16 Nov
2005
16 Nov
'05
6:34 p.m.
Subject: Re: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008?
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:14:12 -0800
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
If I were to build a system from chips today, I'd probably relegate all of
my I/O devices to some commodity interface, using single-chip
microcontrollers where some particular intelligence was required. Leave
the CPU free for the heavy computational lifting.
Cheers,
Chuck
Unless it gets crzy I tend to do that. Create a parallel interface with
a protocal to talk over it to a slave and let the slave do the grunt work.
Did that back around 81 for the first time using 8085 and 8035 and found
it nice to have a limited IO on the host yet get good performance. Now
with AVR, PIC and others it's pretty reasonable. Just let it interrupt
the host when there's something for it or when done.
Allison
16 Nov
16 Nov
8:13 p.m.
On 11/16/2005 at 1:34 PM Allison wrote:
Unless it gets crazy I tend to do that. Create a
parallel interface with
a protocal to talk over it to a slave and let the slave do the grunt work.
Did that back around 81 for the first time using 8085 and 8035 and found
it nice to have a limited IO on the host yet get good performance. Now
with AVR, PIC and others it's pretty reasonable. Just let it interrupt
the host when there's something for it or when done.
Of course, since a PC has all of the I/O support needed, one could simply
let it be the I/O servicer.
That way, if a problem with the homebrew box came up, the homebrew hardware
could be emulated on the PC. One could even cut down on construction and
debugging time by simply sticking the necessary components into a
prototyping PCB, skipping the nasty wiring stage just adding an illuminated
LED on the board (blink if you want) and emulate the whole lashup on the
PC.
Sort of like sitting behind the wheel of a car with the engine turned off,
saying "vroom, vrooooom".
:)
--Chuck
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