Gameduino could make a good GPU / coprocessor for 6502

[ChuckT]

Nightmaretony wrote:

And you will always find Moore's Law coming into play for increasing computer power at cost.

You can also look into the Propeller for serious multitasking fun.

I have both "What is a Microcontroller?" and the "Propeller Starter Kit".

I decided to go elsewhere for several reasons and some of them are design philosophy and perceived conflicts of interests. No one works for free but I felt that components were sold cheaper on Arduino websites even though I don't intend to entirely stick with Arduino but the concept of stacking shields is something that I can work with whereas the Propeller has 40 different board designs for everything.

The advantages of Arduino is that C is a language that the rest of the world knows and if you go to the Propeller you have to learn Spin which isn't used anywhere.

Can you show me documentation or tutorials for a beginner? The perceived conflict of interests is that you have to read a 30 page manual on how to operate the editor because they are making the Propeller (Board of Education) into a class and you can't make money if you give people short tutorials like what the Arduino has because then no one would need the class because everyone could do it. Look at the prices of the Xbee starter kit. It is 179.99 and I can get that part for probably $20 on an Arduino site with a free tutorial.

I bought the Propeller Starter Kit which has a large manual that doesn't tell you how to get started and I was told that even though it is named "starter kit", you have to learn "What is a Microcontroller?" first. I bought "What is a Microcontroller?" and there are some jumps that you have to make between Pbasic and Spin which not everyone can make. Gadget Gangster has a $3.00 tutorial book that you can download from their site temporarily for free for the Kindle but I would need to buy their $50 board to have ease of compatibility with their pin configuration so that everything looks okay with the instructions.

As far as design philosophy, the Arduino and Maple Leaf have more ram. The Gameduino has better video and more colors available. The Arduino websites have more getting started tutorials that are one or two pages to help beginners.

I have two Microchip Pics and a Pikit2 because I found good tutorials over at Bradsprojects.com/forum and they are a smaller forum with help.

If people want to get started then they should go with the Arduino crowd because the two page tutorials are enough to get people up and running instead of turning learning into a course where we take sequential instructions and list them alphabetically which is out of order and let the user guess which order to put them in. It is called giving the highly paid engineers a job so that they will be important while fewer people learn the material which means fewer sales.

I haven't been as verbose about my problems with the propeller but I'm already being shunned because they're all friends that go to Upenn and I said something.

[Tor]

I'm not an experienced Propeller user at all, but I got their $20 QuickStart kit (+ shipping, just $2.09 IIRC to Norway!) and followed the simple instructions at their web site and had Spin code that worked (flashing leds and whatnot) with my own variants running in no time. It's easy to fiddle with - the QuickStart board and a stub USB cable is in my pocket, and I can connect to a laptop or something anywhere and test things.

Spin is another language, but on the other hand it's just a language - easy to leaarn. Obviously I will also learn the assembly language, and there's at least one C compiler available (with Propeller II there will be GCC). And Forth. For serious work with C I would need another board with RAM though. But it's best to keep in mind that the Propeller isn't a microcontroller like the rest - it's really just an ultraprogrammable set of I/O pins. A different tool. My point though is just that it's _not_ difficult to get started. And not expensive either.

-Tor

[ChuckT]

Tor wrote:

My point though is just that it's _not_ difficult to get started. And not expensive either.

-Tor

That is good for you. I got both kits on sale ("What is a Microcontroller?" and "Propeller Starter Kit") so I spent $180 or more and the Quckstart didn't exist then. The quckstart tutorials didn't exist for them back then.

I don't give credit to whom credit is due from. I spent close to $200 and didn't get started with them so there is no reason for me to extend credit to them.

[Nightmaretony]

The Arduino I am staying away from since I have so many projects going that my time is beyond insanely llimited. I love the Gameduino concept but was offput by the licensing which we discussed earlier.

I am off Parallax and the Propellor for another reason entirely, their main dude JW needs a serious anger management course. (it stemmed from me contacting them asking permission to design my own board to interface to their system and when I mentioned a customer of theirs that is a mutual friend, JW then thought COMPETITOR! immediately and proceeded to throw a 20 minute yellathon in my ears. So now I avoid any form of product to do with him or his company.

for tiny projects, I dig the AVR Tiny 26, using it for a vampire show. Was always wishing there was a 565C02 compatible core that was ISP programmable and similar in scope. I am only using GCC on it. The AVR is also much cheaper to get into than a Parallax system as the big P doesn't appear to sell their chips only while AVRs go for a nice small amount.

My primary projects I stick with the 65C02, the pinball machine (yes, it is still going strong, and a HUGE thanks to BDD for helping me master the tricks of librarying my code!) and a brand new project which will use the same board, an airplane light controller. The resultant is a nice little master board which I do plan public release of.

[Tor]

If by 'big P' you mean Parallax - of course they seill their chips. You can buy them one by one if you want. How do you think all those hobby-produced boards out there could be designed and built without being able to purchase only the chips?

-Tor

[ChuckT]

Tor wrote:

I'm not an experienced Propeller user at all, but I got their $20 QuickStart kit (+ shipping, just $2.09 IIRC to Norway!)

They sold out and raised the price to $25.00. You would have to google it and get it at that price from one of their distributors if you want anymore (at that price).

[Tor]

Yep, just heard about the price raise half a day ago. It's still a good price though, particularly with the type of international shipping option they provide. I wish other companies would do that too, thinking about when I needed a connector which I couldn't get anywhere except from a company in the US. Paid some $35 in shipping.. but I needed the connector.

