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From: bdale@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: Other hardware projects?
Message-ID: <9009061441.AA08998@hpcsbg.col.hp.com>
Date: 6 Sep 90 14:41:02 GMT
Sender: news@daver.bungi.com
Lines: 33
Approved: news@daver.bungi.com

> Back in the heady days of the first boards, many interesting ideas were
> bandied about for much needed PC532 peripherals. My two faves were the
> Moto 56000 DSP board and the i860 intelligent frame buffer. Whatever
> happened to these?

Dunno.  I've talked to Dave and George about a frame buffer based on Intel
and C&T silicon, but as much as I'd like to work on it, I really don't have
time right now... or any time soon.

> Just curious.. I'm well aware of how wide the gap between wanting to do
> something and actually having the time to do it (as is evidenced by the
> virtual standstill our BSD porting project has come to). Still, it would
> be real nice to get a frame buffer at some point.

Yes, very nice!  In the meantime, I've got several renditions of a block 
diagram for what I call the "Kitchen Sink Card" on my CAD system.  The intent
is to make a really cheap do-all card to provide a set of standard, stupid
interfaces that I need that aren't on the pc532.  Things like Centronics 
parallel printer ports, a LAN interface, a floppy interface, etc.  My favorite
scheme so far involves an NEC V50, 1Meg of DRAM, 2 byte-wide ROM sockets that
overlay the top of RAM space to provide either a bootloader or a full set of
firmware depending on the size parts you want to use and your attitude... 2
Centronics ports, thin LAN, floppy, SCSI to talk to the bus, and the serial
port on the V50 brought out for a debugger interface.  As much as I hate the
80X86 architecture, I've got the tools and loads of embedded system runtime
code lying around, and a ready source of cheap V50's.  Plus, the part has all
kinds of really neat stuff onboard.  Personally, I believe that for this kind
of interface card, the V40/V50 provide lots of bang for the buck.

Whether I'll ever find time to get beyond a block diagram is very much in 
doubt.  But, it's fun to think about...  :-)  

Bdale