S100 mainframe on USB stick

[udo....@freenet.de]

https://youtu.be/CTYXMwlE8pY

Not really an Altair, but also can run the standalone MITS Altair BASIC, might be interesting for some.

[John Galt]

Pretty cool.

Now it makes me want a multitude of emulators on a stick for various vintage system.

[udo....@freenet.de]

John Galt schrieb am Samstag, 27. Juli 2024 um 22:26:24 UTC+2:

Pretty cool.

Now it makes me want a multitude of emulators on a stick for various vintage system.

Understandable :-) It is pretty demanding to implement such emulations on devices like this,

no operating system and bare metal, tons of stuff one needs to understand and program directly.

We discussed using RTOS, but that would add another layer of complex problems.

[John Galt]

Just amazing what you can do today in general.

[udo....@freenet.de]

John Galt schrieb am Sonntag, 28. Juli 2024 um 05:22:40 UTC+2:

Just amazing what you can do today in general.

I can tell you :-) In 1989 I ported z80pack to a 368 System running COHERENT. That was a full sized tower box under my table, consuming several 100 Watts power. The emulated Z80 ran with ca. 2.5 MHz on the system, but that was good enough to get rid of old Z80 hardware und then run CP/M and the like just on VM's.

And now this USB stick can run a Z80 system with 8-10 MHz, consuming a few Milliwatts power for doing so.  And unlike the 386 tower I can take it with me anytime, besides that it is fun to use. If you build one don't miss to play 8080 Microchess on it with the Dazzler output, the choosen name Microchess then has a very different meaning than what originally was meant ;-)

[John Galt]

I really need my Altair-Duino to hit at least 4mhz :-(

i wish Arduino would put out a newer faster model of the DUE. overclocking was a disaster.

[Tom Wilson]

There is a faster version - the Grand Central. Unfortunately, it would require some code changes (and possibly some changes to the pinout) to work. 

Tom Wilson
wils...@gmail.com
+1(619)940-6311 

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[John Galt]

OOO, Hey Chris how about that Grand central coming with the new metal case!!

[Richard Deane]

tried building the software with

cd RP2040-GEEK-80
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles"
make

but bombs out at:

[ 66%] Building C object CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/picosim.c.obj
/home/rwdeane/RP2040-GEEK-80/picosim.c:25:10: fatal error: tusb.h: No such file or directory
   25 | #include <tusb.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/build.make:76: CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/picosim.c.obj] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:1605: CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:91: all] Error 2

I guess I have some dependency missing -any suggestions?

Cheers

Richard

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 at 11:57, udo....@freenet.de <udo....@freenet.de> wrote:

https://youtu.be/CTYXMwlE8pY

Not really an Altair, but also can run the standalone MITS Altair BASIC, might be interesting for some.

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[Belknap K]

Richard - I built this software just now - nothing different from another pico-sdk based program.  Same ideas.

I would start with Raspberry Pi pico-sdk on github and build an example (pico-examples is a separate repository).

  $ git submodule update --init

That's done in the pico-sdk base directory.  If TinyUSB isn't all the way populated, that used to bring it in (did not check for this build what it does; only that it is either harmless to do it, or required).

I always use 'develop' branch of pico-sdk not 'master'.

 $ ls

pico-sdk  RP2040-GEEK-80  z80pack

This (just above) is the containing directory listing for all three directories (two git repos from udo munk; one from raspberrypi).

 $ export PICO_SDK_PATH=../../pico-sdk

This is the ammended $PATH to the pico-sdk, when in the build directory (created by you as instructed in udo monk README.md file).

All above is Linux-centric.  Windows people do their own thing (I know nothing about that ;)

It builds clean - the messages are mostly in a green color.  Looks bog standard and produces the usual .UF2 file.

73, BK

On Monday, July 29, 2024 at 9:13:54 AM UTC Richard wrote:

tried building the software with

cd RP2040-GEEK-80 mkdir build cd build cmake .. -G "Unix Makefiles" make

but bombs out at:

[ 66%] Building C object CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/picosim.c.obj
/home/rwdeane/RP2040-GEEK-80/picosim.c:25:10: fatal error: tusb.h: No such file or directory
   25 | #include <tusb.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/build.make:76: CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/picosim.c.obj] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:1605: CMakeFiles/picosim.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:91: all] Error 2

I guess I have some dependency missing -any suggestions?

