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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: Sun Oct 13, 2019 10:09 am
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| Here are a few points about the ALU. It is based on Dieter Muller's unit that is based on 74xx153 multiplexers and a 74xx283 adder. It was used in an 8-bit form in the Gigatron - and it lends itself directly to a 4-bit wide bitslice design, consisting of four multiplexers and one adder. Further exte... |
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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: Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:22 am
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| Hi Roelh, Thank you for your excellent list - a good way to breakdown the main points and make decisions. I am still at the start of a very long project. I wanted to build a flexible architecture which would allow me to explore a register based architecture with that of a stack machine. The register... |
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Forum: Projects Topic: Kobold - an innovative 16 bit TTL Retrocomputer |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 2:18 pm
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Replies: 40
Views: 15001
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| Roelh, Thanks for the update. I'm planning on using a 74xx194 universal 4-bit shift register as the ALU/accumulator register for my 4-bit wide bitslice design. I definitely like your use of the (still available) 74xx670 for the address and data registers - but I am still working my way through your ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Collapse OS |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2019 10:13 am
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Replies: 5
Views: 3210
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| Thanks for the link to Sam Falvo's blog. I've met Sam a couple of times in San Francisco/Bay Area - he's a regular at the Silicon Valley Forth Interest Group, so very much into keeping his systems simple and understandable. I found the Collapse OS discussion more of a thought provoker - of just how ... |
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Forum: General Discussions Topic: Collapse OS |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:39 pm
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Replies: 5
Views: 3210
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| This has been widely discussed in the last 2 days on retrocomputingforum.com, reddit and Hacker News. The premise is that following some future post-apocalypse, we have to reboot society using what we can scavenge from mid-1970s technology. Here are the main links - please don't shoot the messenger ... |
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Forum: Hardware in general Topic: The LD12 - a TTL PDP-8 kit from 1974 |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2019 2:42 pm
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Replies: 7
Views: 18442
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Hi Ben,
Thanks for sharing. I'm also working on a design based on 4-bit slices.
I have an Altera Nano DE0 dev-board that I might re-visit, but my preferred FPGAs are the Lattice ICE40 - because of the open-source toolchain. |
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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: Wed Oct 02, 2019 11:48 am
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| Hi Joan, Good to hear that you are making progress with "Digital". It takes a little while to understand the user interface, but it's a good way to do virtual "breadboarding" - and it also gives us a format for sharing design ideas. It also offers support for GALs and ATF150x ser... |
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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 Sep 27, 2019 4:43 pm
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| I've made some progress with the bit-slice cpu - at least in terms of simulating it using "Digital". I now have enough experience of "Digital" to quickly change the contents of Eproms, and use the 7-segment display device so that I can see the state of the various buses. This is ... |
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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: Wed Sep 25, 2019 5:14 pm
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| Today I have been looking at the practical implementation of the cpu using TTL. With a 16-bit cpu, things can very quickly get large and complex, so I thought that I'd look at the ALU first - as it is a fairly well defined unit, it represents a fair chunk of the design and easily built from TTL. How... |
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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: Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:10 pm
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Replies: 52
Views: 24260
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| After a week away relaxing on a narrowboat, mulling some thoughts, I am now re-engaged in my TTL computer design. I have settled on a name for the project "Suite-16" that pays homage to Steve Wozniak's Sweet-16 interpreter and also reflects that this is a 16-bit processor. The aim of the p... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Cambridge-1 |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:52 pm
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Replies: 3
Views: 4307
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| Hi Ed, Richard has been burning the midnight oil for about a month to get the Cambridge-1 together in time for last weekend's RC Festival. Using an Arduino to help with the Bring-Up is a neat idea ( and also covered well in Ben Eater's latest video on the 6502 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJL... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Cambridge-1 |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:17 pm
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Replies: 3
Views: 4307
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| Whilst at the Retrocomputer Festival in Cambridge last weekend, I shared a corner of the room with Richard J. Grafton of Arith-Matic. Richard had spent 30 days in August building a 4-bit breadboarded TTL computer he calls the Cambridge-1. It's a neat design, which currently uses an Arduino for progr... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Bitslice using currently available TTL |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 10:20 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 14695
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| Joan, Wikipedia has an entry under "Bit-Slicing" which explains it well and has examples of historical cpus that have used the technique. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_slicing I have estimated that my design will have approximately 64 ICs in the ALU, registers and memory addressing sec... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Bitslice using currently available TTL |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 7:51 am
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Replies: 23
Views: 14695
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| Hi Joan, Regarding "Digital" my understanding from the Installation notes was that it would run on any platform: There is no installation required, just unpack the Digital.zip file, which is available for download. On Windows machines the EXE file can be executed, on Linux start the shell ... |
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Forum: CPU/MCU choices and designs Topic: Bitslice using currently available TTL |
| monsonite |
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Posted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:50 pm
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Replies: 23
Views: 14695
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| I have now begun my sabbatical year - having left paid work yesterday afternoon. I can now focus on my hobby projects, which include designing a 16-bit TTL cpu, learning verilog to familiarise myself with open source FPGAs and doing some more coding. A friend suggested I look at "Digital" ... |
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