (or find) a motorola mono-board. They made both a 6800 and a 6809 version. You can grab the schematic and manual off of bitsavers under motorola. Rob On Jan 28, 2010, at 1:50 PM, Ben wrote: Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com

On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, Ben wrote: Hmmmmmm. Can a Mac emulate a 6809 well enough to run OS9? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: NitrOS-9: http://www.nitros9.org/ -- Regards, Torfinn Ingolfsen

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: http://www.nitros9.org/downloads.html "You can get NitrOS-9's source code from SourceForge's CVS Repository". HTH -- Regards, Torfinn Ingolfsen

The downloads on the nitros9.org site are too small to include source. The checkout I just got from CVS is about 56 MB flat, 18 MB zipped. You can grab my zip file if you want (well, in a few minutes when it finishes uploading): http://yagi.h-net.msu.edu/nitros9src.zip Note that since I just pulled CVS without specifying a branch, it's roughly equivalent to today's daily build. De

externals, third party applications/utilities/games/languages, etc. Again from inspection, there's a bit of C, but the kernel proper seems to be almost entirely asm. De

If you are interested in getting your SwTPc working, try: http://www.flexusergroup.com/flexusergroup/default.htm Some nice 6800/6809 people there . . . . Jeff ____________________________________________________________ FREE 3D MARINE AQUARIUM SCREENSAVER - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas on your desktop! Check it out at http://www.inbox.com/marineaquarium

On Jan 28, 2010, at 1:55 PM, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote: I had a COCO 3 once. Unfortunately, I gave it away. Bad move!

Phill Harvey-Smith wrote: Hmm, I have a Dragon 32 and a 64 - ISTR one of them has two PCBs but the other is all on a single PCB. Can't remember which is which, now; it's been a long time since I've been inside them. I've got a disk cart, floppy drive and OS-9 for the D64, but the machine itself was unwell and I never did get the time to fix it. One day... cheers Jules

On 1/28/10 10:40 AM, "David Betz" <dbetz at xlisper.com> wrote: There is a IO mezzanine board in the works that will make the 6809 board more of a full system.

On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:36 PM, Ben wrote: It'll do a good bit more than that. My high school used a UniFLEX system that was a 2MHz 6809 with about a dozen 1200-baud terminals. It was used to teach Pascal. Interactive performance was typically pretty good. And you do realize "PDP-11" spanned some two and a half decades and more than a dozen implementations with a huge range of processing power ranging from "wimpy" to "big clanging brass balls", right? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Jan 28, 2010, at 11:23 PM, Ben wrote: Whoa! Mirrored. 16 bits, actually. The two MMU architectures extended that to 18 and 22 bits. I wouldn't call it a goof considering the first one came out in 1970. For a small lab minicomputer in 1970, 64KB isn't bad at all. You did that to yourself, man. ;) And who on this list only has one computer? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Considering the cost of CORE memory in 1970, 64KB was much larger than any PDP-11 at that time. 8KB was a common system. Even up to around 1975, I don't think there was an MMU available in any case. Does anyone know when the MMU was first used with more than 64KB of memory for the system? As for total memory available to use for temporary work space, when I run Ersatz-11 under WXP on a system with 4 GB of physical memory (I agree that WXP wastes almost 1 GB of that memory), Ersatz-11 allows me to provide a program running on what looks like a PDP-11 with access to about 1.2 GigaBytes of temporary storage work space. The words are accessed via 4 IOPAGE registers, the third and fourth registers being a 32 bit byte address. The access time is up to ten times the access time to emulated PDP-11 program data within the normal 64KB, but that is MUCH faster than using other methods such as VIRTUAL in FORTRAN, let alone the size limitation with the latter method of 4 MegaBytes. In addition, it is possible to enhance the DLL which is used to access that extra 1.2 GigaBytes and have the DLL perform a substantial portion of the data manipulation. It would be very similar to adding a co-processor to the PDP-11 which I have using in the past to calculate FFTs and other vector quantities. Of course, no one would ever start a new project using Ersatz-11, but for current projects that have a major investment in software, using Ersatz-11 is often a very low cost solution to increased CPU and disk I/O speeds. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

