Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-05 Thread Adrian Graham via cctalk 
On 2 June 2017 at 17:13, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk 
wrote:

> The (ridiculous) story of the Keyboard Component was legendary. The ECS
> keyboard variant can barely be considered functional even by the standards
> of the time, though I guess it at least looks decent compared to an
> Aquarius
> and the second sound chip was nice. It was designed to be cheap and get the
> FTC off Mattel's back and that's all it did.
>

I managed to get hold of an ECS in 2001-ish when there wasn't much info
around for it, hence my writeup here

http://binarydinosaurs.co.uk/museum/mattel/ecs/index.php

-- 
adrian/witchy
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection?
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread dwight via cctalk 
Such things were often done on loyalty to previous companies.

It is like the Video Brain used the F8 or that Olivetti used the Z8000 for the 
M20.

The Video Brain was because the designer had worked on the F8 at Fairchild.

The M20 was because Faggin was Italian and had connections to Olivetti.

Such things were not always done because they were better or cheaper.

Woz was rare in his way of thinking at the time. He was mostly looking for cheap

but having a rich set of addressing mode was surely a plus.

Dwight



From: cctalk <cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org> on behalf of Cameron Kaiser via 
cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, June 2, 2017 9:37:13 AM
To: ccl...@sydex.com; cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: I hadn't made the connection before

> I sold a bare CP1600 chip about a year ago to a collector.   "Odd" is an
> understatement. A 10-bit wide instruction word, with the upper 6 bits of
> the opcode unused.   Loading a 16-bit address took three words.
>
> Also, slow, very slow, with no I/O instructions.

But that was because it has memory-mapped I/O, no? On the other hand the
decles were weird and it has a lot of instructions that were removed.

Retrospectively a 6502 or a Z80 would have looked like a better choice in
this application, even considering this was supposed to be a higher-end
console.

--
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com<http://www.floodgap.com> 
* ckai...@floodgap.com
-- Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. -- 1 Corinthians 8:1 ---

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread Jim Brain via cctalk 

On 6/2/2017 11:26 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:

On 06/02/2017 07:55 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:


A very odd version of the PDP-11

I did some programming on it for GI in the late 70's using their
GIMINI development system and cross-development tools on their Sigma
9.

I sold a bare CP1600 chip about a year ago to a collector.   "Odd" is an
understatement. A 10-bit wide instruction word, with the upper 6 bits of
the opcode unused.   Loading a 16-bit address took three words.

Also, slow, very slow, with no I/O instructions.   A stripped-down
instruction set (IIRC, exclusive OR and AND Boolean ops, but no
inclusive OR).  We'd examined its possible usage, but determined that
code would run slower on it than on most contemporary 8-bit CPUs.

But, for 1975, notable because it's a 16-bit monolithic CPU among a
handful of others (Fairchild 9440, MicroNova, National PACE, TI 9900)
This begs the question of why the CP1600 was designed that way.  I fail 
to believe that GI engineers were somehow less intelligent than the rest 
of the population, so what happened?  Upper Management dictate?  
Customer demand?  It would be interesting to know.


Jim

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread Cameron Kaiser via cctalk 
> I sold a bare CP1600 chip about a year ago to a collector.   "Odd" is an
> understatement. A 10-bit wide instruction word, with the upper 6 bits of
> the opcode unused.   Loading a 16-bit address took three words.
> 
> Also, slow, very slow, with no I/O instructions. 

But that was because it has memory-mapped I/O, no? On the other hand the
decles were weird and it has a lot of instructions that were removed.

Retrospectively a 6502 or a Z80 would have looked like a better choice in
this application, even considering this was supposed to be a higher-end
console.

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. -- 1 Corinthians 8:1 ---

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread Chuck Guzis via cctalk 
On 06/02/2017 07:55 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

> 
> A very odd version of the PDP-11
> 
> I did some programming on it for GI in the late 70's using their
> GIMINI development system and cross-development tools on their Sigma
> 9.

I sold a bare CP1600 chip about a year ago to a collector.   "Odd" is an
understatement. A 10-bit wide instruction word, with the upper 6 bits of
the opcode unused.   Loading a 16-bit address took three words.

Also, slow, very slow, with no I/O instructions.   A stripped-down
instruction set (IIRC, exclusive OR and AND Boolean ops, but no
inclusive OR).  We'd examined its possible usage, but determined that
code would run slower on it than on most contemporary 8-bit CPUs.

But, for 1975, notable because it's a 16-bit monolithic CPU among a
handful of others (Fairchild 9440, MicroNova, National PACE, TI 9900)

--Chuck

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread Cameron Kaiser via cctalk 
> I was looking at an old GI catalog and casually noting the CP1610 that was
> most of a PDP11 processor. I did some more web surfing and noticed that the
> Intellivision game machine used this chip. It just never dawned on me that
> they used this processor.
> 
> I see that one could even get a keyboard for these.

The (ridiculous) story of the Keyboard Component was legendary. The ECS
keyboard variant can barely be considered functional even by the standards
of the time, though I guess it at least looks decent compared to an Aquarius
and the second sound chip was nice. It was designed to be cheap and get the
FTC off Mattel's back and that's all it did.

I say this as a kid whose first video game system was, in fact, an Inty.

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. -- William Blake --

Re: I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread Al Kossow via cctalk 


On 6/2/17 7:20 AM, dwight via cctalk wrote:
> the CP1610 that was most of a PDP11 processor.


A very odd version of the PDP-11

I did some programming on it for GI in the late 70's
using their GIMINI development system and cross-development
tools on their Sigma 9.

I hadn't made the connection before

2017-06-02 Thread dwight via cctalk 
I was looking at an old GI catalog and casually noting the CP1610 that was most 
of a PDP11 processor. I did some more web surfing and noticed that the 
Intellivision game machine used this chip. It just never dawned on me that they 
used this processor.

I see that one could even get a keyboard for these.

Dwight