Omnimaga
Calculator Community => OTcalc => Discontinued => Major Community Projects => [OTcalc] Z80-Progress => Topic started by: matthias1992 on October 10, 2010, 07:35:10 am
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Ok I just thought I made this topic to get back onto this project. We have decided the hardware components for the OTZ80 but ever since then I haven't noticed any progress...
The big question now is, where do we go from here? Of course we will need to build a hardware dummy of this but who is going to make it? When will it be done? If it all works then what is our next step? I think we are in need of some sort of overall plan...personally I think it is good to know who is gonna do what and when they'll be doing it. If I were to make a schedule from here on I'd say our next step is to make one dummy, in the process of making it much can be learned and once it is succesfully made still more improvements might be possible. Actually building something also keeps the project alive, now again I have no clue as to who is willing to do this...I am not going to be it, I'd prefer to take a siderole in the whole development and just help on any level I can...
So who is going to do it (if anybody)?
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Yeah for some reasons, right after the polls ended, everything went poof. I think alberthrocks is busy with school and having troubles with grades and Graphmastur seems busy as well, so I'm not too sure if this is on hold until next summer or not.
Also now we'll have to compete with the new Casio calc so we oughta not make the final price too high, if the OTZ80 calc got lower memory than the Casio calc.
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This is going to be based on the z80 microprocessor?
Let's hope it has more tan 24kb of user RAM ;)
I would love to help and stuff by writing an OS or something, but i'm not good with creating actual hardware. But I have a friend who might. I'll go ask him.
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I'm pretty sure it will have more than 24, but I was a bit worried it may have much less archive than the TI-Nspire and not much more RAM than the 89 Titanium. The Casio Prizm has 61 KB of RAM and 10 MB of archive, yet costs less than a TI-84 Plus, so if OTZ80 had like 128 KB of RAM but only 1.5 MB of archive, it would need to be considerably cheaper than the rest, especially if the processor is much slower than the new Casio calc.
Also yes it is gonna be based on some sort of Z80 processor.
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I'm pretty sure it will have more than 24, but I was a bit worried it may have much less archive than the TI-Nspire and not much more RAM than the 89 Titanium. The Casio Prizm has 61 KB of RAM and 10 MB of archive, yet costs less than a TI-84 Plus, so if OTZ80 had like 128 KB of RAM but only 1.5 MB of archive, it would need to be considerably cheaper than the rest, especially if the processor is much slower than the new Casio calc.
Also yes it is gonna be based on some sort of Z80 processor.
Sounds cool so far. But it might take a while for my friend to repond to my email... he checks it once every 3 or so days. ;)
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I seem to recall its 16MB user ram and 16MB flash archive. The 'sort of z80' you were mentioning DJ, is the eZ80 which is 4x as fast as the Z80 and can adress up to 24bits (A.K.A 16MB of memory).
It might also be possible there will be only one memory chip of 16MB in this calc since swapping between two memory modules can be a pain if you use different types of memory...
Ooh yea, one more thing. Memory size was decided but for the actual chip I propose micron strata flash(16MB), it's on the FPGA I own and its very durable...
The chip itself is very small too (for the hardware guys here :) )
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Hmm, I looked on the Zilog site at the ez80. looks worthwhile :D
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It is :D
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Hmm... but is it still simular to the microprocessor we all know and love?
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It has binary compatibility and similar assembly syntax :)
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well, then I want to help on this dearly. This is too cool of a project to let fade away.
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if it's 16 MB RAM/archive it will sure rule a lot.
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I know a little hardware... not enough at all to build a calculator prototype, though.
I would be willing to help in some way though. It would be good hardware practice ;). (battery light indicator or something little like that maybe?)
Oh, and as for the screen, did we decide on 192 x 128, or did we go with something else because we couldn't find screens that size?
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I know a little hardware... not enough at all to build a calculator prototype, though.
I would be willing to help in some way though. It would be good hardware practice ;). (battery light indicator or something little like that maybe?)
Oh, and as for the screen, did we decide on 192 x 128, or did we go with something else because we couldn't find screens that size?
Basically it is 192*128 but if a other, better prized, screen is find or a screen that fits our needs better in general then we'll take a vote for that one. For now thoug, assume it'll be 192*128.
What worries me is that I am getting the idea this project is dying a slow death. Let me just repeat the question: where to go from here? Maybe I'll come up with a poll or something giving some pre-fab answers but I dunno if everyone is fine with that. Anyhow, I think it is time to recollect and recapture what we have gotten so far...
graphmastur? alberthrocks?
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What I am thinking is that Alberthrocks and Graphmastur are just too busy, from what they told me on IRC. In Alberthro case it even involved low grades and in Graph's case life issues. I think this project will go dormant until next June :(
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As soon as I have exact specs on the hardware, and I mean exact, I can start on the OS. I just need to make the emulator, then I can port the KnightKernel and start working on the OTCalc-specific code.
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Doubt it. I do believe we decided that the screen would be too hard. I also need to collect and publish the otarm results.
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Yeah the screen size might be an issue, although I wonder why it would be when Casio uses a weird screen size for their new calc as well X.x
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Doubt it. I do believe we decided that the screen would be too hard. I also need to collect and publish the otarm results.
What is hard about the screen?
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Apparently a screen of that size is impossible to find.
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As soon as I have exact specs on the hardware, and I mean exact, I can start on the OS. I just need to make the emulator, then I can port the KnightKernel and start working on the OTCalc-specific code.
If I get specs on hardware as well as a programming environment to create the programming for this, I can start writing code for a OT-BASIC programming language :)
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As soon as I have exact specs on the hardware, and I mean exact, I can start on the OS. I just need to make the emulator, then I can port the KnightKernel and start working on the OTCalc-specific code.
If I get specs on hardware as well as a programming environment to create the programming for this, I can start writing code for a OT-BASIC programming language :)
If i ever get exact specs ill tell you right away. I think the project got stuck because we are doing too much at once. Mostly because we want to do two versions. Id say we stick with the ez80/propellor version. My question would be, anyone still interested? If so we need to make a plan of action, which peices do we have already, which ones to we still need to decide on, when will we have decided on them etc...
Eventually we will also need a merketeer plan. Personally I think its best if we keep this low profile for as long as possible and than at almost the exact same time release a storm of these things. Tweet about it, digg it, facebook it, i dunno, anything..
Bla....getting too far ahead here...ehr werre was I?
EDIT by DJ: Fixed your post because it was showing up inside Xeda's quote. :P
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Hey, matthias, I think you posted your post inside the quote. I could fix it, but I'm not a moderator. :P
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Done.
Also I think the project stalled because Alberthrocks, the main leader, got busy with school, then the same happened with graph. From now on OTCalc is only being worked on during Summer.
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Done.
Also I think the project stalled because Alberthrocks, the main leader, got busy with school, then the same happened with graph. From now on OTCalc is only being worked on during Summer.
I am teh graph. And I'm writing sh3 compilers atm, so yeah. I can work on it in college much easier, though, so it shouldn't be a problem.
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Ah ok, but yeah for now I think it can't really progress as fast until all project members have all the free time they need again.