On Feb 1, 2010, at 2:57 AM, Alexander Schreiber wrote: The MMU can easily get around this. And indeed, I don't have this problem with any other OS. Does Windows not understand PAE hardware? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Feb 1, 2010, at 9:43 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote: Holy cow, that's pretty nasty! Machines that can take that much memory (and machines for which one would reasonably expect to have that much memory) in which it won't actually function? I've never seen such a machine. I hope I don't ever. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

I am confused over how the hardware responds to a physical address for hardware as opposed to actual memory at the same physical address? The mother board being used (ASUS P5B) actually allows 8 GB of memory in total, so PAE hardware must be present to allow 64 bit Windows to reference the extra 4 GB of memory. My less than complete understanding of how an MMU operates is limited to the PDP-11 where the top 8 KB of memory is lost to the IOPAGE registers. As far as I can understand, all PAR7 address references are redirected to the IOPAGE registers which results in the top 8 KB of memory not being able to be used. This redirection takes place BOTH with and WITHOUT an MM being present. When there is 4 MB of memory available to the system, the loss of 8 KB was not considered a major problem and we all considered ourselves fortunate if we actually had 4 MB of physical memory in the backplane. I get the impression that a PC does something very different with physical memory addresses (out of a 2 * 2 GB sticks for example) vs something like the video controller which has its own memory. However, I still get the impression that a 32 bit Windows XP could set up the necessary pointers to allow the operating system to use the unused 1 GB of physical memory for some rather useful functions such as cache for the hard disk drives. Is my impression correct? And what about Windows 7 running a 64 bit? I realize that this seems to be a discussion about Windows, but the only goal is to be able to run a 32 bit application, specifically Ersatz-11, with reasonable, or at least as close to reasonable as possible, efficiency. If a 64 bit Windows can still run a 32 bit application, are there any penalties imposed as a result. I realize that the maximum memory that could be assigned to a single 32 bit process will almost certainly be 4 GB, but that is substantially more than the maximum of 2 GB under a 32 bit version of Windows XP which is running at the moment. Please pardon my almost total lack of understanding of the Windows environment, however I shudder at having to learn all of that stuff just to be able to run Ersatz-11. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

Also, if anyone is interested in the details of how the hardware works, just read the chipset docs. Intel chipset docs are easily available on their website. (The same is not true of some of the other chipset vendors). Intel? 4 Series Chipset Family http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/319970.pdf Page 56, Figure 4. System Address Ranges This figure shows that some of the host system address space below 4GB is allocated to devices. Some DRAM in that address region is remapped to host system address space above 4GB. That corresponds to the "OS Invisible Reclaim" DRAM mapped to the "Main Memory Reclaim Address Range" in that figure. If the OS does not make use of host system address space memory located above 4GB the DRAM corresponding to the "OS Invisible Reclaim" region in that figure is effectively lost. That would account for the lost 0.5GB or whatever on a 4GB DRAM system. -Glen

On Mon, Feb 01, 2010 at 09:14:08AM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote: For values of 'easily' that require PAE, which complicates things and also has some limitations. For instance, no single process can access more than 4 GB without some ugly hackery remininescent of MS-DOS EMS. And then there is the fun and games that is MS Windows licensing, which limits what certain OS editions can do. If that isn't enough, there are also driver issues - not all drivers support PAE. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

Dave McGuire wrote: Funny, how much truth can be in one sentence ;-)

