New subject: 68k prototypes & microcode

13 Feb 2021

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@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
&lt;athornton(a)gmail.com&gt; 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/