The Xena module

post accidentally edited, removed.

@ChrisH

You could use it to pretty much take total control of the classic. Zorro is pretty much an extension of the system bus. The side extender port on A1000 and A500 as well.

The XMOS should be fast enough to be able to monitor bus access in realtime and trigger on specific events. You could for example, if you wanted to, halt the CPU on certain memory accesses, or keep a snapshot of the values written to the custom chips (which is how cartridges on the Amiga were able to do accurate freezes/snapshots of games etc., despite the number of write-only registers), or DMA stuff straight in/out of memory on the classic, or emulate an expansion card to let the classic use the X1000 as a hard disk or memory expansion (wouldn't be hugely fast, but then again the maximum speed imposed by the typical transfer rates on the side expansion / Zorro isn't exactly high either.

Of course the real answer as to why one might do something like that is because it's fun and can be done :)

I think the Xena module has great potential. I have an interest in an i/o interface, i just hope they can find a way to make it easy for people to control it.

My hope is for a Hollywood plugin or maybe porting of EMC from linuxcnc.org "Enhanced Machine Control software". Having a look on the site it seems PC's have timing issues, with the XMOS chip controlling the i/o on the X1000 would this be better?

There's lots of DIY projects out there that you can connect to your computer and do stuff.

My dream would be an open source CNC machine design from CNCzone.com controlled through an X1000 perhaps engraving a boing ball onto something perhaps :) ?

@dazA1

Quote:

I mentioned this on AW.net. Most of those PC based CNC machines bit-bang the Parallel port, and the pulse stream that's sent to the CNC machine must be very precise. Multitasking on these machines can be enough to cause pulse timing glitches that may or may not result in imperfections in whatever you're machining. The most extreme examples is hot-wire cutting foam wings. In this case, the motion of the hot wire must be absolutely smooth, or the wing will have defects.

IMHO, the XMOS chip would be an ideal interface with a CNC machine. The timing issues that I mentioned above wouldn't exist.

Hans

@Hans

You know some people may not even think about this but what about programming the thing to do industry type stuff Like sewing machines, machinery, medical devices, etc. so the "patterns" would just be "in there"
this is just an example mind you. I can also think of some VERY interesting audio interfaces as an example with utterly real time effects and 0 buffer latencies.

Could it be possible to use it as a realtime rendering machine? That would allow quite cool lookin games.

Or could it be possible use second core for that?

@utri007

"Could it be possible to use it as a realtime rendering machine?"

No.
x1000 will have fast PPC and Ruby for that. (ATI r700 GPU)

"Or could it be possible use second core for that?"

What second core?

GPU is used for that, theres 80...800 units doing the calculation on r700.

@Hans

It sounds like the xmos chip works on its own, sort of upload a program to it and set it off running. It could be (with an i/o card in the xorro slot) a mini PLC hosted within the X1000. Or maybe I am simplifying a bit, is xena something a bit more than that?

With my idea for xena it would still need software something like EMC (linuxcnc.org) to get some use out of it. BTW reading up on the EMC site it does more than just CNC machines it can do basic stuff with ladder logic.

If you havent noticed i would really like this to be ported to OS4/X1000 :)

@TrevorD & Co

It would be very nice to hear about the plans of how to get xcore developer tools ported to AOS4.1 xena. According to some people open source tools are not good enough for xcore.
(from documentation: "You must have a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.5 or later installed" )

And is x1000 going to appear here: http://www.xmos.com/technology/development-kits :P