[TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode

[Gregg Levine]

An amazing idea.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 7:51 PM Jason Stevens
<jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
>
> You might find this interesting
>
> https://twitter.com/i/status/1320767372853190659
> <https://twitter.com/i/status/1320767372853190659>
>
> It's a pi (arm) running Musashi a 68000 core, but using voltage buffers it's
> plugged into the 68000 socket of an Amiga!
>
> You can find more info on their github:
>
> https://github.com/captain-amygdala/pistorm
> <https://github.com/captain-amygdala/pistorm>
>
> Maybe we are at the point where numerous cheap CPU's can eliminate FPGA's?
>
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From:   Michael Parson [SMTP:mparson at bl.org]
>         Sent:   Friday, February 05, 2021 10:43 PM
>         To:     The Eunuchs Hysterical Society
>         Subject:        Re: [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode
>
>         On 2021-02-04 16:47, Henry Bent wrote:
>         > On Thu, Feb 4, 2021, 17:40 Adam Thornton <athornton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>         >
>         >> I'm probably Stockholm Syndrommed about 6502.  It's what I grew
> up on,
>         >> and
>         >> I still like it a great deal.  Admittedly register-starved (well,
>
>         >> unless
>         >> you consider the zero page a whole page of registers),
> but...simple,
>         >> easy
>         >> to fit in your head, kinda wonderful.
>         >>
>         >> I'd love a 64-bit 6502-alike (but I'd probably give it more than
> three
>         >> registers).  I mean given how little silicon (or how few FPGA
> gates) a
>         >> reasonable version of that would take, might as well include
> 65C02 and
>         >> 65816 cores in there too with some sort of mode-switching
> instruction.
>         >> Wouldn't a 6502ish with 64-bit wordsize and a 64-bit address bus
> be
>         >> fun?
>         >> Throw in an onboard MMU and FPU too, I suppose, and then you
> could
>         >> have a
>         >> real system on it.
>         >>
>         >>
>         > Sounds like a perfect project for an FPGA.  If there's already a
> 6502
>         > implementation out there, converting to 64 bit should be fairly
> easy.
>
>         There are FPGA implementations of the 6502 out there. If you've not
> seen
>         it, check out the MiSTer[0] project, FPGA implementations of a LOT
> of
>         computers, going back as far as the EDSAC, PDP-1, a LOT of 8, 16,
> and 32
>         bit systems from the 70s and 80s along with gaming consoles from the
> 70s
>         and 80s.
>
>         Keeping this semi-TUHS related, one guy[1] has even implemented a
>         Sparc 32m[2] (I think maybe an SS10), which boots SunOS 4, 5, Linux,
>         NetBSD, and even the Sparc version of NeXTSTEP, but it's not part of
> the
>         "official" MiSTer bits (yet?).
>
>         --
>         Michael Parson
>         Pflugerville, TX
>         KF5LGQ
>
>         [0] https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki
>         [1] https://temlib.org/site/
>         [2] https://temlib.org/pub/mister/SS/