SMS2 and STELLA

[Tinyfpga]

I am not sure what I am looking at (FPGAs that is). But here goes anyway:-

The SMS2 PEROM has a capacity of 128Kbytes. This is large enough to contain the
OS and its drivers, the Thing system, user interface, QPAC2, SBASIC, an editor, CLI etc. etc.
The Stella kernel is more powerful than SMS2 and smaller at 7Kbytes.

Some of the Lattice FPGAs have LRAM (which is probably not SRAM) exceeding the capacity of the "instant-on" PEROM.

The Lattice LFE5U-45 (17$) and the Certus LFD2NX-40 ($44 with 320k bytes of LRAM) are available
now, but as Dave and mk suggest, designing circuitry during a severe chip shortage is difficult.

[Derek_Stewart]

I am not sure what I am looking at (FPGAs that is). But here goes anyway:-

The SMS2 PEROM has a capacity of 128Kbytes. This is large enough to contain the
OS and its drivers, the Thing system, user interface, QPAC2, SBASIC, an editor, CLI etc. etc.
The Stella kernel is more powerful than SMS2 and smaller at 7Kbytes.

Can you prove Stella actually exists?

I doubt it is any better than SMSQ/E v3.38

I have an Atari STFM 4Mb with Extended 4 emulator board and some Atari eprom modules that can load the SMSQ/E Level E from Rom drive, just need to update the eprom for SMSQ/E v3.38.

Only 4 colours in 512x280, not in the same league as the Q68 in 512x384 mode 33 many more colours and much faster.

[ones' complement]

The Stella kernel is more powerful than SMS2 and smaller at 7Kbytes.

Does the checksum equal 42 ?

[ones' complement]

...designing circuitry during a severe chip shortage is difficult.

But I would hazard to guess not as difficult as not knowing what to implement in FPGA.

Is STELLA tied to 68K CPU architecture or can primitives of it be implemented in FPGA (like FORTH viz GA144).

Until we know then it's all purely academic...

[XorA]

Can you prove Stella actually exists?

Pretty sure by now someone is just taking the

[RalfR]

Haha, I had the same idea yesterday.

[RalfR]

I doubt it is any better than SMSQ/E v3.38

Stella just 7k in size and should be able to run TOS and QL programs? With all love, who should believe that? Stella is just a wish but not a reality. And I don't think TinyFPGA has the source code of SMS2 either. All just talk. He just have to send us a few things from that assembler listing, commented by TT and perhaps we are able to believe it.

I just watch Queen...Radio Blabla...

[Dave]

This is all getting a bit harsh.

[NormanDunbar]

Moderator hat on.

Morning gents. Please be respectful to one another. There's enough shit happening elsewhere that we don't need to add to.

Tinyfpga is running Stella, he says, that's fine. That doesn't mean he has the source or the ability to distribute it.

Be kind

Or, I will rant.

Cheers,
Norm.

[Peter]

As a matter of interest, are there any low cost FPGAs containing significant amount of SRAM?

Yes of course, it just depends on "significant for what". There are embedded applications that require the capabilities or flexibility of an FPGA, but where an internal CPU is useful. About 64 KB in a 5€ chip or 112 KB in a 7€ chip can do a lot with 68K, and I did some serious stuff with even less RAM. Not with SMSQ/E, but bare metal or with a tiny realtime/embeded OS. Lead times are through the roof at the moment, but that's the chip crisis in general.