2011-07-15

Serial and IDE Cards

Currently i'm working on the microcode again. I reworked the existing c-code to match the new compiler and started work on device drivers and file system. Some peculiarities were introduced due to the pure 16 bit design of the CPU.
Also, i started the design of a half-sized serial card for the K1 bus and a half sized IDE card. When these are built i can restart working with the real CPU. But i'll probably test them in the emulator first. For the IDE card i have the choice to use a 96MB 40-pin IDE flash rom module or a compact flash adapter. Combining them may be a little bit tricky because IDE uses TTL levels and compact flash CMOS levels.
For the serial card i'm using an 88C192 which can also provide a regular system timer interrupt.

2011-04-15

Vicci 's got a name


The last months i was busy rewriting the compiler in C++. Meanwhile it evolved into a fully fledged compiler/linker/virtual code interpreter for i386/i386x64/ppc. Now most things work and i'm starting work on the K1-CPU [microcode] assembler backend.