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A project log for Trinity Core and Net

A 32 Bit Variable Length Instruction Set Core and Transputer Like Comms Network

andre-powellAndre Powell 10/12/2018 at 14:280 Comments

It's been a while but I thought I would add a log.

I decided to write a generic routine to allow text to be sent to the LCD screen on the dev board I have. I wrote a specific one a long time ago that sent 'Hello World' out to the display.

Now with the Dual and Single complexs I thought lets start to put bits of code together so that they can be used.

Using the techniques used in getting unformatted text out on the 'console' in the simulator time to use that and add in the LCD option.

Extracted the specific routine and then started to write the more generic routine.

Ran it up and hit a problems. This can be quite disheartening in a project that has been running this long. When you you hit problems you start to think

'Is it all worth while ?'

An interregnum ensues where Phased Array audio is investigated and using HP Calculators.

But laptop is with me on holiday and I start to skin the onion, all bugs have layers and each layer brings tears to the eye.
Crack the first RTL bug, sometime skip the stack pointer update ! Move onto the Assembler, fix a bug there, hit a new RTL bug (where have the instructions gone ?), fix that. Finally fix a typo in the Assembler (this was part of the old code but not up to date with present instruction name.

Now I have the PIO block sending out the control signalling for the LCD. Next step to get it all synthed again and to plug into the dev board.

Next thing after this will be to add in a proper comms link, still not got a RS232 block in there which hopefully should not be too hard to get in there !

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