I found out that the Beaglebone microcontroller has two internal microcontrollers that can be independently programmed.

When I learned about this, I thought about the Amiga. Here is a board that can potentially multitask. here is a board that could be used to make retro hardware.

@Chuckt

Its an ARM processor, of course it can multitask.
Are you confusing multitasking with ASMP?
And from the specs, I only see one cpu.

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@Chuckt

Any CPU can multitask, multi-tasking is an OS-Trait

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@Beans

Well hardware multitasking. Or hardware multithreading perhaps. Which a multicore CPU can also do.

@Hypex

Time sliced multitasking provides the same thing, and its still the basis for multi-core SMP.

And I wouldn't try to force most early 8 bit cpus into a multitasking environment, they don't do it that well.
The 6809 and 6309 manage reasonably well, and you can get a Z80 to do it, as for other 8 bit cpus...not so good.

Last edited by Beans on 24-Sep-2016 at 02:54 AM.
Last edited by Beans on 23-Sep-2016 at 06:41 PM.

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@Beans

I don't recall how but one time when I got an Amiga A500 repaired and it was brought back to the house personally I got into a discussion on mulitasking and knowing how the Amiga did it explained how I once wanted to do the same thing on an 8-bit Commodore.

He was quite interested and asked me if I could do it on the C64 for the 6510. At the the time I said no. The closest I come to 6510 programming was my now dead C16. And my A500 would now work again.

Nice idea but early 90's was bit too late for a multitasking OS on a Commodore 64. Plus to be useful it would need a GUI. And I would have preferred doing it on a Plus/4 if ever I saw one then.

In theory a 6510 could multitask. But you have little stack and registers. The limitations could outweigh any advantages.

@Hypex

Quote:

Plus to be useful it would need a GUI

Not necessarily, but a windowing system would be nice.
It could be all text.

And multitasking allows concurrent operation of peripheral devices (if they don't tie up 100% of the cpu).

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@Chuckt

Quote:

Chuckt wrote: I found out that the Beaglebone microcontroller has two internal microcontrollers that can be independently programmed. When I learned about this, I thought about the Amiga. Here is a board that can potentially multitask. here is a board that could be used to make retro hardware.

That is true and I looked at setting up a xorro slot card using a beaglebone but there are no suitable prototyping cards available for such a project. The situation does not look any better for the new mother boards. Sad, I can find PCI boards for around 15-20 USD, but no PCIe boards more than x1. I guess it will remain a dead slot.

The new beagleboard X-15 is now in production and should be on the street soon. I will be ordering ASAP.

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@Signal

How would you propose to connect it?

The XMOS based Xorro slot doesn't have that much bandwidth.

The Beaglebone X15 does have two PCIe channels available on its expansion connectors, but finding somebody competent enough to figure out that interface and write drivers for it...

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@Beans

Communication with the motherboard would have gone mostly thru the x1 portion of the slot with xena being used mostly for signaled interrupts or control signals to the board on the card.

The X15 is new. Give it some field time. I don't think Texas Inst. would produce a product that only half works. Anyway it looks like it can be useful and fun.

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@Signal

I didn't say it wasn't interesting.
An ARM board with available PCIe connections?
Sounds cool.

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@Beans

Quote:

Not necessarily, but a windowing system would be nice. It could be all text.

It's funny that although you interface with a Commodore through a type of console I didn't imagine it being that way. I wasn't aware of Unix at the time. So perhaps thought multitasking in windows would be the way.

Also my C16 had basic windowing features which isolated the text to a box on screen. No pointer. IIRC I typed in some SIMPLE program once that did a GUI of sorts. But can't find any info on web and my tape loader didn't work when I tried it last.

Quote:

And multitasking allows concurrent operation of peripheral devices (if they don't tie up 100% of the cpu).

Yes that would be the hard part. Since most of that was done through the kernel calls. Which would be best to take over but lack of ram makes it tight being the new OS and apps are sharing the same space.

@Hypex

Quote:

Yes that would be the hard part. Since most of that was done through the kernel calls

Well, you would use a kernel designed specifically for multitasking.

But the peripheral hardware on 8 bit systems can do some weird things, like throwing out non-maskable interrupts and requesting halts states.
That was where we ran into problems trying to use Microware's OS-9 operating system on Tandy Color Computers with a stock Tandy floppy controller.
The stock controller used the halt pin of the peripheral expansion slot so disk operations caused to whole system to stutter.

The only solution we ever found was the use of third party controllers that had buffers to eliminate the need to use the halt pin (or using alternative storage).

BUT, again, multitasking CAN be done on 8 bit hardware.

Last edited by Beans on 25-Sep-2016 at 12:58 PM.

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@Beans

Sounds like OS9 nuked the system through the floppy hardware.

@Hypex

Quote:

Sounds like OS9 nuked the system through the floppy hardware.

The floppy controller was designed with only Microsoft Basic in mind.
AND, it had no buffers.

Most apps load from it, then except for using tokens via machine language, very little of the onboard rom was used.
OS9 used nothing from the rom (in fact the rom had to be modified to include a DOS command to boot the floppies for that).

I guess that part of the problem was adapting an OS intended for pretty heavy applications to a home computer.
I know the OS baffled most users.

At the same time, we (the company I worked for) had two, four, and five user systems set up with it and even ran a multi-terminal POS system with it.

Using hard drives eliminated the floppy/halt problems.

Last edited by Beans on 26-Sep-2016 at 06:27 PM.
Last edited by Beans on 26-Sep-2016 at 06:23 PM.

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