Project "Multi-Z CPU" Multi-Processing ZX-xx Micro

[zbasicandy]

I do not know how fast a mini-RTOS running in C or ASM is compared to ZBASIC, but not having to get instructions out of EEPROM, and not having to interpret the instruction to create AVR instructions ought to confer a significant speed advantage.

If your are looking for high speed processing may I suggest you check out two Websites. WWW.rvhe.com and www.coridiumcorp.com. The first one claims over 500,000 basic instructions per second and the second one claims over 10 million lines of basic code per second! They both use an "ARM" processor. You will say "Wow" and get out your credit card to make the purchase. It is what they avoid or don't mention is that they don't have a "professional" IDE, floating point math, an incomplete basic instruction set and proper tools for debugging. Software is the key and this is where ZBasic comes in first.

[stevech]

at the risk of being banished to spend my remaining days with Hades for discussing non-ZBasic stuff here (I refer to the identity of the prior poster)

IMO the RVHE language is circa 1975. Ouch. Not going back there. Add its 8KB bank-switched code stores and you have barf-city.

The ARM Basic is far better, but has only one data type: 32 bit signed integer. No char or byte type; no FP. Well, depends on your application. The low price of the module is noteworthy in today's march of the state of the art.

Neither has a task scheduler as in ZBasic.

[spamiam]

The ARM Basic is far better, but has only one data type: 32 bit signed integer. No char or byte type; no FP. Well, depends on your application. The low price of the module is noteworthy in today's march of the state of the art.

Neither has a task scheduler as in ZBasic.

I have looked briefly at the ARM processors. They did not seem sufficiently better than AVR hardware to be worth the effort to change.

Maybe the reason that the one data type being a 32bit signed integer is that the processor is a 32 bit? Probably not. Are there NO other variable types in ARM Basic? If not, wow.

I had considered ARMs because I might eventually want MORE SPEED!!!!! (than C in an 8 bit 16Mhz (or 14.xMhz) AVR. 60Mhz sounds so good!

MU-HAHAHAHA

Right now I am perfectly happy with ZX-24's and Zbasic for the development of hardware, programming algorithms. It works just beautifully and is so easy to use on my breadboard!

-Tony

[stevech]

ZBasic - me too. I've never seen an equivalent or better platform for rapid app development on an embedded microprocessor - for most goals.

I do wish ZBasic would shed the BasicX legacy of having the library routines be I/O pin-number oriented for the module rather than oriented towards the processor's actual I/O ports. I guess that legacy is from folks who wanted that abstraction or simplification. I'm probably the exception to the rule.

[twesthoff]

You are in luck. Don fixed that long ago. Here are examples:

Public Const RD As Byte = C.1
Public Const WR As Byte = C.0
Public Const AD7 As Byte = A.7

I believe you can just use for example C.1 in your code where you would use a pin number too, but I usually don't do that.

[bozooka]

Project - "Multi-Z CPU"

Hi will the multi Z work with the new zx1280?

[dkinzer]

will the multi Z work with the new zx1280?

It appears that neither of the people that worked on this project post here any more. My guess it that the software would work or could be made to work but I haven't looked through the source code to confirm this. You'd have to design new hardware to use multiple ZX-1280 chips.