[sdiy] Re: and firmware synth

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow All.
         Sorry. I've been side tracked by the mountains of information and 
all the tributaries that lead from it.

Whilst I appreciate the coolness factor of both SPARC boards and G3s, I'm 
specifically interested in old INTEL arch stuff. Ok, Yeah. I know. I can 
hear the groans from here. But there's a reason for this. And that can be 
stated quite simply in two words.

"ZERO DOLLARS"

If the total cost of base hardware is more than a fiver it's not in the 
ball park. It's all about preventing landfill in a way. OK. So a few DIY 
projects aren't going to make a dent in the global poisoning these things 
are causing but we can at least keep a smug disposition here. :)

The aim would be something like, shoving a board in a 1u rack case with a 
small PSU. No drives and bugger-all memory. Unless you needed vast sample 
RAM or course. And for that matter, the RAM should be on 30 pin SIMS. Must 
be billions of them kicking round out there. I know I've probably got half 
a million of 'em myself.

There's no making PCBs and not a real lot of wiring. It's already done. The 
hardware costs nothing so it doesn't matter if you bugger it up anyway. I 
know an INTEL architecture system isn't entirely ideal for 
DSP/Numbercrunching stuff but if it costs nothing and you waste a few 
cycles, who cares.

Of course I'm not talking about wasting the kind of cycles a full blown OS 
would but a 486 or P1 that takes a few extra cycles to shunt a word around 
@ 100meg isn't going to be a big concern surely? It would make a big 
difference it you had to go out and buy a 100 dollar P4 board and shove a 
processor and some DDR ram in it. But we're talking zilch on the hardware side.

You don't need networking or any other layers. You don't need video and 
probably most of the other peripherals. Certainly don't need a hard drive.

I've never written machine code for an i86 and frankly, segmented 
addressing pisses me off. But if the Assembler handled all of that crap 
then it probably wouldn't be that bad. Especially if there were libraries 
for all of the mundane stuff. Then it wouldn't be TOOO far removed from 
working with Embeddeds.

So this is my feasibility study if you like. Would a 486 be a good enough 
target to start with? How easy can I make this in terms of tools and 
libraries without having to torture myself by trying to learn something 
like C. (or even Forth for that matter. Much as I like forth.)

But that's the point. There's tones of this stuff going into landfill. It's 
got to be seriously more powerful than an AVR and cost a lot less. Plug in 
a crappy ol' ISA sound card, or if you're lucky, find one on-board. It's 
all done for you. The addition of an opto and you've got a MIDI interface. 
At BIOS level you don't need to worry about managing any crap you don't 
need and you can ignore the irrelevant hardware.

Does this sound like a plan? Anything I've overlooked? Any catches? Is this 
worth poking my head into any time soon?

Be absolutely Icebox.

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