Michael
says:
Hey, are you there?
Mr. Bean says:
hey, sorry i missed the meeting, i had a minicourse to go to
Michael says:
You didn't miss anything, sorry, I meant to say Saturday, or for you Sunday.
I posted a couple messages to the list.
Mr. Bean says:
alright
Michael says:
Do you have any sort of spring break?
Michael says:
Or I gues autumn?
Mr. Bean says:
i had it last week, i won't have any class off until easter
Michael says:
Okay, I have the next two weeks.
Mr. Bean says:
nice!
Michael says:
Do you guys actually start school the same time of year as us?
Mr. Bean says:
in september
Michael says:
Us too, does that mean you just started?
Mr. Bean says:
nope, we're in march, so i started a few months ago
Michael says:
What months are in autumn where you live?
Mr. Bean says:
sept. oct. and nov.
Mr. Bean says:
now
Mr. Bean says:
we're in winter right now
Michael says:
Where in March, two months of school left.
Mr. Bean says:
yeah me too, we go on our final break in the beginning of may
Michael says:
Amit lives in India and Zaleth lives in Sweden.
Mr. Bean says:
r we gonna manage to all meet at the same time?
Michael says:
Well, it kind of means you getting up at 5:30 and Amit staying up late. Where
still trying to come to a compromse.
Michael says:
What time is it where you live now?
Mr. Bean says:
almost 9:30 pm
Michael says:
Forget everything I said about the seasons and time.
Mr. Bean says:
haha, ok, i had gotten confused by it all anyways
Michael says:
I've been talking to Zaleth the whole time and thought you were him.
Michael says:
Just realized when you said it was 9.
Michael says:
Duh!!!!
Michael says:
Anyhow, Zaleth (I don't know his real name), had some cool ideas for programming
the processor.
Michael says:
We can allow the kernel to use one set of registers and games another. That
way we can switch processes without saving the reqistry status.
Michael says:
Giving us faster speeds than many processors.
Michael says:
Proportionally
Mr. Bean says:
will we have enough registers for both to use?
Michael says:
Zaleth seems to think so.
Michael says:
There are 24 General registers and 32 floating point registers. *
This information is not verified correct
Michael says:
The floating point are divided into two 16 piece banks. *
Either is this
Mr. Bean says:
so if we give 12/16 to the kernel and the other half to the games we'll be all
set?
Michael says:
The general are divided into 16 banked and 8 shared (don't ask, I don't know)
* Either is this
Michael says:
Yeah, that's what Zaleth was talking about.
Michael says:
He says we should have the games use r0 - r7, that way they won't disturb the
kernels registers.
Mr. Bean says:
i don't think it's a good idea cuz, some of the registers have special meanings,
and we can't assume that the kernel will only need about 12 registers
Michael says:
I'm not sure which of the two groups and sub-groups are the the lower r0 -r7
though.
Michael says:
I don't know much about low level, I'm not sure how many the kernel would need.
Mr. Bean says:
i'll have to reread the instruction guide, but as far as i know u can't use
all of the registers all the time * You can only
use half the registers at a time
Michael says:
You can tell this machine was built for graphics, it has more fp registers than
general.
Mr. Bean says:
and the registers r only used in asm....we're not gonna need them necessarily
for the os
Michael says:
Yeah, he said they'd have to be used in turns but that's still faster to switch
registers than to save and load.
Mr. Bean says:
he's right about that
Michael says:
Did I tell you a hard drive can be interfaced to the Dreamcast?
Mr. Bean says:
through usb right? * The Dreamcast doesn't remotely
have a USB like interface
Michael says:
Since the Dreamcast has only 16MB of RAM it could be used at last resort for
virtual memory.
Michael says:
Through parallel.
Michael says:
(The modem connection)
Mr. Bean says:
oh ok, parallel is kinda slow though
Michael says:
Yeah, maple may be faster.
Mr. Bean says:
yup, brb
Michael says:
I think maple is sort of a proprietary USB. * Maple is
actually proprietery serial