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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Stuck between a hard place and a 16-bit rock. |
| drogon |
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 9:55 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 15972
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| ... supervisor, user). Instruction and data spaces were separated as well, so you could have 64kI and 64kD without touching the segments. The Alto initially used 64kx16 words, later versions had 4 banks of 64kx16 words. Which wasn't enough for what they were doing. The Dorado, successor to ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Stuck between a hard place and a 16-bit rock. |
| DockLazy |
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:53 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 15972
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| ... supervisor, user). Instruction and data spaces were separated as well, so you could have 64kI and 64kD without touching the segments. The Alto initially used 64kx16 words, later versions had 4 banks of 64kx16 words. Which wasn't enough for what they were doing. The Dorado, successor to ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Stuck between a hard place and a 16-bit rock. |
| DockLazy |
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2023 6:53 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 15972
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| ... you just ample space for GUI with bank select. 20 or 32 bits is the only way to expand to keep the design with a simple data path simple. Xerox Alto is good example of TTL computer, with GUI. I like the potrait display since it is about 600x800. (none of this cheap TV displays like the ibm pc) ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Stuck between a hard place and a 16-bit rock. |
| oldben |
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Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:30 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 15972
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| ... you just ample space for GUI with bank select. 20 or 32 bits is the only way to expand to keep the design with a simple data path simple. Xerox Alto is good example of TTL computer, with GUI. I like the potrait display since it is about 600x800. (none of this cheap TV displays like the ibm pc) ... |
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Forum: Projects Topic: LALU Computer: Lookup Arithmetic Logic Unit |
| alrj |
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:57 am
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Replies: 90
Views: 24808
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| Ooh, that's funny, I like it ! I've just run it with my port of the Palo-Alto Tiny Basic on BB-88, my 8088 (actually V20) breadboard computer. I had to use the remainder method provided above, but PATB does support early exits from FOR loops, so no need to use ... |
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Forum: Projects Topic: Astorisc : A pipelined Risc-V from scratch ? |
| oldben |
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Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 9:43 am
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Replies: 53
Views: 26097
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| ... then you have a lot of data to move around, for just a text display, a buffered serial device may be better than a video display. The Xerox Alto was early bitmapped B&W TTL computer that did everything in microcode, keyboard mouse,disc,network,bitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto ... |
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Forum: Projects Topic: Possible 16-bit design, need guidance on pipelines & fetches |
| DiTBho |
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Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 5:47 am
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Replies: 29
Views: 3575
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| ... of money for an hobby toy, but I love it. An other weird beast is the MIL by Ivan Godard and his startup Mill Computing, Inc, located in East Palo Alto, California. It may be interesting for you because it uses a very long instruction word encoding to place up to 33 simple operations ... just it's ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Thoughts about a high-density ISA |
| oldben |
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Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:57 am
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Replies: 32
Views: 25426
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Xerox Alto put a large amount of code in micro-code. Not sure if it saved space, but it did save time on I/O and Bit mapped graphics. (B&W). Need a new Lanuage, write some micro-code and your virtual machine is ported.
Ben. |
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Forum: Projects Topic: CS01 |
| BigEd |
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 3:28 pm
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Replies: 107
Views: 25962
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| ... have several versions of Tiny Basic, but they are all ultimately derived from Tiny Basic for the 68000. Tiny Basic for the 68k was a port of Palo Alto Tiny Basic found in Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Of course, the source code is considerably different now but the ideas remain the same. Thanks! |
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Forum: Projects Topic: CS01 |
| robfinch |
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 4:01 am
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Replies: 107
Views: 25962
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| ... have several versions of Tiny Basic, but they are all ultimately derived from Tiny Basic for the 68000. Tiny Basic for the 68k was a port of Palo Alto Tiny Basic found in Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Of course, the source code is considerably different now but the ideas remain the same. Added several custom ... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Suite-16 (formerly Bitslice using currently available TTL) |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 8:39 pm
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Replies: 52
Views: 23529
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| ... In mid-November I went over to California for a couple of weeks - firstly to attend Forth Day 2019, held at Stanford University near Palo Alto, and then to have a road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway in a 1996 Cadillac Sedan de Ville..... I did a short presentation on "Forth ... |
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Forum: Hardware in general Topic: Gigatron - A TTL machine with integrated VGA |
| BigEd |
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Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2019 12:05 pm
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Replies: 25
Views: 21009
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| ... In the specific case of the gigatron with the software-driven video, that might be more trouble than it would be elsewhere. (I'm reminded of the Alto , which did all disk I/O in microcode, if I remember correctly. Oh, even more : "The display, disk, Ethernet, and even the refreshing of the ... |
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Forum: Hardware in general Topic: CPU Control - Microcode vs Finite State Machine |
| quadrant |
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Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:06 am
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Replies: 8
Views: 7503
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| ... link. There's a lot to pick up from it...once you get over the initial overwhelm-ent. --- With regards to microcode and flexibility, the Xerox Alto that Curious Marc and friends repaired comes to mind. I am not sure about the details, but in one of those videos it's mentioned. |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: BESM and CDC 6600 in London's Science Museum |
| BigEd |
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 9:38 pm
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Replies: 4
Views: 5907
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| ... of it is a CDC 6600. There's a bunch of micros in a display to your left, and the Pilot ACE just beyond that. Beyond the CDC 6600, between a Xerox Alto and a MITS Altair is Englebart's mouse. Lots more too, of course. https://goo.gl/maps/T9kyL6PzuY92 |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Some 16 bit instruction formats |
| BigEd |
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Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 3:32 pm
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Replies: 5
Views: 6629
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| . Reading today about the Xerox Alto , a microcoded machine which can emulate something a bit like a Data General Nova, both being 16-bit word-oriented machines with multiple registers, I came across this examination of quite a few historical ... |
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