The end of Retrochallenge 2022/10
I have learned a lot about writing a assembler.
Last month I’ve been going through all my documentation and trying to describe how I came to get started with the 1-Bit microprocessor. The hardware, the cooperation between the address bus and the IO, how do you get multiple controllers to work with a 1 bit data bus. Connect the utility of the output of the Result Register to an input. Connecting an output to an input to create a memory bit. The set-up, operation, programming and testing of the assembler. All in all I really enjoyed this robot based on the 1 bit microprocessor mc14500b. I have learned a lot that I can continue with the next project.
For me, this is the end of Retrochallenge 2022/10.
The last part of the RetroChallenge 2022/10
@retrochallenge
For this robot, I had 4 challenges to complete.
1 – the hardware must work properly
2 – the arduino program to simulate the Eprom
3 – create / set up an Assembler
4 – Write line-follower in assembly.
I am now at the point where writing the first 3 works, especially the 3rd, found it very challenging and gave me great satisfaction when it worked.
Now on to the line follower program. As mentioned before, we CANNOT make a jump in the program, so if we have to skip a part of the program we have to use other techniques. We do that as follows, we use a memory bit that we create by turning an output high that is connected to an input. We use bits 4 and 5 of the output for this, which are connected to bits 4 and 5 of the input. So we will initially turn on both engines.
Next, let’s look at the line-following sensors. If we see 1 of these become active, we switch OFF a motor and set the relevant memory bit (4 or 5) and activate the timer
Then we will see if a certain time has passed before the engines have to be switched on again.
Finally, we described the functions of the IO.
And the whole program has a size of 31 bytes. That is quite small for a line-following program. But with the help of assembly you are really on top of the hardware, you have little or no overhead and because of this you get a compact program.
The program works, initially in this assembly program not the motors but the test leds are controlled, in the second instance I replaced the output bits 2 and 3 with the output bits 0 and 1. And then the motors instead of the test leds were controlled and the Robot was able to drive across the track.
I first wrote out the program on paper how the program should proceed, how the decisions had to be made. Then the program was written in assembly and there were no errors in it. I thought that was quite special. From this I concluded that I understood and understood the assembly language and the way the whole system worked.
Then the final testing of the sensors and motors, and the M1-bit robot was ready for the competition.
After I have managed to control the outputs for the mc14500b with the help of the mc14599, I now want to read out the inputs in order to be able to use the statuses of the line following sensors in my program. For the inputs we use a mc14512b 1 out of 8 decoder. We see in the truth table that if we always make the Inhibit 0, then we can choose with the Disalble whether we take 1 of the 8 inputs to the Z output or whether the latter has a high impedance. This when we think about this we notice that this Disable connection can be connected -directly- to the Write of the mc14500b !! The Disable must be low to make the mc14512 active and if we want to write the data bus the Write output goes high, so this mc14512b is NOT selected.
socket for the mc14512b at the right
We connect the mc14512b to the 3-bit address bus from the Eprom, the data bus, and the Write. The output of the MC14500b of the Result Register (RR) we connect direct to X7 so that we can read the value of the RR on an input.
We also connect the outputs OUT-4 and OUT-5 to the inputs X4 and X5 so that we can use these as memory locations. We connect the line-following sensors to X0 and X1. The RC timer is controlled by OUT-6 and read by X6.
Here too I made the mistake of not connecting the Inhibit to the 0 at first. Because of this, the input selection was not reliable and it took me a while to find it. When I had connected the inhibit properly, the inputs worked well and I could test the 2 line full sensors, 2 memory bits and RC timer. This worked very well very quickly.
After this success I was able to get started with programming, especially to make an assembler. My goal is to create an onboard assembler that starts working when the ESP32 starts up. Using the SPIFFS we want to put the assembly program in the ESP32, after which it will be assembled, put in memory and after that the rset of the mc14500b will be released and the ESP32 will function as an Eprom emulator.
How does an assembler program work, I have no experience with this. How should that work. How do I read a file that is put in the SPIFFS file system. How do I read a line from this file. How do I convert a line of text into an 8 bit machine code? How do I deal with errors in the rules.
