All desktop PCs will have 8-channel OCTART super-simple high speed serial ports
to replace USB. They are simpler because the driver is as simple as old school RS232 Serial, they have no USB end-points and they have no USB human interface
device reports. Computer mice will all have exactly two bttns and one wheel.
Game controllers will all be the standard deluxe game console controllers that
are popular today. It will have 8 big TX and 8 big RX fifos that allow flow
control characters to jump the queue. It should be locked-down to as few
options as possible, like 8-1-N only, although hardware may use a USB frame, not
an RS232, so stop bits might not be relevant. Perhaps, just two baud rates --
high and low speed are needed. Low speed is good for slow microcontrollers and
allows longer cable length. Keyboard, mouse and game controller can be low
speed.
The USB creators banned generic devices, requiring a signed, certified driver
for everything! That's no good. We allow any device and will communicate,
generically, using a serial terminal program like the old school HyperTerminal,
XTalk or Telnet.
A mouse packet interface should be similar to this:
TX: <ENTER>
RX: X:+3 Y:+0 Wheel:+0 LB:OFF RB:OFF
TX: <ENTER>
RX: X:+0 Y:-1 Wheel:+0 LB:ON RB:OFF
We aspire to be as simple as a Commodore 64 joystick driver:
VAL=PEEK(56321)
if VAL AND 1 THEN y=y-1
if VAL AND 2 THEN y=y+1
if VAL AND 4 THEN x=x-1
if VAL AND 8 THEN x=x+1
The game controller will be more complicated, but much simpler than USB. It
will use a standard text packet of some kind.
On the other end, you might hook-up a thermostat microcontroller and interface
as a generic serial device. The microcontroller in the thermostat would have
something simple, not a crazy overkill ethernet connection.
U8 b;
while (TRUE) {
b=ReadU8(2); //Read byte from high speed serial channel 2.//(Has been configured for low baud because thermostat should be slow.)if (b==CMD_UP)
temperature++;
elseif (b==CMD_DOWN)
temperature--;
}
Super-simple block devices will replace ATA/ATAPI hard drives and
CD/DVD/BlueRays. Today, the industry is in flux with nonvolitile memory just
invented. We want a super-simple block device interface for non-volitile memory
and for what is currently USB memory sticks, but only if they can be made
without bad blocks. I don't think we want to deal with bad block memory, so
maybe we will not do NV-memory. The standard TempleOS desktop will require a
hard disk.
There will be minimal commands: READ_BLOCK, WRITE_BLOCK, GET_CAPACITY,
GET_MODEL, GET_SERIAL_NUM, and EJECT.
We want a CPU mode with virtual IO port addresses similar to how paging creates
virtual memory addresses. We want a 65536 word look-up table that converts
virtual IO port numbers to physical IO port numbers. There will be a standard
IO port configuration, so port numbers can be fixed in the code. We want the
primary hard drive on one set of ports and the primary CD/DVD/Blu-ray on another
set of ports. Choose a contiguous set of IO ports.
Meanwhile, a complicated PCI interface can be designed along-side the TempleOS
interface for Windows and Linux. It would almost be possible to carry-on
separate lives, however, the super-simple serial requires getting rid of USB
since super-simple serial is a new hardware standard. People can add USB ports
with a PCI device card.
God said He wants single-voice 8-bit signed MIDI-like sample for the sound. God
does not want death screams, perhaps, because God has PTSD or soldiers have
PTSD. (Imagine wounded on battlefields.)
The video will be a linear frame buffer 640x480 16 color with one-byte-per-pixel
even though it is only 16 color with is 4-bit. Perhaps, we have a interrupt to
sync with the refresh.
I am tmpted to help amateur hardware device designers by making the hardware
interface for the PC simple. I have fond memories of 1993, when I made a
wire-wrapped ISA data acquisition card which plugged into my 486 and had some
analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog convertors. I am not designing a bus.
Earlier, I said the super-simple high speed serial port replacement could be
USB-like in hardware as long as the software driver interface was simple like
old school RS232 serial ports. Requiring a complicated hardware handshake
raises the bar, slightly, for the lowest level hardware designers. Most people
will be connecting a microcontroller or something that already has a serial
communication design, but if it's not a problem, maybe we should keep it simple
at all stages. It was nice putting an oscilloscope on my serial port wires.
The original PC had general purpose digital IO through the parallel port. That
was fun. I have enough battles to fight, so I'll leave being a savior to
hobbiest hardware engineers to somebody else.
Digital cameras will be super-simple high speed serial, but TempleOS is forever
limited to 16 colors and multimedia is banned because large files being loaded
into memory fragments memory, so cameras are somewhat unwelcome. I have enough
problems without making the Brits anxious about autonomous gun turrets and
killer robots. The reason I say cameras will be super-simple serial is because
we are replacing USB ports with super-simple serial. PC's will have only
super-simple serial ports unless people buy a USB PCI expansion card. So, the
digital cameras will be super-simple serial.
