MISC FIRE

[Rick Hohensee <rickh@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

( to be xposted to MISC@, fire-l and a guy at Motorola ) 

Congratulations, MISCers, on a nice list for a meta-nice meta-device.
In true Forth tradition, the MISC name is succint. The phrase 
CISC RISC MISC has such a lovely ring to it that it may penetrate
'management types'.
CISC, RISC, MISC... FIRE!
I've recommended the Motorola mc68360 as the core device of the 
FIRE design. It's _basically_ a 68020 with glorious I.O. capability.
'Lots of I.O.' might be a good quick definition of a general purpose
computer platform. The '360 is obviously a very general device. No 
audio or video though. 
So why am I posting to MISC?
The '020ish portion of the 68360 goes away. In particular, the '360 can be 
gluelessly slaved to a 68040. The '040 bus pinout, it seems, is a superset
of what is absolutely essential to slave the '360 to the arbitrary 32 
bit CPU. The I.O. ports on the '360 talk to a dedicated on chip RISC which
talks to the external CPU via a transparently arbitrated dual port ram area
( the ext. CPU always wins a conflict). 
The ARM7500 ( as in the Newton) could be viewed as analagous to the I.O. 
module on the '360, 
except it lacks the dual-port RAM interface and it has all the stuff for 
a really fun box that the '360 lacks, video, audio, analog in....
In other words, it complements the '360 well as far as the features it 
implements, but they're not connected quite right for FIRE.
Motorola, it seems, knows comms. However, it also seems that they can't
decide these days between CISC and RISC.   
How many weeks [grin] would it take Chuck to scale the MuP21 up to 
32x32 ?  

What I'm trying to say is, there are a couple of places where FIRE wants
a MISC. As the CPU, as the video CPU, and elsewhere, but I'll wrap this up.
Using a Forth ( or OK) engine with a '360 would simplify the software of 
FIRE a lot. The required kernal wordset would be miniscule. As moderator of
fire-l@artopro.mlnet.com, I'm looking forward to news of 32 bit MISCs and 
many-color-producing MISC video controllers.

BTW, will MISCs be purveyed by the likes of JDR Microdevices? I've tried 
to inform them of a possible hobbyist interest in the 68360, which  
I haven't seen via mail-order.






Rick Hohensee rickh@cap.gwu.edu  P.O. box 11340 Wash., DC 20008
Not just Forth, necessarily, but,, beautiful.