Author Topic: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project  (Read 30621 times)

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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« on: May 25, 2015, 07:37:27 am »
Dave goes back 20 years and find an old PC Based Logic Analyser project of his that was published in Electronics Australia magazine back in 1996. He uncovers the original timing diagrams, schematics, and prototype. And tries to resurrect the old Borland Pascal 7 source code and Lattice ispLSI PLD chip code.
And the old Protel Autotrax for DOS PCB and schematic files.
Will it all work 20 years later?
A bonus side detour into the venerable Tektronix TDS210/220 oscilloscope.

Original articles: http://www.eevblog.com/files/PCLA-Article-ElectronicsAustralia.pdf
Original design notes: http://www.eevblog.com/files/PCLA-OriginalDesignNotes.pdf

 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2015, 08:11:27 am »
There was no web in 1995? sure it was, maybe not for AOLers or later arrivals.

Btw nice video  :-+
 

Offline ktulu

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2015, 09:29:03 am »
Here are the two EXE files patched for Error 200. I hope Dave don't mind it.
(PCLA10 needs to be run under DOSBOX)
« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 09:38:37 am by ktulu »
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2015, 11:02:30 am »
There was no web in 1995? sure it was

Yeah but it had bugger-all.
No such thing as online e-commerce, manufacturers with websites and PDF data sheets like we take for granted these days. Altavista was the search engine of choice, not that you ever found much. No such things as blogs or online video, or even modern forums, usenet still ruled that world.
There was basically nothing on there of real worth for a designer at the time.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2015, 11:08:08 am »
Here are the two EXE files patched for Error 200. I hope Dave don't mind it.
(PCLA10 needs to be run under DOSBOX)

Wow, just ran it, totally forgot what the main menu or disassembly screens looked like!
 

Offline firewalker

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2015, 11:08:52 am »
Is the source code available? :D

Alexander.
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Offline gemby

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2015, 11:22:07 am »
I was always wondering, how big and complex projects, like this one are made in those days. Today it is very much different, you can simulate almost everything, including hardware in hardware. In those days, it requires much more knowledge, time and devotion to bring out something like this. I remember, long time ago ( in galaxy, far, far away, off course ) i was trying to make programable digital timer for photography, made entirely in TTL logic, ok, this one came to documentation phase only, no prototype has been made, but it was hundreds, and hundreds of hours, shitload of printed documentation, and all done on paper and all simulations are done in head. Today, i would not even think of TTL logic, and not even try to assemble anything before simulation. Probably not even put anything on paper at all, it will all be in digital form.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2015, 11:23:32 am »
Is the source code available? :D

I'd mail it to you on a 3.5" or 5.25" floppy back in the day  :-+
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #8 on: May 25, 2015, 11:34:19 am »
Your software looks nice...

Drill 717 holes by hand? Rather you than me.


PS: Tab indent size 8 on a DOS screen in Turbo Pascal? Fail! 3 or 4 indents and you're half way across the screen.

« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 11:52:43 am by Fungus »
 

Offline vlad777

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2015, 11:58:22 am »
How many Davids are there in your world?
Old Protel runs fine in DosBox emulator under W7.
Windows 7 and up doesn't run 16 bit programs.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 12:03:51 pm by vlad777 »
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Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #10 on: May 25, 2015, 12:00:03 pm »
Thanks a lot for the video! No nostalgia for me since I was five years old at the time. But I do know some of this stuff. Some time ago I helped my grandfather to run code that he wrote in the nineties using Borland Pascal 7. It was a pretty heavy graphical application for simulating thermo-dynamic systems, like power plants, somewhere around 30k lines of code. First we ran into all sorts of troubles to just launch the damn exe. Same error 200, lots of screwed up timings etc. And then we recompiled all the code to make sure we were able to reproduce the thing.

We tried a lot of different methods to run this stuff on modern machines: DOS on bare metal, Windows XP, Dosbox, Bochs simulator, QEMU, VMware and finally Virtual Box. All of them had some quircks, but in the end the absolute best environment was a VirtualBox VM. VirtualBox enables you to simulate hardware that's recognized by DOS without any workarounds, graphics are good, you can attach iso images on the fly to get files into the VM, slow down the CPU etc. I can export my VM with DOS installed and ready to go if anyone is interested.
 

Offline vlad777

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #11 on: May 25, 2015, 12:06:50 pm »
What 30k lines of code?
Tell us about this project, how many people ,did it sell.... ?
Mind over matter. Pain over mind. Boss over pain.
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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #12 on: May 25, 2015, 12:08:14 pm »
Drill 717 holes by hand? Rather you than me.

No drill press either, all with a small hand drill.
 

Offline vlad777

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #13 on: May 25, 2015, 12:37:45 pm »

This is one of my first projects ,26 March 1998.
I was in high school ,but did this in my own time.
Looks like I used a wrong layer on some components, ups, no color monitor at the time.
Spoiler alert , it doesn't work.
Mind over matter. Pain over mind. Boss over pain.
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Offline hikariuk

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #14 on: May 25, 2015, 12:55:38 pm »
How many Davids are there in your world?
Old Protel runs fine in DosBox emulator under W7.
Windows 7 and up doesn't run 16 bit programs.

