Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!DKAFHS1.BITNET!I0908
From: I0908@DKAFHS1.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: 6301 used as co-processor
Message-ID: <8905131842.AA24159@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 13 May 89 18:42:23 GMT
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X-Unparsable-Date: Sat, 13 May 89 20:39:51 SET

Date: 13 May 1989, 20:20:53 SET
From: Cornelius Caesar          BITNET / EARN:       I0908    at DKAFHS1
To:   info-atari16 at score.stanford.edu

I just found another (german) ST magazine which I did't know before.

(If someone is interested:
   ST VISION
   Postfach 1651
   D-6070 Langen
   West Germany

full coverage of the Atari ST)

The May/June issue has a small article about using the HD 6301
keyboard processor as an (integer) co-processor for the 68000.
For this they poke a little program into the 6301's 128 byte RAM
which apparently has to interprete later to be given parameters.
A sample BASIC loader does this by resetting the 6301 and poking in
that program, which reads a command plus two arguments. The result
can then be read out from the keyboard processor.
Of course that is only a demo, but the author claims that some
programs can be made faster up to 15 % with clever programming.

Can somebody comment this?
Are there dangerous drawbacks?

Cornelius