If you could make room for only one thing in the main rom, would it be a tpdd dos, or xmodem?
Remember, tpdd was only one of a few different kinds of disks, it's only a sort of defacto standard now because of various reasons, probably mostly because it works over the serial port and the protocol was simple enough to be reverse engineered and re-implimented by others, making all the emulators possible. If I had to choose one thing to go right into the main rom, I think I might actually go with xmodem or y or zmodem or kermit etc, some standard generic binary capable serial protocol, rather than tpdd. And rts/cts support in TELCOM & BASIC. That's probably the single thing about the 600 that I like. It has xmodem built in to it's telcom app, and that makes it no problem to recover from resets any time any where. You can regenerate the utility disk and install BASIC from scratch with just a serial cable and the downloaded files. What other things would people say should be in there, after 30 years of hindsight? How about, rather than some more software baked in, just more, and more useful hooks? Like how UR2 loads TS-DOS without containing TS-DOS, or like the few hooks that do exist that the DVI uses, but more and better? How about... the MFORTH rom with a minimal set of baked-in features, maybe implemented in forth themselves. Like right now there are a bunch of ML routines that various utils and BASIC all use, while this would be forth has all the ml, and everything else just uses forth. And the bulk of apps and utils would be forth programs in ram and as little as possible in rom. Use as much of the rom space as possible to make forth itself as good as possible. And the rom just has enough features baked-in to make it easy to load the real apps from elsewhere any time. I guess really I wouldn't want any rom at all except just something tiny that didn't do anything except load the real "os" from somewhere else, so you could do that forth idea and then have an updated forth the next year, but I'm trying to stay within the context of 1983 and Tandy's cost and time limits. On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 4:03 PM Kevin Becker <ke...@kevinbecker.org> wrote: > SCHEDL and ADDRSS could both go for me, but I suspect they are pretty small > > On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 3:56 PM, you got me <ven...@hotmail.com> wrote: > >> would ts-dos fit on the main rom if SCHEDULE was taken off? Who uses that? >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* M100 <m100-boun...@lists.bitchin100.com> on behalf of Kurt >> McCullum <ku...@fastmail.com> >> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 11, 2018 7:42:24 PM >> *To:* m100@lists.bitchin100.com >> *Subject:* Re: [M100] call for programs and games >> >> This brings a question to mind. The Tandy 200 and NEC 8201 (and 8300) >> have multiple banks. Since the 27c512 is identical to the 27c256 ROM with >> the exception of pin 1 which is for address 15. Could a 27C512 be inserted >> with pin 1 bent to stick out to the side and then a wire run from pin 1 to >> the enable pin of bank 2? So switching banks also switches OptRoms? >> >> I have read an article about installing a switch to do this but I wasn't >> sure if this could be done by taping the existing hardware. >> >> Kurt >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018, at 9:36 AM, Mike Stein wrote: >> >> >> Another simple approach that's often used is to have an adapter with an >> (E)EPROM large enough to hold several ROM images and a physical (or >> logical) switch to select among them (essentially what my adapter does, but >> with only one OptROM image). >> >> Unfortunately there's very little vertical clearance in these babies so >> there's not much room to use the old trick of stacking several chips with >> the select lines brought out the side. I haven't looked at my T102 but in >> the M100 there is enough room for one piggy-backed chip which would give >> you at least three 32KB OptROM images, but it does lift the keyboard >> slightly unless you remove the socket; depending on the socket used you >> might also gain some clearance if you trim the IC leads. >> >> Another approach to using several and/or larger ROMs is to make a little >> board that puts the chips upside down in the space beside the system ROM; >> as a matter of fact the plan with this prototype board was to add another >> RAM or ROM socket beside the existing one: >> >> >> >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Greg Swallow" <gswal...@mchsi.com> >> To: <m...@bitchin100.com> >> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 9:34 AM >> Subject: Re: [M100] call for programs and games >> >> > Multiple ROMs would be easy enough with a REX. Of course if the REX >> goes, you could be out of luck. >> >> >> > -- bkw
