On Friday 19 July 2013 15:22:50 Jon Elson did opine:

> EBo wrote:
> > true.  That board design seems to come from the the traditional
> > embedded design camp -- little RAM and a decent amount of EPROM.  I do
> > like some of the peripherals and power though.
> 
> it is an ** 8 ** bit CPU!  You will never get a real Linux kernel to run
> on that,
> although some super-stripped-down kernel might be possible.  But, the
> whole Propeller idea is really stupid, aimed at people who can't
> comprehend a task scheduler, real time OS, or multiprogramming.  So,
> you put each task on a separate virtual CPU and let it multiplex the
> hardware among the tasks.  This is just like Intel's hyperthreading X
> 8, instead of just X 2. That is great for an OS that does a horrible
> job of multitasking (read Windows),
> but really not useful at all on an OS that does it well (read Linux).
> 
> <rant off>
> 
> Even though the Propeller's CPU instances each run at 80 MHz, the
> overall performance is WAY down, because it is doing 8-bit operations
> on 8-bit memory at that speed.  I thought the Z-80 was the bee's knees
> in 1976, but it is now obsolete by about 30 years!
> 
> Jon

Nah, it was broken even then.  I looked at it in 1978 for a project and 
wound up using the RCA 1802, it was just as fast and actually had a true 16 
bit address bus.  Writing code for it by looking up the nemonic and using 
the programmers manual for an assembler to feed a hex monitor was dead 
straight forward.

Again, in 1980, I needed a smart transmitter control in NE CA at a radio 
station,  bought two Microprofessor Z80 based boards.  Big mistake.  I used 
them, but the Z80's 8 bit unsigned conditional jumps meant every 256 byte 
page of ram had to hold a table of long jumps at both upper & lower 
boundaries of each page.  Then Zilog would not replace a patently defective 
Z-80.  I had to buy it myself, $30 IIRC.  Zilog sealed their doom with me 
on that.  I must have lost a gallon of mental blood on that.  Life is too 
short for that kind of pain.  I wouldn't ever use one again even if they 
were free, I'd use a moto 6809 or a Hitachi HD6309.

Cheers, Gene
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up!
My views 
<http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml>
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                -- Alan Parsons Project
A pen in the hand of this president is far more
dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of
         law-abiding citizens.

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