Windows 7 64-bit and up don't run 16-bit programs; Windows 7 32-bit still has WoW (as opposed to WoW64) for running 16-bit Windows programs.

The best way of running old DOS applications is probably just to use DOSBox though, as Dave appeared to be doing in some of the video.
I write software.  I'd far rather be doing something else.
 

Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #15 on: May 25, 2015, 01:36:27 pm »
What 30k lines of code?
Tell us about this project, how many people ,did it sell.... ?

Nope, it was purely an academic/research project, it was designed by professors, and many features were implemented by PhD students. I'm not sure how much I can tell in detail since the thing contains a lot of data about actual power plants. For the same reason the program had a copy protection to prevent people from taking it outside the university and it gave us a hard time to run the thing before we could recompile it. But my grandfather was very happy to see that this project could still work after all the time he spent on it back in the day.
 

Offline Tek_TDS220

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #16 on: May 25, 2015, 02:23:58 pm »
"TDS 220....  Who can remember that?"  Just used one yesterday.  It gave me the data I needed.
 

Offline vlad777

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #17 on: May 25, 2015, 05:17:47 pm »
What 30k lines of code?
Tell us about this project, how many people ,did it sell.... ?

Nope, it was purely an academic/research project, it was designed by professors, and many features were implemented by PhD students. I'm not sure how much I can tell in detail since the thing contains a lot of data about actual power plants. For the same reason the program had a copy protection to prevent people from taking it outside the university and it gave us a hard time to run the thing before we could recompile it. But my grandfather was very happy to see that this project could still work after all the time he spent on it back in the day.


Wait, I just realized...
PhD students writing in Pascal?
That doesn't sound right, how come?


(Pascal was always a noob lang at universities.)
Mind over matter. Pain over mind. Boss over pain.
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Offline mushroom

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #18 on: May 25, 2015, 05:57:42 pm »
Pascal was very popular in french universities...

Why... ? Probably because of Philippe Kahn. (Google that name)

On my side, I got Turbo Pascal (don't remember what version, maybe 3 or 4...), and immediately switched to TurboC 1.5. I *NEVER* used again this "language" (as crappy as Basic)
 

Offline zapta

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #19 on: May 25, 2015, 06:26:52 pm »
Pascal was very popular in french universities...

Why... ? Probably because of Philippe Kahn. (Google that name)

And then another Frenchmen invented Ada which is Pascal on steroids.

BTW, Philippe Kahn was also one of the pioneers of merging cameras and cell phones which at the time looked as a kitchen sink approach.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2015, 06:42:45 pm by zapta »
 

Offline coppice

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #20 on: May 25, 2015, 06:47:39 pm »
There was no web in 1995? sure it was

Yeah but it had bugger-all.
No such thing as online e-commerce, manufacturers with websites and PDF data sheets like we take for granted these days. Altavista was the search engine of choice, not that you ever found much. No such things as blogs or online video, or even modern forums, usenet still ruled that world.
There was basically nothing on there of real worth for a designer at the time.
Didn't you ever come across sites like cdrom.com? That had lots of electronic design material in the mid 90s.
 

Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #21 on: May 25, 2015, 06:55:37 pm »
I wasn't working in the IT field at that time, but according to this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal

TP had a lot of advantages: first integrated IDE, small code footprint, super fast compilation, TPU modules with reusable code were available for a lot of tasks, and 50$ retail price, even by today standards is unbeatable. Performance-wise it's closer to C than to Basic. I think Pascal programmers would take offense for putting the two in the same basket.
 

Online Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #22 on: May 25, 2015, 07:04:59 pm »
TP had a lot of advantages: first integrated IDE, small code footprint, super fast compilation, TPU modules with reusable code were available for a lot of tasks, and 50$ retail price, even by today standards is unbeatable.
I dunno. My copy of Visual Studio was free to download and includes quite a lot of stuff.

Performance-wise it's closer to C than to Basic. I think Pascal programmers would take offense for putting the two in the same basket.
Pascal was a terrible language. Fundamentally broken: http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html

 

Offline zapta

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #23 on: May 25, 2015, 07:18:21 pm »
I think Pascal programmers would take offense for putting the two in the same basket.

Don't pay attention to language war trolling. :)

TP set a new standard for developer productivity at the time.
 
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Offline Carl_Smith

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Re: EEVblog #747 - PC Based Logic Analyser Project
« Reply #24 on: May 25, 2015, 07:37:08 pm »
I did a lot of programming in Borland's Turbo Pascal, and I liked it a lot.  I still have all the books taking up space in one of my bookshelves even though I hadn't looked at one of them in years until today.  One of the things I liked was all the extra books that came with example material, like the Gameworks, Graphix, Editor, and Database toolbox books.  I spent countless hours back in the 80's reading through these learning programming and algorithms.  It was just amazing to me to have the full source code for something like a fully functional DOS text editor that I could just go through and examine as I pleased.



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