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Interrupts - what a luxury. On my old box I do bit banged serial communication without a UART. Currently all is well at 19200 baud. 38400 works for single bytes, but not for larger memory blocks. The timing error in the delay loops obviously accumulates too much when too many bytes are sent at once. Maybe I can resynchronize at every start bit, but I would have to overclock the old 8 bit processor a little more. It could go faster than 8 MHz if I raised the processor's core voltage above 5V. Perhaps it would then even become noticably warm and the processor would actually require cooling.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Impressive! I never went below the UART interrupt level. Your mention of 8MHz reminded me of one of the things I tell my once a week Data Structures class that I teach - namely, that when I first started working with microprocessors the clock rate was in KHz, not GHz as they now are.
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Fun times, sounds like. I never got that far back. I coded 6502 asm but Nintendo's hardware (NES) already had a pretty slick PPU that made timing somewhat easy.
Still coded in ARM32 asm for the DSi but that was mostly to do basic geometric transforms in the weird video memory it had (bitmaps were not stored in a straightforward manner).
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The memory addressing logic was designed to let whatever graphics hardware you had access its video buffer quickly, not for the programmer's convenience. The hardware was racing the electron beam for you, so there was little time to waste. And then there is also the old problem of how to synchronize CPU and graphics hardware access to the same memory.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I'm surprised no-one's mentioned ZX80 and ZX81. They didn't have specialised circuitry to handle the display, but, instead, had the Z80 execute the contents of the screen, ensuring that the Z80 itself saw only NOP until the end of the line. The contents of the data bus (the actual character codes) were then fed to the character generator.
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Z80! Haven't heard that for almost 40 years, I used to write assembler for that, too.
You know this really means we are all a bunch of old farts!
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I have that book in the shelf myself. A shame that all that pedal to the metal assembly code has been replaced by hard wired logic in some graphics processor since then. But things have been that way all along. Turns out that even my first computer kindof raced the electron beam, but it was automated via interrupts and DMA so all I had to learn was how to set up an interrupt routine and had not to worry about how to put pixels on the screen anymore.
The computer's design goes back to 1976. At that time having graphics at all were a complicated and expensive affair, so usually little single board computer kits did not have any at all. To make it not only affordable, but also relatively uncomplicated to use was a small wonder.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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I may have to build myself an MS-Dos (Circa 1995) computer, just so I can do some nostalgic programming again.
I do still have a set of Masm32 disks somewhere 
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Ales with spirit point to starters (9)
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Like it! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Cheers, I hope someone solves it as we're becoming a monopoly again - I think it's largely the time difference - how's Mrs Griff ? sounded like a very nasty break to me.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Herself is getting more sleep, which indicates that it's getting better, albeit slowly.
I emailed you a pic.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Got the email but no pic
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Check the attachments - it shows as there in my "sent items" log".
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Is it the email where you gave the answer to todays ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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No, a second one - you hadn't asked about Herself when I sent the first.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It's just arrived Paul
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I would oblige but in the car from 7am tomorrow so won't be able to do one.
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No worries Rich
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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First one I've solved for weeks ...
Ales - BEERS
with spirit - GIN
point - N
to starters - BEGINNERS
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Yay ! YAUT Richard
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Hmm, I had better start thinking.
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Start at the beginning 
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Great, now I have Do Ra Me stuck in my head.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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