Re: questions (about x21)

[Greg Alexander <galexand@xxxxxxx>]

>> Jeff did not develop or market the P21 chip!  That was a joint effort of Dr.
>> Ting and Chuck Moore.  Please don't criticise Jeff for things Dr. Ting has
>> or has not done!  Jeff did develop a P21-specific version of Forth for P21,
>> but it was a fairly loose business relationship from what I have heard about
>> in this email list.  Jeff has done a lot of FREE documentation for his F21
>> considering it is still at a pre-production stage.  Please remember that P21
>> and F21 are different chips commissioned by different people.
>>
>
>I'm glad that Mike has made these points. I'd like to expand a bit...
>
>Neither P21 nor F21 development was financed out of deep corporate coffers or 
>VC
>investment. Both were financed by individuals drawing on personal resources at
>GREAT personal sacrifice. Both Jeff Fox and Dr. Ting were powerfully motivated
>by fervent belief in the significance of Chuck Moore's vision and the importan
>ce
>and promise of MISC technology. Were they chasing the pot of gold at the end o
>f
>the rainbow? You betcha. Did they expect a quick killing? Hardly. Was it a goo
>d
>investment? Many have called them fools.
>
>I'm sure both Jeff and Dr. Ting could add up the dollars they've invested. But
> I
>doubt that they could add up the hours and months and years of tough creative
>work needed to bring the P21 and the F21 to where they are today. Neither, I'd
>venture to say, has yet to see a dime of profit.
>
>Are there warts on the products and information issued by Jeff and Ting,
>respectively? Yes, and they'd be among the first to point them out. In both

No, they wouldn't be.  Jeff responded to criticisms about P21 being
underdocumented by calling them nonsense.  At the time I agreed with him:
I'd read his site, there was gobs of documentation.  But it's all
documentation for the F21!  There is very little documentation on the
P21.  I just discovered, while reading something only marginally
related, that the P21 has only 4 levels in the return stack?!?  This could
indeed affect my interest in the chip.  It is important informatin.

>cases, I'm sure, they'd love to go through another fab run or two; run more
>definitive tests; add this feature or that; spiffy up the printed documentatio
>n.
>But with what? When you've invested the full extent of your personal time and
>financial resources and you've borrowed to the brink and then some, where do y
>ou
>go from there? I know Jeff, for one, has literally gone hungry to keep F21
>development alive.

I don't intend to belittle their achievements nor their sacrifices.  I
think that Fox, Moore, Ting, etc are doing the most important work in all
of computer engineering.  However, 

>Both Jeff and Ting have been generous and open with specs, schematics and code

Coulld you please point me to this generosity about the P21?  I can find a
LOT of information about the F21 and that reassures me greatly, but i can
find nearly no information on the P21.  A big reason that the MISC design
idea has no market penetration is that there's not much of an opportunity
for it: the documentation is for the F21, the hardware is the P21.  Since
Jeff is advancing an IDEA, not just another piece of silicon, it seems
like getting people up and running /and satisfied/ on the P21 would be a
very important step towards making the F21 accepted.  I'm sure Jeff would
is happy just to get the F21 chips working, but I think he'll be a lot
happier if other people use the F21, if not just because that at least
opens the door for the possibility of significant income from the project
(i'm not saying he wants more money for money's sake, but it seems like
he'd want to get it when he can so that he'll be able to do that extra fab
run).

>And both have issued open invitations to folks in the Forth community and on t
>he
>MISC list to contribute board designs, testing efforts, system code, etc. But
>from what I can tell, few have responded.

Well, I couldn't figure out how to search the archives, or I'd post you
the message where someone did indeed offer to do a board layout and was
ignored by Jeff.  Jeff was having a hard time at the time, but nonetheless
it seemed like getting the F21 going was high on his priority list.

>So think of it. How many people do you know have the courage to design a
>revolutionary new processor, see it through multiple fab runs at at considerab
>le
>personal expense, spend countless hours of personal time developing system
>software and documentation? Here are two people who have put their money and
>their lives where their mouths are. They have said, "This can be done!" and th
>ey
>have done it. Both chips work. But most of what I have heard from the communit
>y
>that one would expect to support them is "Gimme.." or "Whydoncha..." or
>"Howcomeya..."

Most of the "Whydoncha"s that I've seen have been people who totally
missed the point: they're wanting to do regular computer things (run
Linux and Quake) on these super little chips, so they are safely ignored.

