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Hello from daverand

daverand

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2022
Messages
129
I have several working (more or less) 32k systems, and I ported the old DSI-32 loader to wrap around an emulator, back a few years ago. It was fun, and all that old software still works!
 
Thanks! I wrote a fair bit of software over the years. Some may know me by the USQ or NSWP programs on CP/M, among others.
Back in 1983 or so, I was lusting after the NS32032, based on the instruction set - it seemed such a departure, for a kid that had only worked on z80/8080/8085/8086/80286 systems.

I joined the design team for the DSI-32 - one of the first co-processors for the IBM-PC. Porting the Green Hills compilers to the newly developed "operating system" I created for the 32032 was a joy. That project was published in Byte magazine, and sold moderately well. I went on to work on other systems, doing various software ports, and later helped with the PD32 and PC-532 systems. I also have a couple of ICM-3216 systems, and a Heurikon 532.

Elsewhere on this forum, I see that someone took apart a laser printer (likely Canon branded) with an NS32CG16 processor in it. I worked for National Semiconductor for a while, and was on the team that designed that processor. I ended up writing some of the microcode of that system, and many of the reference manuals and application notes. Oh yeah - it does not have a blitter in it - just software (in the form of microcode).

Today's systems operating at multi-GHz can certainly run faster than those 10-30 MHz systems - but I still enjoy the ease of programming in assembly for the 32k series. Even though I've done lots of work in the 68k, ARM and many, many other systems - I still favour the 32k.
 
Hi Al! I've not seen you since... the Pizza place Frank M took me to?

I hope you are doing well. I have some more documents for you - I have the original Toshiba T-250 manuals, along with what appears to be the technical specifications and theory of operations... I don't know if you are still able to scan things, but it's some history I was hiding up in Canada for the past 40 years or so :)
 
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