Re: What is this chip? MVS PCOC1

From: Jim Granville (no.spam_at_designtools.co.nz)
Date: 09/10/04 

Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 13:17:37 +1200

Kenneth Lemieux wrote:
> larwe@larwe.com (Lewin A.R.W. Edwards) wrote in message news:<608b6569.0409090224.55a4e397@posting.google.com>...
>>>It's pin compatable with an 8051 yet has flash and runs a subset of
>>>Athlon/Pentium instructions AND has a built in bios.
>>
>>It sounds like vaporware. But in any case the "subset of
>>Athlon/Pentium" looks like 8086 (at a very quick glance).
>
> MVS Support person said it was an 8051 with 8086 instructions but he
> couldn't or wouldn't tell me anymore.

Did they say if it was a CHIP, or a Module ?

Certainly is a strange animal :

First there is the clock speed, it's not easy to create a
1MHz/4.77MHz/7MHz x86 these days!

Then, the memory is just 6143 bytes of Code?! - and RAM is
just 511 bytes.

> MEMORY MAP
> ----------
> 0000-17ff ROM (FLASH)
> 8060-825f RAM
> 9000-91ff EE (fast read but slower than RAM to write)

and it is not clear just HOW it talks with the VGA ?

Thus it looks to me like a student project brief : To create an x86
emulator, using a SiliconLabs TurboC51 core uC or similar.
The low speed, and miniscule resource would match that.

They show 830 opcodes, so it's like the Byte code of Java, or .NET,
but I do not see any MUL or DIV opcodes.... :)

This would have educational merit, but can't think of any commercial use ?

-jg

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