FPGA VAX update

[William Maddox]

Roger Merchberger wrote:

> The last time I checked (last year) the eval boards for Crusoe/Efficeon 
> chips were rather expensive for the hobbyist. It'd be cheaper to pick up 
> a Crusoe-based laptop mobo or machine, and use that for a possible 
> platform, altho I'll admit that it's certainly not the *ideal* hacking 
> platform available. Sometimes, one must balance function with cost.

The principal problem with such a project is that the VLIW architecture
is not publicly documented, nor is the source code to CMS available.  It 
is treated as "black box" microcode from the customer's point of view.
That's really too bad, as we had quite a few neat hacks internally. 
It's an odd feeling to have a debugger open on a CPU's "microcode", 
though it more closely resembles an OS kernel or a very large device driver.

Bill
(Transmeta engineer)