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Does anyone else here play with the Emac 8085 Primer Trainer? — Parallax Forums

Does anyone else here play with the Emac 8085 Primer Trainer?

KotobukiKotobuki Posts: 82
in General Discussion
Does anyone here use the Emac 8085 Primer Trainer? I have the Extended op system that allows downloading code from a computer. It is a nice unit that has upgrades from the old and venerable SDK trainer. Does anyone know of a community for this? Google has not been my friend with this search.

Thank you again,

Best,

J

Comments

  • DaveJensonDaveJenson Posts: 375
    Kotobuki wrote: »
    Does anyone here use the Emac 8085 Primer Trainer? I have the Extended op system that allows downloading code from a computer. It is a nice unit that has upgrades from the old and venerable SDK trainer. Does anyone know of a community for this? Google has not been my friend with this search.

    Thank you again,

    Best,

    J

    First try on Google gives me this page:

    emacinc.com/primer-trainer

  • KotobukiKotobuki Posts: 82
    Hi Dave,

    I was not very specific with my post, but I was looking for a forum type of thing specifically for the Primer Trainer. The company site is very good and informational.

    Thank you very much :-)

    Best,

    J

  • DigitalBobDigitalBob Posts: 1,513
    Looks like any typical 8085 simple setup. You might want to get a copy of the Intel 8085 instruction set this will help you with your programing. You will probably have to key in a monitor program this way the 2764 eprom has a routine. So that the trainer has some sort of OS to scan the keyboard etc. Ounce your monitor program is running then you can key in or load programs like making a simple calculator etc. Look at the primer trainer lab manual.
    I like using an Arduino to program the 2764 as a stand alone this way I can write an entire routine check it and just pop the 2764 back into the trainer.
  • neuroklinikneuroklinik Posts: 2
    Kotobuki wrote: »
    Does anyone here use the Emac 8085 Primer Trainer? I have the Extended op system that allows downloading code from a computer. It is a nice unit that has upgrades from the old and venerable SDK trainer. Does anyone know of a community for this? Google has not been my friend with this search.

    Thank you again,

    Best,

    J

    Hi! I have one of these, with MOS 2.7 from March of '96. My ROM accepts hex downloads of ASM I cross-compile with the DOS assembler provided by EMAC from their FTP site. My development environment is Ubuntu 14.04 running on an Intel NUC, using a cheap-o USB to RS-232 adapter I bought off eBay for a couple of bucks.

    I just dug this thing back out after not playing with it for three years. I'd just about finished a little coding project, a recreation of the "follow me" game Simon. It heavily relies on MOS routines, but allows one to play a game of Simon (here called ECHO8085) on an attached terminal emulator. The code draws an ANSI game board, and uses the EMAC Primer piezo beeper to generate the tones to match the colors shown on the ANSI terminal. Player interaction is via the terminal keyboard.

    I'll get this code cleaned up and post it to a GitHub repo tonight for anyone interested to mess about with. It's not perfect, but was my first attempt at learning some 8085 asm, and as I said it relies heavily on MOS ROM routines.

    Christopher
  • neuroklinikneuroklinik Posts: 2
    I should add that I also rely on DOSBox in my development environment. I run the ma85.exe cross-compiler there, and also use an old DOS ANSI terminal emulator called ProComm to talk to the EMAC Primer when running the game code.

    The ANSI welcome screen and gameboard were drawn in TheDraw, a DOS ANSI editor.

    Christopher
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