Posted By
GeekDot
on 2023-01-09
09:30:56
|  Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
Hey gang,
Finally my first C264 "cartridge" is done and some docs written to tell you all the details
-> https://www.geekdot.com/t2c/
You will (rightfully) ask "what the heck it that?!"...
Well, for short, it's a niche within a niche design. You can connect a Transputer to your C16/C116/plus4 (and C64/C128 as well!) and feel the mighty power of the most advanced CPU of the 80s 
It's not a plug-and-play product as there's next to none software to it. Well, besides some examples like a Mandelbrot.
That said, it's for those having seen it all, are bored by the 15th incarnation of a Raspberry-Pi 'slap-on' and like a challenge (e.g. learning "new" programming languages).
Also, at least to my knowledge, it's the first 'Flipper Card' for Commodore 8 bit machines. I.e. you can connect it to your beloved C264 system as well as a C64 or C128 which might sit on your desk/shelf, too.
Thanks again to MCes & SukkoPera helping me to figure out the specialties of the C264 expansion port! <3
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2023-01-09
10:43:44
| Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
Looks neat, even if very nice  I think the Plus/4 scene might be a bit too small to see wide support for this, but who knows.
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Posted By
GeekDot
on 2023-01-09
13:40:39
| Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
@csabo It's all about the love to share and not forgetting the beloved 264 family 
...and one day, when I got the Mandelbrot rendered in color... guess which C= system displays the most?
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Posted By
MMS
on 2023-01-09
18:20:16
 | Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
Well, this is a fantastic project!
When we tested the potential speedup of George's 3D drawing routine, the first version used 3D coordinates from Blender, and calculated the 3D lines. The speed was really limited by the slow 5 byte floating point calculation of the +4.
Compilation could be an option, but Austrospeed took too much memory, so only much simpiler objevt could be used, while Litwr's compiler was promising, but does not support any gfx command in the code.
During the looong discussions I had the idea to link a Z80 minimal config on the expansion port with the 8 or 10MHz variant, and just pass the numbers and the operand and the Z80 just plays the FPU task. We concluded it is beyond our current knowledge, and also did not fit to George's approach. Finally he found the SVG method, and drawing speded up drastically, no calculations any more.
So the answer: the T800 has an FPU and probably it is pretty fast. It could be used to eg. Speed up Elite or Driller or other 3D program. Sending the floating point numbers and the operandus and reading back the end result is probably faster than to wait our own CPU.
I. Insterested to buy one, but only next month, when I get my next salary :-)
About power: your problem is similar to the SuperCPU, it required a new stronger PSU for the C64.
CMD solved it with their RAMlink I also own: it has it' own PSU, and does not stress the PSU of the C64
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Posted By
GeekDot
on 2023-01-10
04:33:33
| Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
@MMS - Yes, that's a perfect job for a Transputer. The T800 FPU is very powerful and does 64bit IEEE 754 floating point... that said, you'd need a routine to create these on the C= side.
In my Mandelbrot demo, I cheated and predefined them in an array
static char left[] = {0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xc0}; //-2.0
static char right[] = {0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xf0,0x3f}; // 1.0
static char top[] = {0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xf2,0x3f}; // 1.125
static char bottom[] = {0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0xf2,0xbf}; //-1.125
'bout the power: I thought about an external power-plug but that resulted in a routing and jumper nightmare (to prevent feedback) so I left that out for now. Maybe in a next revision.
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Posted By
George
on 2023-01-10
14:03:49
 | Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
Hallo Axel!
Sehr interessantes projekt!
EN: Very interesting project! I admire your dedication to develop this over a timespan of 12 years!
As my good old friend MMS already wrote, i developed a humble 3d renderer in BASIC for the Plus/4, which can render big 3d models (up to 2.500 vertices). Of course its very slow, but that was not the primary goal.
I find upgrading a plus/4 with a transputer extremely fascinating! Really fascinating!
My naiv idea is to run the 3d renderer on the Transputer (after porting it to C) and let the transputer do also the graphics (eg. writing directly to screen memory). The plus/4 would only do the User-input part. Or is there a better way? Maybe simple animations in realtime are doable...
Would this be possible? Another question, is there an emulator, where i could do some experimenting before using real hardware?
Greeting George
Btw: T-800 is a really cool name..:)
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Posted By
MIK
on 2023-01-10
15:49:54
 | Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
T-800... It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!
If only all computer hardware was this reliable.
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Posted By
gerliczer
on 2023-01-10
16:10:36
| Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
If you ask me, which you certainly didn't do so I should STFU, it is exercise in futility. But I wish you merry fun for tinkering with this project.
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Posted By
George
on 2023-01-14
13:23:09
| Re: Say "Hi!" to the T2C=
@gerlicer Do you know other alternatives? Based on a Raspie maybe?
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