Anyone playing with the 8x300

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Anyone playing with the 8x300
>   From: Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com>
>   Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 18:07:06 -0700 (PDT)
>     To: 
>     Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On Fri, 13 May 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>
>> I'm looking at an application of the 8X300 by
>> Signetics. This is for a hard disk controller.
>> Is anyone fiddling with simmulators for this processor.
>> It seems like someone was a while back.
>> My current application is on an Olivetti M20 not
>> a TRS80.
>
>Having written code for it (long, long ago though) its a rather
>bizarre and hard to work with chip.
>
>In the real (physical) world it was extremely expensive to write
>code for -- code was in bipolar PROMs. Maybe there were PROM
>simulators but we didn't have one, so it was burn PROM, debug with
>scope. Ouch. Yuck.

Even with a rom emulator it's nasty.  I played with one I have 
for a while just because.  It's whole concept must have originated
to solve a particular problem and was then vended out. It's not 
suited at all to general computational use.

For those interested in microprogramming and building their 
own computers from the instruction set up...

http://www.homebrewcpu.com/  Follow links around for many differnt CPUs.

http://www.pjrc.com/tech/8051/ide/wesley.html  This is an interesting 
link as it describes how to hang a IDE disk off a 8255 PPI, worth 
looking at.


Allison




Allison