Fuzix for the MSP430FR5969

David Given

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: MSP430FR5969, MSP-EXP430FR5969

Good news, everyone! I've just ported Alan Cox's Fuzix to the MSP430. It'll run on a MSP430FR5969 and supports up to four 23kB user processes via swapping to an SD card. There's a full Unix filesystem and a tonne of software. It's riddled with bugs, but is surprisingly snappy and usable.

This is running on a standard MSP430FR5969 Launchpad with the 43oh.com SD card boosterpack plugged into it. The console's via the USB UART. It's riddled with bugs, but there's enough running to be of interest.

You can find the source code here: https://github.com/davidgiven/FUZIX/tree/msp430

Here is a somewhat edited transcript from my serial terminal to prove it.

FUZIX version 0.1
Copyright (c) 1988-2002 by H.F.Bower, D.Braun, S.Nitschke, H.Peraza
Copyright (c) 1997-2001 by Arcady Schekochikhin, Adriano C. R. da Cunha
Copyright (c) 2013-2015 Will Sowerbutts <will@sowerbutts.com>
Copyright (c) 2014-2015 Alan Cox <alan@etchedpixels.co.uk>
Devboot
64kB total RAM, 23kB available to processes (4 processes max)
Enabling interrupts ... ok.
SD drive 0: hda: hda1 hda2 
Mounting root fs (root_dev=1): OK
Starting /init
init version 0.9.0ac#1
# mount
# df
Filesystem       Blocks   Used   Free  %Used Mounted on
df: cannot open /etc/mtab: No such file or directory
# prtroot
/dev/hda1 / fuzix rw
# prtroot > /etc/mtab
# df
Filesystem       Blocks   Used   Free  %Used Mounted on
/dev/hda1         20480   1218  18622     5% /
# ls
bin
dev
etc
init
tmp
usr
# cd tmp                                                                                     
# cp /bin/sh data
# ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     0           18111 Jan 01 00:03 data
# cp data data2
# cat data data2 > big
# ls -l
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root     0           36222 Jan 01 00:04 big
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     0           18111 Jan 01 00:03 data
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     0           18111 Jan 01 00:04 data2
# rm data2
# rm data
# wc big
   1696   3086  36222 big
# ls /bin > files
# wc -l files
    101 files
# cd /bin
# ls b*
banner
basename
bd
# banner Hello
H     H
H     H  eeeeee  l       l        oooo
H     H  e       l       l       o    o
HHHHHHH  eeeee   l       l       o    o
H     H  e       l       l       o    o
H     H  e       l       l       o    o
H     H  eeeeee  llllll  llllll   oooo
# ps
USER      PID   STAT    WCHAN   ALARM   COMMAND
root        1   Ready   0000    0       init
root        2   Ready   0000    0       /bin/sh
root       12   Running 0000    0       ps
# forth
 ok
BYE
# cd /usr/games
# ls
fish
wump
# ./fish
instructions?
yes

`Go Fish' is a childrens' card game.

(I would like to claim the record for the smallest physical hardware capable of beating me at Go Fish. Alas, Hunt the Wumpus doesn't run, for some reason.)

over 10 years ago

Ryan Brown1 over 10 years ago

TI__Guru**** 218277 points

Hi David,

Great work on porting this project to the MSP-EXP430FR5969 and thank you for making this announcement and sharing with the community! Be sure to also post your project to the 43oh forum so that it gets as much attention/interest from the community as it deserves. Perhaps some would even like to collaborate and help track down and fix some of those pesky bugs ;)

Regards,
Ryan

David Given over 10 years ago in reply to Ryan Brown1

Intellectual 280 points

Oh, I didn't think of the 43oh forums. Will do. Ta, and thanks for the kind words.

Brian Boorman over 10 years ago in reply to David Given

Guru 25210 points

Ah, to have time to work on cool things like this. You must not have kids.

David Given over 10 years ago in reply to Brian Boorman

Intellectual 280 points

Erm... I think the standard answer is 'none that I know of'?

I've jut managed to get the games working; these four of the classic games from V7 Unix (where a lot of the userland software comes from). Backgammon, Hunt the Wumpus, Arithmetic and Go Fish. These were probably written in about 1979. I'm really not kidding about this being a Unix.

Incidentally, most of the problems were alignment issues. Fuzix was originally written for the Z80, which didn't care about alignment, but the MSP430 does. And, unfortunately, I haven't found a way to make the MSP430 do anything useful on unaligned access, like trap --- instead it just returns the wrong answer / writes to the wrong piece of memory. Anyone know a way to do this?

(Also, an MSP430 with more than 64kB of FRAM would be nice. I see that the FR6989 has 128kB. I wonder if they'll make a Launchpad for it...)

David Given over 9 years ago in reply to David Given

Intellectual 280 points

The port's been accepted into the main Fuzix distribution, so the source URL is now github.com/.../FUZIX.

Also, mutistage pipelines work! I've tried it with three processes, but it should work with arbitrarily many (up to the limit of the size of your process table). It swaps to disk to switch between them.

Blake TI Community over 9 years ago in reply to David Given

TI__Guru* 92935 points

Thanks for sharing David. Also noting you can share this project here on Launch Your Designs (see here) and as well a different site that is also great for project sharing is Hackster.io (see here) with some examples of projects (here).

We also run Webinars from time to time if you ever want to present any of your work and efforts in this regard to othes.

old_cow_yellow over 9 years ago in reply to David Given

Guru 58965 points

David Given said:
(Also, an MSP430 with more than 64kB of FRAM would be nice. I see that the FR6989 has 128kB. I wonder if they'll make a Launchpad for it...)

www.ti.com/.../msp-exp430fr6989

David Given over 9 years ago in reply to old_cow_yellow

Intellectual 280 points

Ooh, I haven't seen the FR5969 board. That looks really nice...

...I don't suppose there's an MSP430 with an external memory interface, is there? I'd be surprised if there was, as it would need lots of pins (at least 36, I'd expect). But that chip *does* seem to have a lot of pins, and being able to hook up an SRAM chip and running properly big programs would be awesome.

Chester Gillon over 9 years ago in reply to David Given

Guru 92251 points

David Given said:
...I don't suppose there's an MSP430 with an external memory interface, is there?

The MSP430 CPU doesn't support an external parallel memory interface.

I have seen some projects which use an external SPI SRAM to extend the memory available to the application. e.g. https://github.com/MetaWatchOpenProjects/MetaWatch-Gen2/blob/05c3160de6f6acb201e2045596cffd7d5d240886/Watch/Application/SerialRam.c which uses DMA to perform SPI transfers to/from a SPI SRAM.

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Fuzix for the MSP430FR5969