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I mourn the death of my old notebook that I used to toast EPROMs and run the terminal emulation for the old Elf. The power supply probably died when I moved it over to the desk with the Zwölf. Now an old desktop PC does its job. It also had been slumbering under the desk for years and collected dust, but it at least still has a parallel port (for the EPROMs) and a serial port (for the Zwölf).
Here is a picture[^] of my development setup on the PC, running Zwölf's first real program in emulation. The emulator is still really helpful, because it can very accurately emulate the software driven serial I/O. Unfortunately both the assembler and the emulator are not going to support Zwölf's modest memory expansion.
Zwölf now has some useful I/O, at the cost of one cheap MAX232, the rest is software. The program still needs more features, but the I/O routines already work fine, on the emulator and on the real thing. Now I have a formula to calculate the timing constants for any reasonable baud rate and clock frequency. I love RISC processors. They make such things really easy.
Little Zwölf has also already been showing some muscles. It tested its 32k RAM with all 256 possible values. At 1 MHz it needed about 22 minutes to check out 32k 256 times. Good news that the RAM is ok, but 22 minutes is quite a wait. It also makes the memory expansion a little questionable. So I exchanged the 1 MHz oscillator for a 6 MHz oscillator. That's 120% of the max. clock frequency. The processor did not even get warm and also had no problems with the noisy breadboard. And then it completed the memory test in under four minutes. Yes, CMOS is slow.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Looks good.
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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I really like your little posts about 12, but if you do not write it up in an article or two, I probably will hex you!!!
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I may do that, but I have to get rid of some crutches first. For example, the memory map is not final yet. Anyone trying to follow an article where I throw in new parts at every step and then replace them by something else two steps later would be totally confusing. Once I got rid of all these stepping stones, an article would make much more sense.
For example, I now use a simple power-on reset and an EEPROM at memory address 0000 to start the Zwölf. Nice and well, that sure works. For several reasons, I want to get rid of the EEPROM, but as it is now, the Zwölf would only find empty RAM after a reset. I need a way to load a program into RAM before the processor starts running. A PIC microcontroller is going to that. It's going to control the processor's clock and operating modes, load a bootloader into the RAM via DMA. That opens up many new possibilities. The Zwölf's clock frequency becomes programmable. Even single stepping by bus cycles or instructions becomes possible. I can support the old Elf's features, which require a very precise clock frequency. The PIC could even synchronize up to 8 CPUs on the same bus, so that they share the memory and I/O devices without getting into each other's way.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Visual C++ 6.0 Developer's Reference in all of it's glory...well, most of it's glory.
Spied this at the local Half-Price Books and had to snap a pic.
Only $14.95 now, much more $$$ then.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/y829t.png[^]
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Learning Visual C++ 6.0 was akin to understanding women; the manual was long and when you got to the end and half way understood, everything changed!
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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Mike Hankey wrote: was akin to understanding women;
At 57, I have come to the conclusion that there is no understanding, just patience and tolerance. I suspect women feel the same way about men.
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At 70, I have still have no understanding of the creature known as woman, but have learned patience and tolerance, as you have. But I do understand that I am not perfect and she tolerates and encourages me to be the weird that I am so what more could I ask for?
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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Quote: I suspect women feel the same way about men I suspect women feel they need even more (and more) patience with men.
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I believe you have found the understanding.
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I'm not sure either gender understands the other.
And when you throw in the trans-gender, cross-dressers, transvestites, gays, etc., etc., it is easy to believe that nobody understands anyone else.
We all need to remember to treat whoever it is as a person entitled to respect, and acceptance for whatever they are.
"Understanding" is highly overrated.
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I'd buy it just for the sake of having it sit on a shelf.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: I'd buy it just for the sake of having it sit on a shelf.
I felt the same way, but I was too lazy to lug the 50lbs + out the door.
Also, I wanted to try reading some of it again and see if I understood it this time. First time, it was all over my head -- for the most part.
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MSDN was better, those days.
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CPallini wrote: MSDN was better, those days.
I agree.
Back then MIcrosoft knew they had to explain it or no one else would.
Now, everyone thinks, "I don't need to do no 'splainin cuz it already been done somewheres else on the Internet prolly. So no one really explains. Oh, that 2nd param no one explains what it is.
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raddevus wrote: Now, everyone thinks, "I don't need to do no 'splainin cuz it already been done somewheres else on the Internet prolly. So no one really explains. And only today we've seen how well that works[^].
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Fully half of that boat anchor is that MFC shite.
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Greg Utas wrote: is that MFC shite.
I liked MFC. OOP wrappers around API. Nice and clean.
But I was a newbie in 1995-8 and OOP was rising and I jumped on the New Thing Boat and this was my anchor.
But, alas, MFC went away for the most part...was ignored when C# came out and all that learning...down the drain. MFC was a weird sidebar but I still liked it.
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I never liked MFC, it always struck me as over complicated, especially those ridiculous macros just to generate a simple jump table. Probably because of my machine code and assembler background, I much preferred the Win32 API.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: I never liked MFC, it always struck me as over complicated, especially those ridiculous macros just to generate a simple jump table. Probably because of my machine code and assembler background, I much preferred the Win32 API
Yeah, I remember my mentor at the time felt the same way.
I think the thing I liked about it at the time was the distance I got from the Windows Message loop.
It was wrapped up nicely in MFC template project.
Of course in the original WinAPI you had to handle it all yourself.
MFC was kind of like the jump to C# way before C#. But it wasn't as nice as C#, of course.
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At the time, I liked MFC (serialization, for instance, was a kind of magic). Now I appreciate more the Winapi.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: I much preferred the Win32 API And that eminently portable help-file version of its documentation.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I was being a bit unfair. As much as anything, it was the documentation ratio (MFC : C++ = 1 : 1) that triggered my reaction.
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I liked it too and still use to. It has become obvious that MFC is on life-support now so we are moving on.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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