The Sinclair QL Forum

There's no need for masking, shifting and other bit-fumbling in the linear hi-color modes of the Q68 - A pixel is either a byte or a short, and all of it is colour. Working with sprites is just moving memory around, as fast as possible. (Still nice to have fast multiplication, though) Tobias Isn't ...

It has socalled "sysDSP" blocks for high performance multiply and accumulate. Which by the way are far from being used to full potential at 40 MHz and only 16 bit. Wow ! Btw this multiply in 1 cycle is great for a fast algo to plot sprites on a background : for the edges of a sprite, wher...

Do you know what the FPGA uses to be able to have multiplcation completed in 1 cycle ?
I am intrigued, really.

Except to shift 1 position only but ok it doesn't optimise anything, except it'll make the source easier to reuse on another 680x0 system

Dave, by the way, it is likely that just adding cache to the Q68 would result in higher average performance than even a good 68030 system. This is because the 68030 needs minimum 2 cycles for a primitive instruction, while the Q68 needs only one (if run from cache or fast RAM). Also, for example, t...

OK thanks.
Slightly but surely I understand more about the complexity of accelerator boards as far as the QL is concerned.

There is a VHDL wizzard, Stephen Leary, aka TerribleFire, who has been working on FPGA 68000 core accelerator boards for the Amiga and the ST. I believe his boards could work with the 68000 based accelerator boards available for the QL. I don't have the time for a detailed look, but those seem just...

I believe Stephen is quite an helpful guy, and he would be happy to answer your questions.
If sbdy has an EAB account, you can easily reach him from this web site.

Hi all. I haven't seen it on this board, so I start this thread. There is a VHDL wizzard, Stephen Leary, aka TerribleFire, who has been working on FPGA 68000 core accelerator boards for the Amiga and the ST. I believe his boards could work with the 68000 based accelerator boards available for the QL...

I am sorry but, to me, a standard QL won't have games like what can be found on the ST / Amiga. I do not know what can be achieved will the accelerator cards (I own a few, but never coded to check speed), or the QL clones, but porting from the Q68 source could be worth the effort. We will see. That ...