At 11:54 PM 30/8/97 PDT, you wrote:
>Of course, parallax's involvement makes one immediately aware of how nice
>something like a basic-stamp 2 would be with a 50MIPs core instead of the
>current PIC...  Has there been discussion on the stamp list?

You said it :)
yes, Scenix (or AVR) + FRAM Serial memory make "dream stamps" possible.

>As processors get faster in general, applications DON'T get faster, they

YES and NO.

YES for sure if Billy is involved - see the Windows threads.
    software must get more complex to require new hardware
    to give more profit to the desktop computer industry :(

NO  in some other cases.

From what is available today on low cost processors ( <= 3USD) AT90S1200
AVR Risc is fastest - too fast as many people might think. Where could
I use 16MIPS? they do ask. And really this is something that is hard
to understand right away. But after working some time with AVR I have
found that the speed increase from PIC to AVR is just enough to make the
difference. It really makes the difference. The only AVR chip available
in production qty AT90S1200 is so tiny and has almost no spoecial I/O that
it might seem to be almost unusable. That is is not so.
with 16MIPS it possible as example to have timer ints at let say 4 microsecs,
or better at baudrate/16 making possible things like

* 19200 full-duplex software UART   http://avrbasic.com/appnotes
* 250KBAud background UART (half-duplex)

all those things run in the background and can be considered as virtual
hardware a concept we feel Parallax and Scenix are targetting too.

When already 16 MIPS made a difference then you can imagine how useable
the virtual hardware will become 50MIPS.
I guess 57.6 KBaud software UART might be duable (as background task)
and other funny things.

>just get more complex.  The number of cycles wasted doing GUI interfaces is
>simply astounding, and a 4MHz Z80 with memory mapped text display and
>WordStar is hard to match, speedwise, with a modern wysiwyg multifont
>multwindow bitmapped display...

In old days - my best DIY computer ever:
Z80 + 64dRAM + 1KB Boot ROM + 5.25 Inch Floppy + ASCII Terminal and CP/M
works like magic. Cold boot in 4 seconds maximum. Runs Turbo Pascal
and is enough for any kind of assemblers and compilers.
Havent seen a Pentium that would boot as fast.

antti






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