MEM11 Update

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Guy Sotomayor

    > I took some time off from working on the MEM11 ... I had some time over
    > the past few days, so I spent it working on the simulator.

Excellent news!


    > Right now all of the J1 instructions seem to simulate properly.

I had to go hunt up your original message:

  http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2015-January/002879.html

to refresh my memory as to exactly what a 'J1' was!

It was interesting to re-read your original message; I and a couple of other
people are looking into doing a QBUS card to provide access to modern
non-volatile storage (SD cards, USB thumb drives), and in discussing the
internal design, we'd planned on an FPGA, and a separate micro-controller.
Your concept to have the 'micro-controller' _in_ the FPGA is interesting! The
only problem, from our point of view, is the 'limited' number of FPGA pins
(the QBUS interface alone is ~50 pins) - at least, without going to a BGA
part, which we view as undesirable.


    > Everything related to the basic simulator also seems to be functional. 

I'm curious as to your reasoning in doing a custom simulator (OK, it's all
fun :-). I do understand having _a_ simulator (writing all the software
involved on the card will be much easier if you don't have to deal with a
flaky/new hardware), but since the J1 is in the FPGA, couldn't you just use
the FPGA simulator? Or is it too slow to emulate a good-sized J1 program?


	Noel


PS: When we get down to detailed design, we'll have to get the specs on your
light panel interface; we'd like to be able to drive the same light panel
(for exactly the same uses :-), to avoid re-building the wheel.