JLP Accelerator support ?

[shazz]

Hi,

 

[Newbie question warning]

 

For some unknown reasons I was browsing again the LTO-Flash website and I noticed something that never caught my attention before :

☞ JLP Accelerator support

✓ Multiply / divide accelerator

✓ CRC-16 generation

✓ Random number generation

 

 

And I was wondering what's that ? I searched on the forum but I did not find that much except JLP means Jean Luc Project ? (I would have said Jean-Luc Picard but... )

 

What is this accelerator ? Another board ? How does it work ?

 

Thanks Just curious...

 

Edited April 9, 2017 by shazz

[intvnut]

JLP is the cartridge board I offer for the Intellivision. It has 8K x 16 of RAM, and a handful of accelerator functions you noted above.

 

It's a PIC based cartridge, and I needed a name for it. A PIC-cart... a Jean-Luc PIC-cart! And then somewhere along the way I dropped the pun and it became the more mysterious sounding Jean-Luc Project.

 

LTO Flash!, BTW, is an extension of that design. I added a bunch of electronics to the JLP. As a result, its code name is Locutus. (It actually says that on the boards, too, and in its wire protocol.)

 

One of these days, I'll get around to finishing the LTO Flash Programmers Guide which covers these details and more. In the meantime, here's some JLP docs I wrote up a few years ago. Some details are slightly out of date, mainly because I've improved the tooling since then. But, this doc will still give you a good idea.

 

The --jlp and --jlp-savegame flags on jzIntv enable JLP support. Alternately, you can add a couple lines to your program to enable JLP. (Requires the Stable Dev Version of the assembler).

.

; To enable JLP accelerators and RAM only
    CFG_VAR "jlp" = 1


; To enable JLP accelerators and flash save area
    CFG_VAR "jlp" = 3
    CFG_VAR "jlp_flash" = 4   ; change 4 to however many 1.5K byte flash sectors you need

JLP Developer's Guide.pdf

[shazz]

Ah ah I love Jean-Luc PIC-cart.... I was not so far so.

Thanks for the doc, interesting (and cheating !).

 

If I'd like to test the fast div and mul, is this section still valid ?

[intvnut]

Ah ah I love Jean-Luc PIC-cart.... I was not so far so.

Thanks for the doc, interesting (and cheating !).

 

If I'd like to test the fast div and mul, is this section still valid ?

 

Yes, all the accelerators are all there. Just load up jzIntv with the --jlp flag.

 

The only out-of-date things in the docs are related to the tools. The tools are in slightly better shape than they were when I wrote the document. The CFG_VAR stuff didn't exist yet, for example, so there wasn't an easy way to have a program declare that it needs JLP features.

[+nanochess]

IntyBASIC will use the accelerated multiplication and division features when compiling with the --jlp flag

[shazz]

Hi,

 

I added the --jlp to jzintv, works.

but the CFG_VAR "jlp" = 1 doesn't :

 ERROR - syntax error at/before string "jlp"

By the way typo error in the PDF, Quotient and Remainder addresses are swapped, according to the table.

Program Example
The following example demonstrates converting a number to decimal using the unsigned divide
accelerator. This can be useful for displaying scores onscreen,
for example.
DIVUU.num EQU $9F8A ; Numerator for the divide
DIVUU.den EQU $9F8B ; Denominator for the divide
DIVUU.quo EQU $9F8F ; Quotient
DIVUU.rem EQU $9F8E ; Remainder

[intvnut]

You need a space before CFG_VAR. It belongs in the same syntactic position as a mnemonic.

[shazz]

Hum I tried everything, no space, a space, a tab,.... always an error. With a space, in addition, "invalid opcode"

sequencer.asm:12: ERROR - invalid opcode
sequencer.asm:12: ERROR - syntax error at/before string "jlp"

[intvnut]

Are you using a recent AS1600?

 

FWIW, I've posted updates to jzIntv and AS1600 over at http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/, including for Linux. (I finally got my Linux box up and running, barely.)

[intvnut]

Aha... here's the issue. It's actually spelled CFGVAR, not CFG_VAR. (Unfortunately, I always seem to get these questions at a time when I can't easily go verify the spelling.)

 

If it's wrong in the JLP accelerator guide, I need to go fix it.