Re: Q68 Advance Notice
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 5:49 pm
There is no issue.
I thought my queries were hurting people and in a way they could think I was underestimating the interest / quality of this new 'super QL' which is not the case at all : I admire the work provided and for sure this is a really great achievement.
In short : I want one !
Even if among the coders in my dev studio there will be some people who master 68000 programming, I have always wanted to learn properly 68000 ASM (I am an ARM ASM programmer, only), so I have a few questions.
Can you confirm the 68000 FPGA has the same timings (ie number of clock ticks) for the instructions than a real 68000 ?
I ask this because on the Archie (ARM based) I believe I have developped some very efficient routines to generate optimised ARM instructions to fast plot sprites on screen, and I'd like to adapt them to this 'Super QL' board.
The Archie uses linear screen modes, my routines work for 8 bit per pixel screen modes ; this super QL offers some linear screen modes too, 16 bits per pixel, so it is a perfect candidate to adapt the ideas used on the Archie to your 'super QL' board.
So it's why I'd like to know if, to use the best 68000 instructions (considering the number of cycles they use), I can learn 68000 and do that with any 68000 book, and the number of ticks given in any 68000 book for the instructions, matches the number of ticks your 'Super QL' takes too.
If there are other considerations to take into account, please give them to me. (For example in case the 68000 FPGA works in fact much faster (clock tick for clock tick) than a normal 68000 when accessing memory. It is of course the key point to write fast sprites plotting routines to know how many clock ticks the various instructions loading from, and storing to, memory, take).
We are ok on the fact the FPGA mimics a 68000, and not a 68008, are we ?
Thanks in advance,
Xavier.
PS : Simple proof of concept, with not even bank switching, of what I can get on an Archie at 8 Mhz, in 256 colour screen mode 320x256 is visible here :
- for fast sprites plotting :
https://youtu.be/K44V7ps_tfY
https://youtu.be/LgOEZvZK04M
-for fast horizontal segment plotting routines :
https://youtu.be/MDg2iOuTkSw
https://youtu.be/cLBSM1thRj8
https://youtu.be/Pjev7O7fKjA
I thought my queries were hurting people and in a way they could think I was underestimating the interest / quality of this new 'super QL' which is not the case at all : I admire the work provided and for sure this is a really great achievement.
In short : I want one !
Even if among the coders in my dev studio there will be some people who master 68000 programming, I have always wanted to learn properly 68000 ASM (I am an ARM ASM programmer, only), so I have a few questions.
Can you confirm the 68000 FPGA has the same timings (ie number of clock ticks) for the instructions than a real 68000 ?
I ask this because on the Archie (ARM based) I believe I have developped some very efficient routines to generate optimised ARM instructions to fast plot sprites on screen, and I'd like to adapt them to this 'Super QL' board.
The Archie uses linear screen modes, my routines work for 8 bit per pixel screen modes ; this super QL offers some linear screen modes too, 16 bits per pixel, so it is a perfect candidate to adapt the ideas used on the Archie to your 'super QL' board.
So it's why I'd like to know if, to use the best 68000 instructions (considering the number of cycles they use), I can learn 68000 and do that with any 68000 book, and the number of ticks given in any 68000 book for the instructions, matches the number of ticks your 'Super QL' takes too.
If there are other considerations to take into account, please give them to me. (For example in case the 68000 FPGA works in fact much faster (clock tick for clock tick) than a normal 68000 when accessing memory. It is of course the key point to write fast sprites plotting routines to know how many clock ticks the various instructions loading from, and storing to, memory, take).
We are ok on the fact the FPGA mimics a 68000, and not a 68008, are we ?
Thanks in advance,
Xavier.
PS : Simple proof of concept, with not even bank switching, of what I can get on an Archie at 8 Mhz, in 256 colour screen mode 320x256 is visible here :
- for fast sprites plotting :
https://youtu.be/K44V7ps_tfY
https://youtu.be/LgOEZvZK04M
-for fast horizontal segment plotting routines :
https://youtu.be/MDg2iOuTkSw
https://youtu.be/cLBSM1thRj8
https://youtu.be/Pjev7O7fKjA