baidicoot/8-bit-risc-machine

A small, 8-bit VM running a RISC instruction set. Programmed in Rust/Cargo. Created for a DofE project!

8-bit-risc-machine

A small, 8-bit VM running a semi-RISC instruction set. Programmed in Rust/Cargo. Created for a DofE project!

The machine

The machine is like any normal 8-bit computer, except that the fundamental flaw with 8-bit machines, namely their lack of memory, is solved not with 16-bit memory addresses, but instead with 'ports'. Each 'port' has 256 bytes of memory, and the machine has 8 ports, and has instructions for each one, like save/load. The idea is that each port has different processes attached, for example, in this VM port 100 is for I/O. Commands are entered into these ports exactly how memory is saved, removing the need for interrupt sequences.

How to use

Currently supported commands are:

run - runs a .red or .rex file
compile - compiles a .rasm file to a specified location

For an example try:

cargo run --release run example.red

N.B. Please run the release version, otherwise overflow will be disabled, and result in a panic. Yeah, I know. I couldn't be bothered to implement wrapping.

FAQ

Why the hell don't you have wrapping?

I'm lazy.

Why did you make this? Seriously, why?

Because I couldn't be bothered to learn assembly, so I decided to create my own.