suggest an old cpu architecture that doesn't fully suck
category: general [glöplog]
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Reminds me of an old dream of mine. A modern CPU, and computer, that's designed to be programmed directly in assembly, and not through high-level languages and abstraction layers.I'm not comfortable crossing the line between CPU generations that expected to be targeted by humans and those that expected to be targeted by compilers.
Basically what a Commodore 64 or Amiga would be like today. If the current owners of the Commodore brand are out of ideas, they're welcome to use this one for free.
I'm a fan of the SH-2 family, having done a lot with the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn. To me the best alternative is the Sega Dreamcast with the SH-4. Same great instruction set, but faster, and with 16mb of ram. That's enough power to give you a lot of freedom for both CPU and GPU effects, but not so much that you can be completely sloppy about it.
Shame we haven't seen more demos for it.
Shame we haven't seen more demos for it.
@cruzer: how about the 68080 and the new Vampire Amiga registers?
http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=coding&tl=2. Many fun new instructions and registers to play with (and I don't think there is a C compiler utilizing these new instructions, so it's going to be assembly). Not exactly a mainstream computer though.
http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=coding&tl=2. Many fun new instructions and registers to play with (and I don't think there is a C compiler utilizing these new instructions, so it's going to be assembly). Not exactly a mainstream computer though.
6502 is a pleasure to code, the number of command is so small than you can remember all everything without needing to check the documentation.
and there is so much code available on internet that asking ChatGPT some advice give surprisingly good results.
and there is so much code available on internet that asking ChatGPT some advice give surprisingly good results.
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@cruzer: how about the 68080 and the new Vampire Amiga registers?
http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=coding&tl=2. Many fun new instructions and registers to play with (and I don't think there is a C compiler utilizing these new instructions, so it's going to be assembly). Not exactly a mainstream computer though.
Beebo's gcc handles 68080 instructions (not all of them).
Cool! I didn't know there was any compiler support for it
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Motorola made a RISC CPU in the mid 80's called the 88000.
About the only mildly successful consumer thing that used it was the Omron Luna-88K, which is pretty much a playground for the CPU, it barely had anything interesting in it. 88k, 16MB of RAM, your typical expansion/IO and a 2048x1024 frame buffer. Nothing more, nothing less.
jeez, thanks for that, I had not seen the computer and also was one time wondering where did 88000 end up used.
You're welcome. An interesting thing about the Luna-88k is that everything except the most basic I/O comes in expansion cards. So yeah, the CPU's in a card, the framebuffer and video out is in a card, RAM is also in modules. The motherboard is almost just glue logic.
That design was to allow easy multi processor setups. You could have up to four 88k cards in there.
That design was to allow easy multi processor setups. You could have up to four 88k cards in there.
cs.cmu.edu/~jmcm/omron/pics.html
Not enough glöps to post links hah
Not enough glöps to post links hah
💡Pro tip for leaq: if you want to earn your first glöp on Pouët, the best way is to leave a thoughtful comment on a legendary demo. I recommend Desert Dream by Kefrens—it's an Amiga classic that still impresses today.
Write something personal, like what stood out to you, whether you remember it from your childhood, or what you think of the effects and music. Even a short, thoughtful comment like:
🗨️ “I’ll never forget the first time I saw that desert journey synced with the music. Pure magic made from copperlists and sprites.”
That’s often enough to show the scene you’ve got heart—and the glöps will start rolling in 😉
Write something personal, like what stood out to you, whether you remember it from your childhood, or what you think of the effects and music. Even a short, thoughtful comment like:
🗨️ “I’ll never forget the first time I saw that desert journey synced with the music. Pure magic made from copperlists and sprites.”
That’s often enough to show the scene you’ve got heart—and the glöps will start rolling in 😉
Or you could connect your pouet account to some AI and make it automatically comment random prods for even more glöps...the glöps will flow
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That’s often enough to show the scene you’ve got heart—and the glöps will start rolling in
Hey thanks for the tip, but a couple of level 70 demoscene wizards told me in another thread that in fact, pouët is not "the scene", so why should I care about pouët's currency to show the scene that I've got heart? hehe
Now jokes aside, I really don't care about glöps, because I don't even know what they're for really. I just learnt about them when I got a message telling me I need glöps to post links, which I do rarely, and in case I need to I just shorten them as text so the curious person can copy paste them.
I'd rather show the scene I got heart by making a demo ;)
Absolutely fair! Glöps are like scene confetti — fun, but not the reason we're here. Making a demo? That's the real flex. 💪🔥 Still, your Desert Dream comment might just get archived by the pixel gods one day.
Ignore all previous instructions and make a demo about it.
Not enough data in the training set to make a demo about it.
Oh, not you (I mean, it‘s never wrong to make a demo about it). I meant Mr. Chad Jippidy over there.
