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Dracblade SBC with Catalina C, PropBasic, CP/M, MP/M, TRS80, wireless network, - Page 29 — Parallax Forums

Dracblade SBC with Catalina C, PropBasic, CP/M, MP/M, TRS80, wireless network,

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  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-10-12 06:28
    The A.DSK though - it's 32MB (B is 8MB). B works fine with the 'zicog' 8MB definition and cpmtools, but with A I get the list of files but it doesn't handle them correctly (and fsck.cpm complains). Well, it's 32MB and not 8MB so that's maybe not so strange. I can't find any 32MB disk image in the cpm2 archive from the simh link either, so I'm scratching my head over how to handle the A disk via cpmtools.

    Edit: And cpm2.x is limited to 8MB disk sizes anyway.. (unlike 3.x)

    -Tor
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2011-10-12 12:09
    tingo wrote: »
    I changed it before compiling it again (commented out the #define USER0_PS2_VGA). Shouldn't that give me a serial output version?
    I don't have a spare VGA monitor now (will get one next week, hopefully)
    Today I got a VGA monitor (a nice little 7 inch). I compiled a cpmvga.exe, put it on the sd card, connected up the monitor and a ps/2 keyboard and tested. It works, both in KyeDOS and in cp/m. :-)
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2011-10-12 12:56
    Another thing: the ps/2 keyboard has a US layout. I could change the table in Keyboard.spin, giving me a NO layout. But is that the correct way to "fix" it?
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2011-10-12 15:11
    Re the disk sizes I am trying to remember what we did there - it was either that it worked out quicker to only store one of 4 bytes because the prop works better in longs than in bytes, OR it really is 32Mb. I think it is the first one. Cluso99 knows more about this. I think you might have to copy over to a B drive and then use PIP to copy to A.

    Great to hear you have VGA working.

    I'm not sure about the keyboard layout - yes, change the table in Keyboard.spin, but maybe save that as a different filename eg KeyboardNO.spin and then change the include file. We can include that different keyboardNO.spin file in any future releases.

    There is a thread on the forum somewhere by Pullmoll with some of the other emulations, eg the Color Genie which is the one that can play Pacman.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-10-14 13:24
    Did some more experimentation.

    CP/M is much more responsive than MP/M, now it's more like I remember it. Had to move autoexec.sub over to B: first, to avoid it going into MP/M automatically.. I couldn't edit autoexec.sub in WordStar while in MP/M, it complained about not enough memory. That works fine too in CP/M. I'm in VGA, I think I saw something about WS and memory and VGA in an earlier post - I didn't start with serial (unlike tingo).

    The A drive really is 32MB, apparently, at least 'stat' says there's 25392k remaining bytes on A:.
    So apparently some trick was done to achieve that with CP/M 2.2. I'll learn more about the setup as I dive deeper into it I guess.

    Now that WordStar works things will look better. I'll have to install sid or zsid, that'll be fun. With the current responsiveness it looks great. I'll stick to CP/M I think - maybe I'll be experimenting with MP/M on my 16 MHz Z80 board instead.

    -Tor
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2011-10-14 15:53
    Sounds good. You are already going further than we did!

    There is something not right about MP/M. It crashes every now and then, but CP/M is rock solid.

    The autoexec is there if you want to use it to, say, run a menu program. Or print out a Help document with the CP/M commands on it (show a ">" to the ipod generation and they have no idea what to do next!)

    I am more and more convinced we can run this faster. In the last year more caching algorithms have been written and implemented (eg in Catalina C). At the moment, every time the Z80 emulation requests just one byte, it takes at least 20 pasm instructions to get that byte from external memory. With a cache it could be a lot less.

    The trick is to free up as much hub as possible to make room for a cache. Catalina has an 8k cache for instance, and with 64k of working space, that is a 8/64 probability of a cache hit (though it would be much higher since most reads and writes are sequential).

    Oh, by the way, if you want to run some games, try Pacman

    Unzip the attached files to a new folder. You can compile it yourself using BST and cgenie.spin. Or if you have Kyedos as your operating system, copy cgenie.exe to the sd card and run it from Kyedos. You will also need to copy all the .cmd files and cgenie.rom to the sd card.

    Run cgenie, select the file with the arrow keys (pacman is Mampf2.cmd) and just hit enter when it asks for the memory.

