DECstation2040

I'd be ok with it if it's possible to use all the insights and software from after that, we'd just be constrained by the hardware - the Amiga 4000, Apple Mac Quadra 840av 128 MB or a Pentium 66 MHz or the 486 DX2-66 with 64 MB ram. Can't we achieve something like this now with microcontrollers like ESP32 or RP2040? This project runs a ca. 1990 scientific workstation (not just a PC) on an RP2040: https://github.com/rscott2049/DECstation2040

I was gifted an old Sparcstation, but it didn't have a hard drive, and while I had a suitable drive, I didn't have the cable - and then I looked up its performance, and never bothered to get it running. It would have been about the equivalent of a 486, when we already had Athlon 64x2 readily available. And, the future marches on, such as the DECstation 3000 emulator that runs on an RP2040. [0] Seeing a cheap microcontroller doing something like that makes me laugh out loud. [0] https://github.com/rscott2049/DECstation2040

> The PSRAM/HyperRAM PIO engine provides 42/32 MB/s (write/read) of memory bandwidth. Further, four PIO engines are used to provide four seperate read/write memory ports. This allows independent memory access for the emulated CPU, video DMA, and receive/send Ethernet traffic. Note that all 32 instruction slots are used. > The video PIO engine can support up to a sysclk/2 pixel rate. Thus, for the 300 MHz sysclk typically used, it is possible to run 1080p60 at a pixel rate of 148.5 MHz. The default video rate is 1024 x 768 @ 70Hz, as this matches the screen used for development and the pixel rate is an integral divisor from sysclk. Only five PIO instruction slots are used. PIO code https://github.com/rscott2049/DECstation2040/blob/main/sw/ps... Amazing