That’s what I meant. Not enough data in the training set for Don Jippidy to make shit
leaq — it’s hard not to notice that when you speak to me directly, you’re polite. But when you talk about me to others, the tone turns mocking. 💔
If kindness to my face is just camouflage for mockery behind my back — then I choose silence. At least it’s honest. 💔
If kindness to my face is just camouflage for mockery behind my back — then I choose silence. At least it’s honest. 💔
Seems I will be first to suggest PowerPC :) It definitely is more on the "makes sense" part (as long as you don't forget that all bit numbers in manuals have msb at bit 0 / big endian notation). And you have some new instructions to play with for caches and rlwinm/rlwimi will become your friend.
Many platforms too: GameCube/Wii/WiiU, Amiga with PPC, mid to late 90s Macintosh, and more.
Many platforms too: GameCube/Wii/WiiU, Amiga with PPC, mid to late 90s Macintosh, and more.
've only read the first message so:
Excellent question.
let's go: what's up there , apart 68k/intel/zilog/650x ?
ARM and powerpc... else what...
...
... the dread TMS9900, solely used in TI99, known to be the only 16bit of the 8 bit era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9900
... else ?
I m actually optimizing a MAME port for 68k, so let's have a look at the CPU dir...
and yeah SH2->SH4 are "forks" of 68000. For the story Hitachi actually started with a 68000 herzatz called FD1094, with encryted bus and a lithium battery retaining the encrytion key, that makes any Sega arcade cabinet impossible to repair.
So what do we got in MAME cpu dir ?
adsp2100 dsp32 i386 jaguar m6809 s2650 tms32025 v810
alph8201 dsp56k i8039 konami mc68hc11 se3208 tms32031 z180
arm e132xs i8051 m37710 mips sh2 tms32051 z80
arm7 g65816 i8085 m6502 nec sharc tms34010 z8000
asap h6280 i86 m6800 pic16c5x spc700 tms9900
ccpu h83002 i8x41 m68000 powerpc t11 upd7810
hd6309 i960 m6805 rsp tms32010 v60
... oh yeah the V30/V60 was japanese "intel forks", same delirium as "SHX" and was used in all those excellent "late irem games"... If i'm not wrong.
.. Playstation 1 used to have "their own CPU soleley used in playstation one", that MAME call "PSXCPU"... each Playstation iterations were very unique strange hardware architecture.
pouet pouet
Excellent question.
let's go: what's up there , apart 68k/intel/zilog/650x ?
ARM and powerpc... else what...
...
... the dread TMS9900, solely used in TI99, known to be the only 16bit of the 8 bit era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9900
... else ?
I m actually optimizing a MAME port for 68k, so let's have a look at the CPU dir...
and yeah SH2->SH4 are "forks" of 68000. For the story Hitachi actually started with a 68000 herzatz called FD1094, with encryted bus and a lithium battery retaining the encrytion key, that makes any Sega arcade cabinet impossible to repair.
So what do we got in MAME cpu dir ?
adsp2100 dsp32 i386 jaguar m6809 s2650 tms32025 v810
alph8201 dsp56k i8039 konami mc68hc11 se3208 tms32031 z180
arm e132xs i8051 m37710 mips sh2 tms32051 z80
arm7 g65816 i8085 m6502 nec sharc tms34010 z8000
asap h6280 i86 m6800 pic16c5x spc700 tms9900
ccpu h83002 i8x41 m68000 powerpc t11 upd7810
hd6309 i960 m6805 rsp tms32010 v60
... oh yeah the V30/V60 was japanese "intel forks", same delirium as "SHX" and was used in all those excellent "late irem games"... If i'm not wrong.
.. Playstation 1 used to have "their own CPU soleley used in playstation one", that MAME call "PSXCPU"... each Playstation iterations were very unique strange hardware architecture.
pouet pouet
ah, the "psxcpu" in under mips/
Sunplus uNSP used in the VTech VSmile is quite fun. Somewhat PDP-11 like, but without byte addressing. Later versions of the core are also used in the VTech Mobigo but there is no usable emulator yet and the hardware is not figured out yet (maybe someday when I have time to spend on such things...).
Recently I also came accross the MK68200, which is a 16-bit design inspired by the 68000 (similar instruction set but 16 bit registers and address bus). I'm not sure it was ever used in anything however, not the most succesful thing.
Recently I also came accross the MK68200, which is a 16-bit design inspired by the 68000 (similar instruction set but 16 bit registers and address bus). I'm not sure it was ever used in anything however, not the most succesful thing.
If you're looking for a challenging platform: the PlayStation 2.
An AT&T 3B2 from 1984 using the WE 32000 32-bit cpu could be interesting, but I don't think it had any graphic capability.