-Tor

[digidice]

I got a Gameduino board a few weeks ago and its pretty impressive so far. the arduino library for it is GPL. Since you might use this with a 6502 processor would not use the arduino library.

Since its a BSD license you can sell your derivative work IE hardware without any issues. other than a footnote of the original copyright holder.

I dont see why the FPGA cannot be used in a commercial application

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licens ... ense.22.29

[Nightmaretony]

I can go for a commercial derivative with attribution, as it is called. Thanks!

[ChuckT]

Someone made a Gameduino emulator for the PC. You don't have to spend $53 dollars to try it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjYeSoeM ... r_embedded

Get the source at http://code.google.com/p/gdemu/

[ChuckT]

Tor wrote:

I'm not an experienced Propeller user at all, but I got their $20 QuickStart kit (+ shipping, just $2.09 IIRC to Norway!) and followed the simple instructions at their web site and had Spin code that worked (flashing leds and whatnot) with my own variants running in no time. It's easy to fiddle with - the QuickStart board and a stub USB cable is in my pocket, and I can connect to a laptop or something anywhere and test things.

Spin is another language, but on the other hand it's just a language - easy to leaarn. Obviously I will also learn the assembly language, and there's at least one C compiler available (with Propeller II there will be GCC). And Forth. For serious work with C I would need another board with RAM though. But it's best to keep in mind that the Propeller isn't a microcontroller like the rest - it's really just an ultraprogrammable set of I/O pins. A different tool. My point though is just that it's _not_ difficult to get started. And not expensive either.

-Tor

I've been interested in Parallax but several newsworthy things have been happening with the company. They produced a Quickstart board to make it easier to program but now their book on programming the Propeller is no longer available:

Microcontroller KickStarts Book - No Longer Available

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Books/BAS ... fault.aspx

It also appears that the Prop II will not be produced because they don't have the tools to produce it:

Is the P8X64A dead ? / PropBasic IDE

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.p ... pBasic-IDE

When you have a kickstart book on programming the Quickstart board discontinued, you have to wonder what Parallax is doing. Now that the Prop II isn't a possibility, they have to go back to making more money. The Quickstart board was to get people interested in the propeller by teaching them how to use it and now they take the book away since the Prop II chip isn't a possibility because the focus is on their more expensive classroom material that they want you to buy. I get it and it wasn't meant to be for me because instead of there being an $9.99 book available, they have an $180 course available:

http://www.parallax.com/StoreSearchResu ... fault.aspx

[Tor]

- The Prop II and the P8X64A are not the same thing at all. The Prop II is on schedule and in its final synthesis, there'll be samples soon. And it will be fantastic. There are some great features there. The P8X64A is something entirely different, it was a proposed 64-I/O pin version of the 32-pin P8X32A (aka Prop I). The process used for the Prop I could not produce the P8X64A, but the process for the PII could. But now all effort is on the PII only.

- Quickstart board is not being discontinued at all, where did you see that? It's a misunderstanding anyway. For the Prop II there will be a similar board, just with some more features because they will initially create just that one board instead of a bunch of different ones as for the PI.

- The documentation is actually all there, it's just that it can be a bit hard to find sometimes.. there is a discussion going on about just that, how to make it easier to find the docs when you're a beginner. But one place that tends to get overlooked is http://www.parallaxsemiconductor.com/ where you can find application notes. The thing is that if you understand how the internals of the Prop works you can go a long way. And there's more documentation elsewhere.

In other words, no worry. There are more products, and more things happening. For hobbyists there's also the website http://propellerpowered.com with a shop of small items and kits, and a forum. Lots of retro-style projects among its members.

-Tor

[ChuckT]

Tor wrote:

- Quickstart board is not being discontinued at all, where did you see that? It's a misunderstanding anyway. For the Prop II there will be a similar board, just with some more features because they will initially create just that one board instead of a bunch of different ones as for the PI.

- The documentation is actually all there, it's just that it can be a bit hard to find sometimes..-Tor

I've seen users have to ask about many commands in the forum because they don't have documentation to use Parallax Products and I should sell my starter kits because it didn't come with instructions and I've let mine sit because I've actually called them and they just tell me to buy something else instead of help. I've told them they need to have more online tutorials to see them actually do nothing so I figure it isn't for beginners and their willingness to cancel books is further proof that it isn't for everybody.

[Tor]

ChuckT wrote:

I've seen users have to ask about many commands in the forum because they don't have documentation to use Parallax Products and I should sell my starter kits because it didn't come with instructions and I've let mine sit because I've actually called them and they just tell me to buy something else instead of help. I've told them they need to have more online tutorials to see them actually do nothing so I figure it isn't for beginners and their willingness to cancel books is further proof that it isn't for everybody.

We seem to have totally different views, maybe it can't be helped. To me, the Propeller is possibly the microcontroller with the lowest threshold for getting started that I've ever worked with - I've never been up and running so quickly before. One of the concepts that drew me to it and got me interested even before I had my first QuickStart was the Propeddle project - that a Propeller could be combined with a 6502 and basically handle all I/O and RAM without the 6502 not even knowing. Just connect the pins to just about anything, and the imagination is the only limit.

As for documentation, I don't have trouble finding anything. There are many places to start with. As the KickStart book was mentioned, why not start at this page? http://learn.parallax.com/KickStart
The forums are excellent. Of course people will ask questions there, the good thing is that there are always answers, from a group of very active and knowledgeable users. The 6502.org forum is the only other place I visit where the members have such deep knowledge about the topic.

-Tor