On Wednesday 19 March 2003 16:40, Andrew Berg wrote:
> [pins for DDR SDRAM DIMMs?]
> [AGP port]
> [HD interface, USB]
> Let's really think outside the box for a minute:  A processor in a
> XILINX with a SRAM memory controller (simple), some flash (simple)
> and a 100Mbit ethernet adapter (not too bad).  The flash contains
> just enough to make it boot from a tftp server:  Fetch down a HAL/VM,
> and then a Squeak image. For video/mouse/keyboard/?sound?, let's
> throw an old wintel box at it with Linux and X via the network.  8MB
> of SRAM is pretty affordable these days, 64 not unreasonable.
>
> For v.2, we could perhaps add USB or FireWire and SATA for HD
> support.

Good ideas there and also in the parts I deleted. Check out this block 
diagram of a 1999 version of my project:

  http://www.merlintec.com/merlin6/merlin6c.gif

The numbers shown are the pin counts so I could see if the Virtex 300 
(which was really expensive back then but is relatively cheap today) 
could handle it.

The 96 bit wide SRAM is a high speed cache designed for code morphing 
like in Transmeta's Crusoe. The MOVE architecture used was a lot like 
microcode and there were 16 hardware threads, so this was like a late 
1990s version of the Alto (http://ce.et.tudelft.nl/MOVE/).

As for the original question, "why don't more people do it?", it might 
have something to do with people wanting to have a life :-)

You can have a hobby reimplementing stuff other people have designed 
(see Linux) but entirely new designs are very demanding. Of course, 
since I am doing this work other people will be able to use my results. 
All schematics, PCB layouts, software and so one will be available 
under a "free" license and also a more commercial one.

I should mention that these will be Squeak machines in the sense that I 
am starting out with a very tiny and clean implementation of Smalltalk 
and want to grow that until it is capable of loading projects and 
sources created in Squeak. Since I have problems doing this even with 
the Squeak plug-in for Netscape I know how complex this "compatible but 
different" route will be. Perhaps the E-Squeak people will run into the 
same problems. Anyway, it will be great if someone ports "real" Squeak 
to these machines but I won't be doing so myself.

-- Jecel