A solid morning's progress on #Transputer #Forth - it now displays the first part of the cold boot message 'eForth v' and then crashes before displaying the version number. More squinting at the emulator output required, but that's a task for another session.

Traced the cold startup and the inner interpreter working through the word list, but then hit a null pointer and my brain glazed over. #Transputer eForth is getting there, but it’s going to require quite a lot more coffee.

Aliasing bug fixed, now stepping through the inner interpreter.. think I've found a bug in $COLON (this is not a microbiome joke). #FORTH #Transputer

This morning I’ve been working on eForth for the #Transputer emulator, changing its example UART I/O code to use IServer protocol requests, and changing its use of macros for defining Transputer op codes with DB directives to use actual instructions that my assembler understands. There’s probably still lots to work on, but going to try a first boot later :)

This morning I’ve been writing a boot loader in #Transputer assembler, using #Helix. Going well so far - laptop fans have not kicked in once. Helix doesn’t understand MASM syntax, that’s OK. Oscillating between “Hey I remembered how to do <some vim action that’s baked into muscle memory>!” and u / :q

It’ll be a while before I’m flowing - but I feel something must change. #IntelliJ isn’t energy efficient: I can no longer put up with it taxing my laptop hard, when editing a simple asm file.

@hoernchen72 #coff ? Habe ich seit Jahrzehnten nicht mehr in freier Wildbahn gesehen. Hm, auf #Ultrix/#MIPS muss das damals gewesen sein. Auch #Parix für #Transputer hat es benutzt.

Http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/COFF

Finally, the "hello world" program, sent over a link from the IServer (a host OS interface/protocol server), to the #Transputer emulator. It boots, and sends a "put console" request back to the IServer, which displays the text. The emulator then shuts down (intentionally).
I started this project nearly 18 years ago.. it could almost buy its own pint legally now!

Yesterday I fixed a nasty bug in my #transputer assembler: the argument to a jump or call is an offset relative to the next instruction, and arguments to instructions can be built up nibble-by-nibble using pfix/nfix instructions. So depending how far away the called code is, the encoded call instruction can vary in size - which can cause the called code to move further away. Finding the right encoding is an iterative process. Which I’d got subtly wrong. Onward!

Today I have mostly been reacquainting myself with the joyous fun (ie frustration) that is writing #Transputer assembly language. There’s a bug in my assembler, or emulator.. not sure where. Need a better debugger, that’s for sure.

Eine Kombo, die ich nicht erwartet hätte. #Transputer und #DDR.

2 #Inmos #T800 Prototypen-Boards mit Chips aus aller Welt.

Sogar die berühmten 1Mbit-Ram-Chips wurden verbaut.

#WolfgangRobel #Zerobrain #Schnapspralinen

https://iv.melmac.space/wnO0r-MIdto

@M0CUV just letting you know I am very excited about your #transputer Parachute project! Are you considering rewriting it in #rust?

Just putting this out to the universe: I would love to procure an Atari ATW-800 so I can play with a real #transputer based computer! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation

#occam #csp #transputer
Title: a tutorial introduction to OCCAM programming
Author: Dick Pountain and David May

#transputer #occam #csp

New blog post on my investigation into choosing an #FPGA for Parachute (my #transputer project), study notes, and getting started with the #IceStorm / #APIO open source toolchains. So much to learn! :)

https://mattgumbley.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/first-steps-in-parachute-hardware-fpga-considerations/

Went to the tip today, part of my carful of stuff was my stack of BYTE magazines from the late 80s to its demise. Can’t help thinking there should be a new “Small Systems Journal”.. Current reading on #Transputer internals has thrown up several articles and papers that seem to have disappeared from the internet. Articles from only a few years ago, too.

Today I have mostly been reading Andrew Tanenbaum’s “Structured Computer Organisation” - a slightly more modern edition than this, from the #Transputer era (which it mentions). https://archive.org/details/structuredcomput0000tane_m8w5/page/n7/mode/1up

And I’ve ordered an IceStick, hoping to get a very cut-down Transputer-ish CPU implemented in real hardware. It probably has too few logic elements to support everything, but let’s see. I was thinking of starting with the Digilent ARTY CMOD-A7, as it’s bigger, but they’re out of stock. #FPGA #Transputer

I’m also hoping to replicate Andrew Menadue’s Picoputer work with my emulator - porting it to the #RaspberryPi Pico, with the PIO providing something similar to the #Transputer links.

Decided to dust off my #Transputer #emulator project again. It was my train-commuting project, and that stopped due to the pandemic… and I gained interest in #hamradio digital mode development so switched to that. I’m getting back into it, and hope to get it updated, with a little progress soon. Moving the build system to a better host.. I’d move to the cloud, but is there a free CI service that builds for macOS, Windows, Linux on x86-64/ARM (CentOS, Ubuntu, Raspbian)?