Most of the "Gimme"s have been in the form of "I'd love to buy one of
these things but I don't feel these issues have been addressed" (I've even
seen a few of these requests that could have conceivably turned into the
cash source that this industry needs to start doing more speedy
development) -- they often haven't been, and when they have been it's
usually in a disorganized fashion.  If I were Jeff I probably wouldn't
have the time to clean up that webpage either -- perhaps if none of
the current efforts become very successful, I'll build a shadow copy of
www.ultratechnology.com that is more navigable.

I don't remember many "Howcomeya"s that have been standing or sticking
issues.

As for some unaddressed issues:
 * I still haven't seen a place where I can get detailed annd definitive
informatioon about the P21 instruction set architecture
 * I haven't seen any information about the P21 pinout
 * I haven't seen any numbers for P21 current draw
 * I keep on seeing someone (multiple someones?) complain that the P21
seems unstable at driving video and Jeff Fox keeps on posting back, "It's
your power supply" in a dismissive fashion.  Now it probably is, but it
seems like it would be more satisfying if it were explained that the P21's
power supply sensitivity is due to its asynchronous design, not merely due
to shoddy engineering.
 * and about once every 6 months I see someone post to this list raising
these issues and I see Jeff Fox (or, more lately, one of ya'll) come on
and say "don't diss Jeff Fox man."  You could easily shut me and Myron and
Vic and a billion other doubting thomases up if youo'd just give us URLs
for the information we're looking for.  Rather than saying "don't ask for
documentation, that's rude," point us at the documentation.  Someone said
something about making a P21 site -- I hope that happens, and it could
solve a lot of problems.  But as it is these are problems that are just
going to stay and posting to this list complaining about complaining about
them won't help it (though complaining about them probably won't help
either, at least it reminds people where the trouble is).
	As it is, I still solidly respect the MISC pioneers, the computer
cowboys.  They're really doing the only thing worth doing with computers,
and they're doing a great job on the technical end.  It's just so
frustrating to see such an awesome piece of silicon like the P21 go to
waste because of simple issues that a naive teenager could solve
(putting up webpages, making them navigable, arranging for webhosting
service) after they've already tackled problems that have had people
scared for ages (simplicity in chip layout software, asynchronous design,
etc.).
	An invalid analogy would be if you had a novel with a great
beginning and a great climax and a very weak middle.  It's very exciting
to write the beginning and the climax but very boring to write the middle.
However, it is very time consuming to write the middle of a novel, but it
is very easy (comparatively) to write webpages!

>Neither Jeff nor Ting are marketers. And, regretably, neither seems to have th

I'm not asking for marketting.  I'm not the unwashed masses or some
ignorant Venture Capitalist.  I'm a hobbyist who knows something about the
technology involved, but regrettably lacks the skills, knowledge, time,
and money to build his own chips.  i'm not asking for a full color useless
pretty typeset 1-page thing listing all of the great features of the P21
like you can so easily get from somewhere like Patriot Scientific about
the PTSC1000.  I'm asking for bare technical details about the P21, a chip
that's been out for quite a while and should be well understood by now.

>charismatic, inclusive coordination skills demonstrated by Linus Thorvald. But
>few people do. Jeff and Ting are both brilliant and dedicated technologists.
>They have given us remarkably promising technology that does what they promise
>d.
>But it remains to be seen whether Jeff or Ting can muster the skills or
>resources needed to push either or both of these chips into the green zone of
>success. With our help and support perhaps they can.  But the last thing they
>need at this point is criticism for not looking and behaving like Intel.

No, Intel released technical documentation grudgingly, they still hide a
lot of details.  My point that EVEN SECRETIVE INTEL, who obviously does
everything wrong, recognizes the necessity of providing free documentation
for their customers, even though the majority of their customer base
couldn't care less what the chip does.  You'd think with P21, which is a
good chip that is currently most popular among hobbyists would have a lot
more hobbyist friendly informatioon out there.  I'm still guessing that it
does and I just haven't found the webpage yet.

All this is somewhat moot to me personally because when I get my next
paycheck I'm gonna buy a P21 and Dr. Ting's book.  I'm irritated that I
can't drool over all the details and burn them into the back of my head
before the thing gets here, but the P21 is really the best thing to happen
to microprocessing in my neck of the woods.