3 ms·

Okay, but what's the purpose of this? Is it merely proof of concept work? Are there software that could utilize a 100 MHz BBC Micro? Or is just something incred

by krige 10y ago

Okay, but what's the purpose of this? Is it merely proof of concept work? Are there software that could utilize a 100 MHz BBC Micro? Or is just something incredibly cool for BBC Micro fans?

jamstruth 10y ago
Something cool for BBC Micro fans. The Pi is being used to emulate a co-processor communicates via an interface available on the BBC Micro called "Tube". For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_(BBC_Micro) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_(BBC_Micro)
jacquesm 10y ago
Well... I think that the 'beeb' was hands down the best machine ever to learn how to program on. It would be nice to see a re-vamped version of it and the 'pi' has all the bits and pieces. Hopefully this is the prelude to something along those lines that no longer needs a bbc micro as an io front-end. (Though, it would seem that doing that right out of the gate would be simpler than to use the original bbc so probably this is to satisfy an itch.)
to3m 10y ago
It's an excellent piece of work, and you could probably use similar techniques to create addons for other 8-bit systems, but overall it's probably not super-interesting for non-BBC Micro fans ;) BBC games tend not to work with a coprocessor - but a lot of business/serious software probably would (not much use these days of course...), and you can always use it for programming. I've got a 16MHz 6502 coprocessor for my BBC and it works well. The coprocessor system is quite well designed, so the coprocessor has basically nothing to do but run BASIC or whatever, and the main 2MHz CPU only gets used for I/O. I/O-heavy stuff can be a little bit quicker sometimes; calculations and stuff run about as much more quickly as you'd expect from the clock rate. (In fact, they're a little bit quicker than that - because the coprocessor doesn't have to handle I/O, timers, keyboard scanning, etc., all of which can bog down the main CPU a little.)

by krige 10y ago

Okay, but what's the purpose of this? Is it merely proof of concept work? Are there software that could utilize a 100 MHz BBC Micro? Or is just something incredibly cool for BBC Micro fans?

jamstruth 10y ago

Something cool for BBC Micro fans. The Pi is being used to emulate a co-processor communicates via an interface available on the BBC Micro called "Tube". For more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_(BBC_Micro) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_(BBC_Micro)

jacquesm 10y ago

Well... I think that the 'beeb' was hands down the best machine ever to learn how to program on. It would be nice to see a re-vamped version of it and the 'pi' has all the bits and pieces. Hopefully this is the prelude to something along those lines that no longer needs a bbc micro as an io front-end. (Though, it would seem that doing that right out of the gate would be simpler than to use the original bbc so probably this is to satisfy an itch.)

to3m 10y ago

It's an excellent piece of work, and you could probably use similar techniques to create addons for other 8-bit systems, but overall it's probably not super-interesting for non-BBC Micro fans ;) BBC games tend not to work with a coprocessor - but a lot of business/serious software probably would (not much use these days of course...), and you can always use it for programming. I've got a 16MHz 6502 coprocessor for my BBC and it works well. The coprocessor system is quite well designed, so the coprocessor has basically nothing to do but run BASIC or whatever, and the main 2MHz CPU only gets used for I/O. I/O-heavy stuff can be a little bit quicker sometimes; calculations and stuff run about as much more quickly as you'd expect from the clock rate. (In fact, they're a little bit quicker than that - because the coprocessor doesn't have to handle I/O, timers, keyboard scanning, etc., all of which can bog down the main CPU a little.)