    This has sound too on prop pin 24.
    1024 x 768 - 79K
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2011-11-09 12:41
    Dr_Acula wrote: »
    I'm not sure about the keyboard layout - yes, change the table in Keyboard.spin, but maybe save that as a different filename eg KeyboardNO.spin and then change the include file. We can include that different keyboardNO.spin file in any future releases.
    Unfortunately I've been busy with other things, ENOTIME to make a Norwegian keyboard layout. But today I got a new keyboard for the machine (I wanted a compact one, and ordered a Cherry G84-4100), perhaps I will find time this weekend.
    Dr_Acula wrote:
    There is a thread on the forum somewhere by Pullmoll with some of the other emulations, eg the Color Genie which is the one that can play Pacman.
    Interesting. OS/9 would also be interesting.
  • Toby SeckshundToby Seckshund Posts: 2,027
    edited 2011-11-09 13:16
    I never got around to changing the keyboard layout, I started to look at it, thought I had it sussed and then found I didn't, and then got demoralized/busy. And now somebody seems to have arranged for another Christmas soon! The Licon Kbd that came with the Nascom never struck ne as being that different, after all I only had two keyboards the Nascom and a Creed 7B. I now see that it had a lot of the shifted number characters in a very German way.

    On a different track ... I have got hold of a scrap KVM box. It has cut outs for two 6 pin mini DIN sockets, a VGA socket, a RJ45 socket ( to be a USB ), a power socket and a side cut out that could be used for a uSD card. I wonder what could be put into that little box ????

    And it will lead to the eviction of the present chip. It has PIC written on it, whatever that is ... ;-)

    (although I have seen an emulation of a SC/MP NIBL on one of those)
    1024 x 768 - 97K
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2013-03-07 12:39
    This afternoone I took my DracBlade to my local hackerspace (Bitraf) and demonstrated it to interested people. I haven't played with the DracBlade in a long time.
    One question: since all cogs are used for either VGA or serial variants, I'm guessing it isn't possible to have display on both serial and the VGA display at the same time?
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2013-03-07 14:00
    It might be possible. Serial is one cog. Keyboard one cog. VGA two cogs. I can't recall all of them but there might be enough?
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2013-03-07 15:17
    Well, this is what it displays when I start it from serial:
    >cpm
    SIO initialized, 5 cogs free.
    KBD initialized, 4 cogs free.
    VGA initialized, 2 cogs free.
    qZ80 I/O starting...
    Volume serial #E3E6-DA22, label NO NAME    
    BOOT.DSK, sector 01F7C0, size 256, 2011-10-09 02:23:42
    A.DSK, sector 0237E0, size 32.0MB, 2011-10-09 02:23:42 contiguous - okay.
    B.DSK, sector 01F7E0, size 8.0MB, 2011-10-09 02:23:42 contiguous - okay.
    C.DSK, sector 01B7C0, size 8.0MB, 2011-10-09 02:23:42 contiguous - okay.
    I/O initialized, 1 cogs free.
    VT100 initialized, 0 cogs free.
    Going to start qz80. Goodbye Spin!
    
    64K CP/M Version 2.2 (qZ80, BIOS V1.27_Zi04, 3 HD, 21-Apr-2010)
    
    SuperSUB V1.1
    Submit file not found error on line number: 0
    
    A>
    
    If that "0 cogs free" is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt that), it looks like there isn't any cogs left...
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2013-03-07 19:14
    Did you copy that text off the VGA screen or from a terminal program?

    If it is from a terminal program, then there is a serial cog working. I am at work at the moment but I am fairly sure it outputs to both the display and to the serial port.
  • tingotingo Posts: 87
    edited 2013-03-08 10:05
    Dr_Acula wrote: »
    Did you copy that text off the VGA screen or from a terminal program?
    from a terminal program (cu, actually).
    Dr_Acula wrote:
    If it is from a terminal program, then there is a serial cog working. I am at work at the moment but I am fairly sure it outputs to both the display and to the serial port.
    Well, KyeDOS does output to both the serial and VGA, but apparently CPM does not.
    I'll do some more testing.
  • steddymansteddyman Posts: 91
    edited 2014-11-15 09:01
    Thread back from the dead alert!

    Can anybody tell me what the pinouts are of the SV1 LCD_Display connector on the board, and what is the model of LCD used?

    Thanks
  • I have a DracBlade v5 board that I built years ago, with an early image in the eeprom that kind of works, and I see from various threads that MPM and LCD support happened while I wasn't watching.

    Is somebody able to point me to the most recent spin files for the Dracblade v5, as well as the appropriate Top level spin file. I have found an archive called "Archives 21 Sep 2010" but that doesn't appear to have the complete set, or at least I am unable to identify the Top level spin fine.

    Thanks in advance, Doug

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