[Coco] The X9

[Chuck Youse]

On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 17:16 +1000, Mark McDougall wrote:
> Chuck Youse wrote:
> 
> > Boooring.
> 
> You asked for comments. I took the time to read your posts and then took the 
> time to offer some, and this is the response I get.
> 

My apologies, it WAS a bit gruff and unwarranted - at least one
mitigating factor to consider was that I was piss-drunk, not that that's
an excuse.

The SoC CoCo has been done (as you pointed out), and frankly, if we're
going to just put everything in one FPGA, why don't we just run this
stuff in emulators?  That's just not fun.  You are (I assume) an EE.
Why do _you_ think it would be fun?

> Not to mention a rather rude dismissive hand-waving concerning John's 6809 core.

It was not meant to be rude, it was simply an observation, and an
accurate one.  I'm fairly familiar with his core, and it carries the
hallmarks of someone who isn't schooled in digital design.  Does it
work?  Yes, I've used it in the past and it seems to be reasonably
accurate.  Does that mean it's good?  Not necessarily.  Excessive
resources (be it speed, memory, gate area, etc.) make up the difference
these days between people's competence (or lack thereof) and their
ability to execute.  John's core reads more like a software emulator
than a hardware representation of an 8-bit microprocessor, it slides by
because FPGAs are giant and fast.  Sorry John.

I could go off on a little tangent about modern comp sci grads or
professional "programmers" who seem unable to churn out even the
simplest of code without requiring ungodly amounts of RAM and CPUs
running in the GHz range for even modest performance.  Same principle
applies.

> I think I'll be he one yawning at your posts from now on....

Yes, don't bother, as I'll be keeping my mouth shut.  There is no market
for my 'archaic' projects anyway - I've been working on them to pass
some time and make my CoCo usable (for instance, I didn't have a floppy
controller) as an amateur radio base station; things don't really get
interesting in EE until radio, anyway..

So my designs, (schematics, PCBs, software), etc. will be available on
www.serialtechnologies.com for those who need some hardware for whatever
reason, and for the rare person who is interested I will announce new
stuff on the list.  But I will, in general, lurk rather than speak.

Happy trails,
C.