[cctalk] Re: Fun with PDP11 Assembly Language

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Sep 10, 2025, at 1:34 PM, Jim Davis via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Yep, 16 bits, or even 32 seemed like a lot, If you're writing asm, It is.
> But like you alluded to, it's not good enough for the stuff we expect today,

That depends a lot on what sort of "stuff" you work with.

For various fun projects I use the Raspberry Pico, which is a 32 bit 
microcontroller with 1/4 or 1/2 MB of RAM, which is quite a lot.  But a bunch 
of that work uses the PIO engines -- basically programmable state machines that 
talk to the I/O pins.  Those have 16 bit instructions, and a 32 word program 
memory.  No data RAM, just a couple of registers.  Quite powerful, though.  One 
application is the DDCMP controller I published a while ago.  I'm thinking 
about making it talk Ethernet in software as the next exercise...

        paul