If you allow an implementation done by way of emulation, then the computing power of a PDP-11 is still increasing. While 3rd party CPU boards (from QED and Mentec as just two examples) were restricted to about ten times the speed of the DEC PDP-11/93, under Ersatz-11, I normally realize about 100 times the speed of the PDP-11/93 on an Intel Q9550 CPU running WXP and for the disk I/O using SATA 300 drives about 200 times the speed of the better ESDI and SCSI hard drives available with a Qbus controller to use on the PDP-11/93. And even a commercial license for Ersatz-11 is less than the current price of a PDP-11/93, let alone the DEC price when first released. What do you call 100 * "big clanging brass balls"? Any comments from the hardware side of the fence? So that twenty-five year span can be extended to a forty year span. Note that there will be a number of problems in running 3rd party hardware under Ersatz-11 since the Logical Company no longer makes PCI <=> Qbus adapters. Does anyone know of a source of these boards (used at this point)? It is possible to write a DLL to emulate these boards, but it may be quite time consuming for some of them. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

On Jan 28, 2010, at 11:14 PM, allison wrote: I have drooled over that design for some time now. I'd like to build one similar to that when I have some spare time. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 26/01/2010 18:18, Dave McGuire wrote: Nope, its ARM, or at least ARM cores, as far as data I can find supports. And MIPS is second. I don't have the figures here at home, but I researched it at work for a computer architecture class I helped with a couple of years ago. Have you got any figures for 8051, because it would be interesting to compare? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, Cameron Kaiser wrote: another characteristic of true religious wars

On Jan 28, 2010, at 3:15 PM, Henk Gooijen wrote: I have one of these but it's only half-built so far. I hope to finish it this spring. Fun stuff! Nice work, guys! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On 28 Jan 2010 at 15:47, Joachim Thiemann wrote: 68HC12 is an enhanced 6800 (i.e. object code compatible); the 6809, while bearing a family resemblance, is sui generis, but for the Hitachi 6309. AFAIK the 09 architecture never made it into an embedded microcontroller. --Chuck

I think you could (either way), with the appropriate 3rd party stuff. DEC was not completely unaware of block mode terminals (VT62? And I think a VT-100oid?). -- Will

On Jan 26, 2010, at 10:10 AM, William Donzelli wrote: That was the VT-131, I think? That always confused me...It's a block-mode device but it still speaks ASCII over async serial? Was there an ASCII and async serial version of a 3174-ish terminal controller, or something like that? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Jan 26, 2010, at 1:12 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: So they weren't actually used to talk to IBM hosts? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Tuesday 26 January 2010, William Donzelli wrote: Howsabout a 3174 with HG23 ports on it (I think that's the right designation), and 3270-type terminals (or VT-100s on the HG23 ports) connected to that? Or, is that cheating? Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

On Jan 26, 2010, at 1:38 PM, Patrick Finnegan wrote: Could you put a straight VT-100 (i.e., not a VT-131) on one of those ports and have the 3174 do all the screen management to simulate a block-mode terminal? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote: VT132? Antonio

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 09:35:19AM -0500, Jason McBrien wrote: Was there ever a big endian vx little endian war? /P

Alpha Micro had this problem when they went from WD-16 to 68K, and ended up doing the same thing (swapping lines) to keep the endianness the same for client data. Obviously, when they went x86 they simply did software emulation, which is much less prosaic. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx ---------

EBCDIC V ASCII !

Joachim Thiemann wrote: You forgot Paper Tape vs Punched Film stock. Ben.

Tubes vs. transistors? -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Even cabbage more sense than you! -- Shampoo, "Ranma 1/2" ------------------

Pontus Pihlgren wrote: I'm not sure when the war started (earlier one might expect) but there was a major battle back in the late-70's/early-80's when portable operating systems and networking were in vogue, and programmers had to account for both orders within the same code. Danny Cohen's paper "On Holy Wars And a Plea For Peace" (1980) was one result: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OnHolyWarsAndaPleaForPeace http://www.rdrop.com/~cary/html/endian_faq.html or numerous other links (I prefer little-endian as it is mathematically consistent, while big-endian is the result of a disparate mixture of cultural artifacts.)

On Jan 26, 2010, at 9:25 AM, Christian Liendo wrote: If it were a "religious war" AT ALL, I would be amused. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL