PRIME TIME

[manjo]

Hello all, i'm new here so please bare with me:

I do belive HP Prime is everything we hoped for in almost every way
the only thing i think missing is the "Saturn emulator"
based on 50G compatibility although there are a couple of things which
could make it 2 steps more compatible without performance hit.

In fact i would prefer if there were 2 emulators:
1. is the emulator based on emulator found in 50G and

the other thing would be a step further: let's call it "Saturn virtual machine"
this saturn virtual machine would retain the saturn architecture
(opcodes and code efficiency beauty of original architecture)
but take advantage of new hardvare and extended very much like Saturn+
larger display, virtualy unlimited memory, sound and other hardware.

In fact... Saturn virtual machine could be established as a
multi-platform standard for math and related applications.

NASA and ISS would find use for such project
so the question, i think, is:

IS IT TIME FOR SATURN TO RETURN TO SPACE ?

all thoughts and wildest ideas very wellcome here.

Regards manjo
http://fly.srk.fer.hr/~manjo

[Simone Cerica]

Ciao manjo, it would be a dream to have 49/50 saturn emulator on the Prime!
Prime time is now.

[toml_12953]

(02-20-2016 09:26 PM)manjo Wrote:  IS IT TIME FOR SATURN TO RETURN TO SPACE ?

Regards manjo
http://fly.srk.fer.hr/~manjo

I thought Saturn was already in space. Right between Jupiter and Uranus!

Tom L

[DrD]

There was a rumor that the Prime runs rings around Saturn...

[jebem]

(03-09-2016 01:18 PM)DrD Wrote:  There was a rumor that the Prime runs rings around Saturn...

[Claudio L.]

(02-20-2016 09:26 PM)manjo Wrote:  Hello all, i'm new here so please bare with me:

New? Yeah, right... you seem the same old manjo to me... (good to see you back in the calculator world!)

(02-20-2016 09:26 PM)manjo Wrote:  I do belive HP Prime is everything we hoped for in almost every way
the only thing i think missing is the "Saturn emulator"
based on 50G compatibility although there are a couple of things which
could make it 2 steps more compatible without performance hit.

In fact i would prefer if there were 2 emulators:
1. is the emulator based on emulator found in 50G and

the other thing would be a step further: let's call it "Saturn virtual machine"
this saturn virtual machine would retain the saturn architecture
(opcodes and code efficiency beauty of original architecture)
but take advantage of new hardvare and extended very much like Saturn+
larger display, virtualy unlimited memory, sound and other hardware.

In fact... Saturn virtual machine could be established as a
multi-platform standard for math and related applications.

A couple of things to think about:
A plain 50g emulator could work, except the physical keyboard would be very different and the screen would have to be re-scaled 2x, but no big deal.
Now for the virtual machine... the Saturn architecture was "maxed out", specifically RAM addressing. You need more bits or some sort of banking (on top of the banking that's already there) to make it work. That alone would cause all kinds of incompatibilities. If TempOb is large, all object pointers will need to be more than 20 bits, which would change their prologs too, which would require a complete ROM rewrite, which would... defeat the purpose of emulation. Do you have any specific ideas on how to extend the Saturn architecture while keeping compatibility?

[Han]

(03-09-2016 03:03 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  

(02-20-2016 09:26 PM)manjo Wrote:  Hello all, i'm new here so please bare with me:

New? Yeah, right... you seem the same old manjo to me... (good to see you back in the calculator world!)

(02-20-2016 09:26 PM)manjo Wrote:  I do belive HP Prime is everything we hoped for in almost every way
the only thing i think missing is the "Saturn emulator"
based on 50G compatibility although there are a couple of things which
could make it 2 steps more compatible without performance hit.

In fact i would prefer if there were 2 emulators:
1. is the emulator based on emulator found in 50G and

the other thing would be a step further: let's call it "Saturn virtual machine"
this saturn virtual machine would retain the saturn architecture
(opcodes and code efficiency beauty of original architecture)
but take advantage of new hardvare and extended very much like Saturn+
larger display, virtualy unlimited memory, sound and other hardware.

In fact... Saturn virtual machine could be established as a
multi-platform standard for math and related applications.

A couple of things to think about:
A plain 50g emulator could work, except the physical keyboard would be very different and the screen would have to be re-scaled 2x, but no big deal.
Now for the virtual machine... the Saturn architecture was "maxed out", specifically RAM addressing. You need more bits or some sort of banking (on top of the banking that's already there) to make it work. That alone would cause all kinds of incompatibilities. If TempOb is large, all object pointers will need to be more than 20 bits, which would change their prologs too, which would require a complete ROM rewrite, which would... defeat the purpose of emulation. Do you have any specific ideas on how to extend the Saturn architecture while keeping compatibility?

I imagine that whatever existing ARM code they already have implemented in the 50G would not require too much modification so that it can become an APP on the Prime since that's really all that the Saturn ROM on the 50G is -- an app.

The virtual machine need not actually use all the address space of the Prime (though it would in practical sense be no different from just an emulator).

But if you want to truly use all the new hardware, then I think Claudio is right. You'd be looking at a ROM rewrite.

[Claudio L.]

(03-09-2016 04:11 PM)Han Wrote:  I imagine that whatever existing ARM code they already have implemented in the 50G would not require too much modification so that it can become an APP on the Prime since that's really all that the Saturn ROM on the 50G is -- an app.

I don't think manjo was planning to use the actual emulator that's embedded currently in the 50g (unless I misinterpreted him), but one (any) open source emulator, ported to the Prime and running in a similar way the 50g works.
In any case, the Saturn emulator has 2 parts: a) emulating the logic and math of the CPU, and b) emulating the hardware I/O of the 48/49 series.
The first part doesn't need much change, but the second one has to be rewritten from scratch to interface directly with the real hardware. I'm talking about timers, interrupts, keyboard, and screen emulation.

Porting Emu48 or similar to the Prime hardware would be an interesting project. Once all the hardware drivers are ready, I'll jump in and port newRPL to the Prime too.

[manjo]

Hello all :-)

yes, not realy new to HP calculators but new to this forum :-)

ofcourse i was thinking... app saturn emulator is what we need,
To make it 100% compatible to 50G is very tricky and maybe not worth the trouble. BUT to make it more like a "hybrid" like emu48 on Windows machines. (to run the modified ROM) compatible on Saturn(+) CPU but no ARM compatibility would be just fine and would be Debug4X compatible.

When thinking about Saturn Vritual machine... I would not look to make it compatible, rather to "evolve" or further develop in the direction what Saturn processor would be if made today with both ARM and x86 archtectures in mind.
Such virtual machine would run efficiently on ARM as well as x86.

Something similar and VERY interesting is the RPL/2 project
http://www.rpl2.net/

Saturn had a very god run for years and the whole plafrom is about to run out of everything... address space, display space, etc...

The basics of saturn is what I love (64-bitness but with nice subfields and nibble operable, both hex and dec mode etc)

two data pointers seam fine to me, but make it 32 bit or 64 bit even so that memory would not be an issue ever again, byte addressing instead of nibble.
in this giant memoryspace all kind of hardware could be represented in their respective memory windows and so on...

[Claudio L.]

(03-09-2016 08:36 PM)manjo Wrote:  When thinking about Saturn Vritual machine... I would not look to make it compatible, rather to "evolve" or further develop in the direction what Saturn processor would be if made today with both ARM and x86 archtectures in mind.

If made today, the Saturn would not be a Saturn, just another ARM system-on-chip. The tendency is to converge to a single architecture, so I'd guess the Saturn would follow the trend.

Question is: if you create a new, much evolved Saturn that is not compatible, you need a new ROM from scratch, written in Super-Saturn assembly. If you are willing to write from scratch, then why not code a math platform directly on ARM or x86? You don't need a Super-Saturn at all. I debated this for quite a while and reached the conclusion that it was best to go for userRPL compatibility and skip the Saturn.

(03-09-2016 08:36 PM)manjo Wrote:  Something similar and VERY interesting is the RPL/2 project
http://www.rpl2.net/

RPL/2 is exactly what I'm describing above: a math platform, rather than a virtual CPU.

Even more similar to a 50g (quite incomplete yet usable): newRPL
You should take a look at the internals, since I think it lines up with your way of thinking: it's essentially a VM core that executes bytecode. The bytecode is (within certain limits) entirely defined by libraries, so in theory you could write a library that executes Saturn assembly from within an RPL program. Even compiling (assembling) is done by the libraries, so it's perfectly doable.
It would actually be very cool if newRPL could compile and run Saturn Assembly routines to keep the old Saturn alive.

EDIT: First you would have to port newRPL to the Prime, should be doable but not exactly trivial.

[ggauny@live.fr]

Hi Jebem,

How do you do this emoticon ? I would like have to put on email message !

I think go with wife at post office next week.

Have a nice day. I love this word "nice" because I live in a town named "Nice".

[manjo]

Again, you're right Claudio,
the solution in that case is to make a emu48 compatible emulator for Prime to emulate 50G using modified ROM and make it Debug4x comaptible.

For other purposes... (to make it a programmable math platform) we have to let go of Saturn(+) or other super saturn ideas, and maybe adopt something like RPL/2 or newRPL or find peace with current Prime language whatever they call it.
(i'm really not sure how it's called)

[jebem]

(03-10-2016 11:08 AM)ggauny@live.fr Wrote:  Hi Jebem,

How do you do this emoticon ? I would like have to put on email message !

I think go with wife at post office next week.

Have a nice day. I love this word "nice" because I live in a town named "Nice".

Bonjour, Gérard!
Ça va bien?


1.- For the emoticons:

I have just used the "Insert Image" icon when composing a new post here in the MoHPC.
To do this, I clicked on the icon number 7 on the top, counting from right to left.

Then in the "Please enter the remote URL of the image you wish to insert." field, I have pasted one image URL from the Internet.
Any URL pointing to a image will do.

For example, using Google and typing "emoticons" and clicking "Images" from the search tools, we get a big listing of images.

Select one image you like by pointing and left-clicking on the mouse; when the image opens, put the mouse over the image and use the right-click to open the options list, then select "Copy Image Location".
This will be your image URL.
To make sure it is OK, paste the URL on another Tab of the browser to see if the image is being loaded.

Now we can just paste that URL into the above "Insert Image" icon when composing a new post.
Before posting the post, it is a good idea to do a Preview, to see if this is what we want to post.


2.- Post Office
Merci beaucoup pour votre generosité


3. Nice is nice!
I like Nice city very much.

I visited Nice a couple of times long time ago and have enjoyed very much.
Nice warm weather, good food and nice views.

Well, la mer Mediterranean is nice in most of the places, like Algarve in Portugal.
I am based in Lisbon region, but I enjoy to go to Olhão or Portimão cities in Algarve to relax a little when I can.