RE:Toas

[Wayne Morellini <ba278@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Misc

I am very busy, so have not been keeping up with reading the posts to Misc. 
Which is good because I should be spend it designing software for the mup/F21
instead.

But yes this Toas idea is a good idea, it apparently has been adopted by a
number of developers around the world (according to the mail out).  It is
primarily written to run games (which generally require speed).  As you
probably have read it does this by translating Toas binaries to native
Binaries, as they are loaded in, so the same binary works with all machines
(as the native kernals & translator, come with all programs, I think).

Which ever was the case, I was looking into porting Toas to the Mup21, to
make a slow Toas compatable game machine.  I thought this as the mup21
seemed to have problems performing (with multi-tasking etc) full forth code
at native speeds, but the timing seemed to suggest that it sure could
be made to interpret fast.  So even a interpreted version of the register
based Taos did not seem out of the question, as it hopefully wouldn't be to
much slower than the translated Toas code on the Mup.  But reality caught up
and with the Sega, Nintendo etc 16-bit market falling out of the sky, with
Sony, Sega etc realeasing mega machines (32Bit/64Bit), people wouldn't be to
interested in something that ran Toas as fast as a 386.  I have since turned
my attention to another system that was thought up around the same time as
Toas, but has not been finished.

I have written to Chuck etc in the past, mentioning Taos and the
possibility of running it on something beefier (like the shboom, that I read
Chuck had got working), but received no reply.  Even though I am
working on other things, I have been interested (though with no finacial
backing, hardware experience) in the possibility of a multiple processor
(10+ * P32) based board/game system using 15 ns  MBDRAM (random acess) and
fast SRAM, that has very advanced consumer video audio processors, and would
be compatable with an OS like Toas.  If it could top the performance of the
"Pixel Planes" rendering machine (which I have heard mentioned, but not seen),
then we would have a board that could be sold as a high end machine, Arcade
Board, plug in card for PC's.  If reduced down to less modules, a home arcade
machine.  As software, apart from brand loyality, is a major selling point
with games machine, an expected market of Toas software would make life
easier, having a software base allready made for bigger budget machines.

If this sounds like nonsence to some of you, O.K., it will be a nonsence
unless it is implemented as a reality.  Just a thought for the more able of
us.


Any way as architechers like MBDRAM should allow near full random access
speeds on the P32, I vote that we should have at least a long call
instruction.


Apologies if this is out of sinc with the discussion, as I only get digested
lists.


Wayne Morellini
ba278@cq-pan.cqu.edu.au

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