Using the above 4 lines I was able to parse each line into a byte of machine code. In the Arduino ino-file on github you can see in the program, with enclosed header files, how this is structured.
After a lot of errors, problems, extensions, searching, I got more and more works. How do I handle the errors that -may- occur in the rules. What do I do if there is an error in the assembly program. Finally I decide to give the WS2812 LED a different color, not to enable the reset of the mc14500b and to display an error code by the serial output (to a terminal program).
To write the assembler I learned a lot. I had a lot of fun with it.
And in the end it worked well.
After this i update the Github with the Arduino-ino file so the program is available:
For a robot you need inputs for the sensors and outputs for controlling the motors. If you are going to build or build a system, it is easier to start with the controls first. You can use LEDs for this instead of directly controlling motors. Then you can test your hardware in combination with your software. Instead of doing all kinds of difficult things, you can also just make an LED (output) blink. If an LED flashes, you can also do other things with it, but then you DO control how an output should be controlled on/off. And whether an LED or a real motor is connected to it, it does not matter.
mc14599b at the top
We connected the address bus from the Eprom emulator, the ESP32, to the mc14599b using the white/yellow wires. The -Write- line from the mc14500b is connected to the mc14599b by means of a blue wire, this is made high when we want to put the data from the data bus (the green wire) on an output. At first this didn’t work at all. If I wanted to make a certain output high, it didn’t work at all. An exit went on and off randomly, but not the way I wanted. After connecting my logic analyzer to the various lines, I understood even less. I sent everything fine but the mc14599b was NOT handling it properly. After a lot of searching, the Enable of the mc14599b turned out not to be connected to the write line. The mc14599b can be used for outputs or inputs. I only use it for outputs, so I connect the Write/Read connection, pin 10, to the 5 Vdc and use the CE, pin 8, for the write command. After having corrected this, the program ran and I saw the output become active at the desired moment. This forgotten connection took me over a day to search, but it has been found and I can continue with the entrances.
From a memory (usually an EPROM, but in our case an ESP32 serves as an eprom emulator) we send an 8-bit command to the mc14500b. This 8-bit command consists of 2 parts in my robot, a 4-bit machine instruction part and a 4-bit address part. So we are going to present an instruction to the microprocessor. If it is a read instruction, we select the address and read in the -data- entry. If the instruction is a -write- instruction, we send the -data- line to the selected address and activate the -Write- Flag. This -Write- Flag is not set with a read instruction. In fact, we use the -Write- Flag to determine whether we are addressing the inputs or outputs of the system.
Not many programming languages are available for the mc14500b microprocessor. I myself have decided to make my own (onboard)assembler, this will be discussed later.
The program counter and the addressing of the memory are not done in the microprocessor itself. There are no real possibilities to make jumps. What is often done is to use a special -Flag- to reset an external program counter. For example, the NOPF statement. Then the -F- output is connected to the reset of the external program counter.
Since we can’t make jumps, we have to use other techniques to skip certain program blocks. The IF-THEN(-ELSE) commands are quite possible.
Because there is only 1 register in the mc14500b of 1-bit, we also have to come up with other things for this. If we need a lot of extra memory, we can connect a 1K * 1 memory and make the address bus very wide. If we only need a few bits of memory, we can also connect an output of an mc14599b to an input of an mc14512. If we give an output a certain status, we can retrieve the status of the connected input later in the program and continue with this. This may be a bit of a strange idea, but it is very applicable.
In this way we can also make timers and counters. We connect an RC combination to an output and after the RC time has elapsed, the status of the input changes, so we know that a certain time has elapsed and for that time we skip a certain (program) block. This also applies to counters. We connect a counter to an output that we pulse every round in the sequence. And after a certain number of pulses, the output of the (hardware) counter that is connected to the input flips and we know that this number of pulses has passed.
The methods are a bit different, but we can create a program, make jumps, have memory places to store things, have timers and counters. So basically we have everything to build a complete working microcomputer system with which we can control a Robot.
