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GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 2:27
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 2:27 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
Randor 4-Jan-21 8:46
professional Randor 4-Jan-21 8:46 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:12
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:12 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
Randor 4-Jan-21 11:26
professional Randor 4-Jan-21 11:26 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:30
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:30 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
Randor 4-Jan-21 11:44
professional Randor 4-Jan-21 11:44 
GeneralRe: Well that was satisfying... Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:48
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 11:48 
GeneralAre hardware questions allowed here? Pin
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 11:35
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 11:35 
Good that I have none at the moment. In the last two weeks I made some progress with the Zwölf and now all bits and pieces are falling into place.

I wanted to boot the Zwölf with a microcontroller, but was not able to get one anywhere. Now what?
Why not take the simple breadboard Zwölf and add an IDE controller? Then I only need some interface and I get a smart disk controller.

What kind of interface? Serial? Parallel? Both would be kindof slow. I need something faster. Something that can be used for bootloading as well as at runtime. DMA in both directions, that's it.

The CDP1802 never gives up control of its bus, not even for DMA. It keeps running and inserts a DMA bus cycle when DMA is requested. It even acts as a DMA controller and does the memory addressing itself, leaving only putting its data on the bus at the right time to the requesting device. Super easy, only three cheap logic ICs on each processor board. Even a 'you've got mail' interrupt is included to be used when all bytes of a request have been sent. The coolest part is that the processor can even do this kind of DMA when it's not running. The interface can be used to load code into memory before booting. That's going to be a smart disk controller.

Coming to think of it, why not even add some sort of network adapter. A smart disk and network adapter. Let's boot the Zwölf from the internet. Smile | :)

The software side is also coming along. I'm going to be stuck with bit banged software RS232 for a while, so I have written a little library for VT100 terminals and pimped the software from 9600 baud to 19200 baud. No comparison to the VT52 and 300 baud we had in the old days. Just fill the screen when you wanted to take a break. Smile | :)

And I now have a heap. Yes, that's memory management. That may be an alien and revolutionary concept, but there is no hand waving when you start with an empty computer. I even had to use something like a global variable, because it's hard to allocate memory on the heap when the computer does not remember where it put the heap.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.

His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.

GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
Mike Hankey3-Jan-21 13:31
mveMike Hankey3-Jan-21 13:31 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 14:28
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 14:28 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep3-Jan-21 16:08
enhzflep3-Jan-21 16:08 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch3-Jan-21 17:14
mvahoney the codewitch3-Jan-21 17:14 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep3-Jan-21 19:43
enhzflep3-Jan-21 19:43 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch3-Jan-21 19:49
mvahoney the codewitch3-Jan-21 19:49 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep3-Jan-21 20:09
enhzflep3-Jan-21 20:09 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch3-Jan-21 21:04
mvahoney the codewitch3-Jan-21 21:04 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep4-Jan-21 3:04
enhzflep4-Jan-21 3:04 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 3:08
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 3:08 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep4-Jan-21 3:33
enhzflep4-Jan-21 3:33 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 3:39
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 3:39 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
enhzflep4-Jan-21 11:58
enhzflep4-Jan-21 11:58 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
honey the codewitch4-Jan-21 12:02
mvahoney the codewitch4-Jan-21 12:02 
GeneralRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
Mike Hankey4-Jan-21 4:40
mveMike Hankey4-Jan-21 4:40 
QuestionRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
CPallini3-Jan-21 20:14
mveCPallini3-Jan-21 20:14 
AnswerRe: Are hardware questions allowed here? Pin
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 22:13
CodeWraith3-Jan-21 22:13 

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