Date   : Thu, 20 Oct 2005 01:53:28 +0100
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Adding copro support to BeebEm

David Hunt wrote:
> It's been a long, long time since my Father sweated over writing code on the
> Cambridge Co-Pro - he was writing something related to Oxford Uni., I asked
> him what it was ages ago, he can't remember.

That's interesting. I've been digging up what 32016 copro history I can 
(easier said than done!) over the years, and this is the first time I've 
heard of any Oxford uni connection.

Leicester and Cambridge unis had them for courses / evaluation, along 
with 32016-equipped ABC 2xx (Cambridge workstation) machines.

Qudos also used the ABC 2xx - but other than that there were never 
really Acorn 32016 boards in the wild far as I know (although I can 
believe that a few escaped to various unis)

> I've got the co-pro knocking around somewhere. There should be two, one with
> 1Mb of RAM for running code and a 4Mb one for debugging. 

Curious - photo of the 4MB board would be nice. The 4MB board for the 
Cambridge Workstation is huge and too big to fit in a BBC copro 'cheese 
wedge'. I've only seen 1MB boards in the cheese wedge, and 1MB boards 
also crop up in the Cambridge Workstation occasionally (same board). 
Never heard of a 4MB BBC 32016 copro though.

I'd *really* appreciate it if your father ever stumbles across a disk 
with his 32016 code on it btw - I'm trying to preserve anything I can 
related to Acorn's venturing into the 32016 world.

> I vaguely remember there was a user/supervisor mode like the 68000 and also
> like the PDP-11, but it wasn't very fast. 

Yeah, think I've heard that one before too (in relation to the 
Whitechapel, which was one of the few other machines to use the 32016)

> There was talk in Oxford of persuading Acorn to use the 32032 but I think
> they had already decided to stop producing the Cambridge Co-Pro.

Wouldn't surprise me. I don't think I've seen serial numbers about about 
130 for the 32016 beeb copro, or above 50 for the Cambridge Workstation; 
it was a bit of an evolutionary dead-end for Acorn (the BBC line was 
starting to show its age by then, and I guess ARM developments were 
already in the pipeline)

> Did Acorn ever make the promised Master Scientific? That was around March
> 1986.

I'm 99% sure that's a no. Various online texts reference it, but I've 
never heard of a real machine, so I think it was always vapourware.

(the often-seen statement that Xenix was available for the ABC 2xx seems 
to be just a rumour too)

> He also mentioned something about an FPU upgrade, I guess most modern OS's
> take FPU support for granted, it would have made a significant improvement
> to the jobs for which it was designed, e.g. mathematical/scientific.

For the 32016? The boards (1MB and the 4MB found in the ABC 2xx) do have 
a spare 40 pin socket on board; we were speculating what it was for over 
on classiccmp just the other week. MMU was one theory, or possibly a way 
of bringing the copro bus signals off-board.

Could you check the FPU aspect with your father? First time I've heard 
of that, but it'd sure make a lot of sense. Give him a poke to see if he 
kept any of his software too :-) (in around 30 boards I've never come 
across one which had that socket populated with anything)

Cambridge uni ditched their 32016 copros a short while ago incidentally. 
Qudos's ABC 2xx's ended up at a computer resellers in Sheffield years 
ago and from there went who knows where. It's possibly that Leicester's 
are still lurking in a cupboard there :-)

I need to get all this typed up and stuffed on the web when I get back 
to the UK - all the info's locked away in various email archives at the 
moment which isn't much use!

cheers

Jules