What are more things we want to make related to our Robot. – ESP32 as EPROM emulator – Onboard assembler – All -Motorola- brand ICs – Create program in the Arduino IDE – Upload assembly file via SPIFFS – Nice OLED display with information on it
This is how we get started.
In the middle we see the mc14500b. From the ESP32, the 4 bit instruction bus (yellow) goes to the mc14500b. From the 555, in red, the Clock signal goes to the mc14500b. From the mc14500b the F-flag goes in purple and in white the Clock_ signal goes to the ESP32.
Now we can run de famous NOPO, NOPO, NOPO, NOPO, NOPO, NOPF program to see if our hardware is working correct with the software.
My robot has the mc14500b as microprocessor. This is a 1-bit processor, developed in 1977 by Motorola. At that time, there were already other processors such as the 8080 and the Z80, so why develop a 1-Bit microprocessor? For industrial applications they were looking for cheap solutions for the replacement of relay controls of automation systems. At the time, the 8080 cost $20 and the Z80 $50, and the mc14500b was marketed for $7.50. The costs could be kept low because the processor was built with very few transistors, only 500. The Z80 was made up of 8500 and the 4004 of 2250 transistors. The nickname for the mc14500b was therefore the Industrial Control Unit. Due to the rapid development in technology, the mc14500b was quickly overtaken by other techniques and other processors such as the PIC that came on the market a few years later. The MC14500 has a 1 bit data bus, a 4 bit instruction bus and depending on the required addresses a 4, 8 or 12 bit address bus. In addition, it has 1 internal register of 1 bit. The mc14500b has no program counter, making address jumps is difficult but not necessary as we will see later.
ALU
All operations are performed on the data bus, we read and write to this bus. When we write, we also activate the -Write- output so that we can activate the I/O with it
There are 16 instructions available, 3 of which are almost never used.
The instruction set is compact and very powerful. It is very suitable for controls. The mc14500b is a microprocessor especially for hardware people.
On 1 Oktober 2022 has been held the Roborama 2022. This are a couple tasks for little robots build by hobbist of the Dutch HCC. This year I have build a new robot around the microprocessor mc14500b. This is a real 16-pins Motorola microprocessor with a databus of 1-Bit (!!) and is made in 1978. I do the match and I am able to accomplish the run.
Lat month i work at a new challenge for myself. I found a nice microprocessor, the mc14500b, from Motorola. Could i make a nice project with this microprocessor. I want to make a line-following Robot. Let go !!
Last days I collect a lot of information about my project. For the code I wrote for the loader program I used VisualBasic 6.0 Also under Windows-10 I can use VisualBasic 6.0 to compile the sourse to the loader-exe-file. These exe runs under Windows10.
The schema for the cable is straight-line. The power in the USB to serial cable we use as powersupply for the max232 IC with converts the TTL level of the USB cable to RS232 level for the MPF-1.
Also I use my vintage GALEP-III EPROM programmer to readout the Eprom from the MPF-1. On the internet I found some other Eprom’s for the MPF with you also can use.
On my GitHub https://github.com/AVTech1 I have store all the information with is necessary for build this project.
At the end of the RCR2020/04 I reach a part of my goal. Not the final explanation of the system and not the test and show of my nice russian with gold pinnet ceramic Z80 clone. During last weeks there where also other things to do. But I hope there is a next change at the end of the year.
I want to thank Mark Sherman for the organisation of this RCR2020/04.
In the previous post I wrote about the new loader program I made. I use the speed of 300 baud. But how I get this. In this post I will explane more about this.
In my storage I have some older computers, also with W98 installed. They have also an real comport. So I took one of these PC’s, install the Z80 assembly and loader program on it and do my tests. This works good. I took my logicanalyser, a kind of USBee AX. I upload a little program to the MPF-1b and look with this analyser to the signals. With the USBee you can also do some protocol analyse. We know this is an “old” system, so we have low-speed communication. 1200 baud or lower. So we choose one and test. With this tool I found the communication setting of 300 8N1.
In the protocol analyse tool from the USBee AX you can see exact the same value as in the old loader program. So in this case we know we have the right settings.
With the information of this test we made the new loader program.
av-retro-computing 