Version 1.0
We will make a spec for a $8,000, perfectly standardized, cryogenically-cooled,
monster desktop PC. It will have 16 cores, integrated 4K graphics, and,
hopefully, 6 Ghz continuous operation. Perhaps, 64 Gig of RAM will be standard?
God said to help to poor buy them. It is pointless to have a high powered
machine if other people have wimpy machines and cannot run programs you write.
Therefore, everybody in the developed world will buy a Standard TempleOS IBM PC
over the next ten years, so that will be a quantity of 400 million, perhaps.
God said to pay the US national debt with the revenue. We will standardize
everything, not just the TempleOS related items. The display will be 4K (and of
course 640x480 16 color) and no others. Everybody gets just one monitor, unless
you buy special PCI cards. Everybody gets two speakers, a headphone, a mic, a
webcam and touch scrn. We make the audio one sample rate and one sample size,
but TempleOS still gets just a square wave. (HD Audio is really screwed-up and
requires complicated artificial intelligence, just to route output to speakers.)
The Standard Temple IBM PC will be a full-sized tower. Perhaps, stain-glass
will decorate the case because God is sentimentally attached to stained-glass.
We should set the size at exactly 2.5 feet by 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet as in the Exodus,25:10-10 for all time. If there is extra room, make a storage shelf for
DVDs. We do not want a race-to-the-bottom, shrinking the size. Instead of
making it smaller, make it more powerful. We want to remove all cost pressure
from making things small. It must have a CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive. The vision is
CD/DVDs used for a library of games, not installed on the hard-drive. We need a
network connection, possibly implemented as a super-simple high speed serial
device. What about standard monitor and speakers? The C64's success was
partially due to wide spread, completely standard, hardware. I think TempleOS
will not do bad block devices, so we need a hard drive, not just NV-memory or
SSD.
TempleOS will have the priority over Windows or Linux on hardware decisions. We
could make it heterogenious multicore. I think we want 16 non-hyperthreaded
cores. Core#0 is the only full-featured core needed. The other cores will have
long mode, but not some of these: real mode, protected mode, ring-3, paging,
interrupts, in/out port instructions, SSE instructions, MMX instructions.
God said Intel should do a simulation of heat produced by gates and try
spreading-out the heat producing gate circuits on the chip.
God said Linux's Wine should replace Windows. We will install a standard
software set-up on all Standard Temple IBM PC's.
Usage
TempleOS is primarily for user developers, like the Commodore 64 was. I created
a total of 50 Meg of content over ten years, so you shouldn't need much room,
either. The installed hard drive space should stay small because the resolution
is low, multimedia is banned, 3rd party libraries are banned, and applications
can be distributed with ISO files or DVDs.
The ROM will have a command that copies the ROM onto the hard drive, creating
identical C and D partitions, so you can have fun modifying TempleOS. You will
have confidence you can fix it easily if you break it. It should be able to run
everything from just the ROM, too. You will need to specify a /Home directory
that is not in the ROM, but on the hard drive.
The standard set-up will be a C primary drive and a D back-up drive. Keep the
size on each hard drive under 512 Meg and periodically copy all of C to D, so
they stay mirrored. The file manager and other programs read the entire
directory structures, so too many files causes problems (unbearably slow).
Third party software should be distributed as ISO files or DVDs, like TextAdventure.ISO. No 3rd party libraries are permitted because they circumvent
the intent of the 100,000 line of code limit which is keeping it cognatively
small enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel and easily master
everything. Therefore, 3rd party ISO files must bring all required software
components with them, except what is found in the TempleOS ROM.
Having all your 3rd party software on separate DVDs or ISO files and TempleOS
running from a ROM, keeps it delightfully simple so you have complete
understanding of what is going on. You will have complete confidence and it
will be a joy to use. 3rd party applications can store saved data files into
your /Home hard drive directory.
The Temple PC will stay unchanged for seven years at a time. The Bible speaks
of a seven year release in Deuteronomy,15:1. The Commodore stayed unchanged for
many years and people became intimately familiar with every aspect.
I thought 2.5' x 1.5' x 1.5' was ridiculously big, but it looks like it is
reasonable for super-cooled refrigeration systems!
Version 2.0
The Standard Temple IBM PC V2.0 will be released seven years after V1.0. Each
unit will have a full, uncut, silicon wafer. V2.0 will be sold, unchanged, for
seven more years, like a Commodore 64.
* "Commodore 64" is a trademark owned by Polabe Holding NV.
* "Linux" is a trademark owned by Linus Torvalds.
* "Windows" is a trademark owned by MicroSoft Corp.