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 at 11:57, <udo> wrote:

Not really an Altair, but also can run the standalone MITS Altair BASIC, might be interesting for some.

--

truncated below tear line BK

[Richard Deane]

Thank you, I built successfully after removing my simple clone of pico-sdk and then doing a full install of pico-sdk on my rpi 5, using the documented install with the sh file. Cleaned out the build directory of udo's software before cmake. 

My geek dongle should arrive today.

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[udo....@freenet.de]

Richard Deane schrieb am Dienstag, 30. Juli 2024 um 08:30:55 UTC+2:

My geek dongle should arrive today.

Cool let me know how you like it, some feedback is always welcome. 

[Richard Deane]

I am now a certified CP/M geek  with Z80pack on RP2040

Relatively painless exercise apart from the cat on the keyboard.

Thank you, Udo, for creating a fun little gizmo.

Richard

On Sat, 27 Jul 2024 at 11:57, udo....@freenet.de <udo....@freenet.de> wrote:

https://youtu.be/CTYXMwlE8pY

Not really an Altair, but also can run the standalone MITS Altair BASIC, might be interesting for some.

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[udo....@freenet.de]

Richard Deane schrieb am Dienstag, 30. Juli 2024 um 19:57:33 UTC+2:

I am now a certified CP/M geek  with Z80pack on RP2040

 

Congratulations :-)

 

Relatively painless exercise apart from the cat on the keyboard.

Thank you, Udo, for creating a fun little gizmo.

You are welcome. Great fun this gizmo and Waveshare created a good name for it,

this really is some GEEK device I guess.

 

[Richard Deane]

Is it impossible for you to enhance it with 8mbyte disk devices. 256k is so small 😞?

I'm so used to retro with a hard disk. And too deaf to hear floppy sounds on those emulators with it.

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[udo....@freenet.de]

Richard Deane schrieb am Dienstag, 30. Juli 2024 um 22:25:43 UTC+2:

Is it impossible for you to enhance it with 8mbyte disk devices. 256k is so small 😞?

No that is not impossible, but the 3740 format disks was what we had for our machines,

and you got 4 of them already, while I had 1 in the beginning.

Also large disks consume space in the BIOS and the TPA needs to be reduced, and then

some programs will not run anymore.

I'm so used to retro with a hard disk. And too deaf to hear floppy sounds on those emulators with it.

I'm so deaf that I can't hear you ;-) 

Guess sometime I'll add larger disks...

[Richard Deane]

Oh well, I had to ask. It's still a great piece of work and performance seems faster than I expected . Actually it  will do me good to develop a floppy-based workflow.

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[udo....@freenet.de]

Richard Deane schrieb am Mittwoch, 31. Juli 2024 um 08:28:22 UTC+2:

Oh well, I had to ask. It's still a great piece of work and performance seems faster than I expected . Actually it  will do me good to develop a floppy-based workflow.

This is because of the very smart design of the RP2040, Rapberry Pi did a great job. Because of the 2 ARM cores we can run the 8080/Z80 emulation on core 0 and the display refresh task on core 1, so that the display output won't cost much performance loss on the CPU and I/O emulation side. Then this clever PIO's with the state engines, that can run small assembler programs independent from the ARM cores. These do all the low level work for the communication protocols with the MicroSD and the LCD and the UART.

To bad they didn't spend the GEEK a little LED, on another Waveshare board which has a RGB LED I use that to make disk accesses visible, read access green and write access red. Even more visible feedback about what the gizmo actually is doing, besides that it looks interesting.

  

[udo....@freenet.de]

Richard Deane schrieb am Mittwoch, 31. Juli 2024 um 08:28:22 UTC+2:

Oh well, I had to ask. It's still a great piece of work and performance seems faster than I expected . 

The other day I got a few of the new RP2350 Pico 2 boards, just got z80pack working on it. Z80 CPU runs with 12.5 MHz,

faster than I expected. 

[udo....@freenet.de]

And the 8080 goes up to 20 MHz, nice.