Date   : Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:03:42 +0100
From   : info@... (Sprow)
Subject: ARM7 CoPro Demo Stuff

In article <d37becd6a4b4b942c2b17d6510f6e6dc@...>,
   Joel Rowbottom <joel@...> wrote:
> One of the things I'd quite like to bring to the Wakefield Show this
> weekend is the ARM7 CoPro, as part of an exhibit showing 'new stuff for the
> Beeb'. However, the last time I did this it was pretty new and didn't have
> any software for it.

Tricky: the demo needs to make use of the RAM and speed while not being
bottle necked waiting for the host to finish drawing. Something like a more
complex scene from Elite would be ideal, since there's lots of trig needed
along with big lists of triangles, some cropping and clipping of lists, but
the output is just drawing a few lines.

What you don't want is a pixel intensive scene (ie. lots of sprites) as the
copro will very quickly get stuck waiting for the host to release the Tube.

I'm rubbish at graphics, which is why I stick to utility things.

Also - you could write a portion of the code in C (app note on my website)
which should make things simpler. There was a recursive fractal plotter a
while back on the BBC Micro mailing list, while massively faster on the
coprocessor the picture was a little dull
  http://mdfs.net/Archive/BBCMicro/2006/03/09/190312.htm

> Just staring at the reset message to show it's got 16MB RAM gets
> a bit boring after a few seconds too ;)

Ah, you want a 64MB one then - you can stare at that for minutes...
Sprow.