Wow! That was a heck of a lot of work and made for a fantastic detective story! Where can we download your code/tools if we want to try it out ourselves?
It is unfortunate that the literal floating point values in the .CA and .CT files are not interchangeable with the M100 version of SuperROM and have to be retyped manually. I wonder if your conversion tool could find those cells, use the M100's "FOUT" routine to convert them to ASCII, and then NEC's "FIN" routine to convert the ASCII to the PC-8000 floating point format. I know that'd be lossy, but I believe N82 BASIC was already lossy. What you typed wasn't always what would get saved in the program. In fact, I'm pretty sure I found some numbers which would change repeatedly every time the line was processed through N82's EDIT! —b9 On Thu, Oct 1, 2026 at 6:11 AM Gary Weber <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi B9, > > Actually an expanded version of that write up is right on the front page > current news on https://www.web8201.net/. Can't miss it! > Thanks for the info about VARPTR, I'll check into it. Maybe there was a > regression? Anyway thank you for the fixes. > > As for the web crawling issue, I believe I know where that configuration > was set up and I'll poke around a bit. > > Gary > > > > > On Thu, Oct 1, 2026 at 2:11 AM B 9 <[email protected]> wrote: > >> That’s exciting news, Gary! Could you please post a link to where you >> published your write-up? I tried googling >> <https://www.google.com/search?q=Slabtop+Computers+discord+server+in+the+%23NEC+channel> >> for it (in various >> <https://www.google.com/search?q=%22SuperROM%22+nec+8201+gary+weber> ways >> <https://duckduckgo.com/?ia=web&origin=funnel_home_website_measuresearchesaa_treatment&t=h_&q=%22SuperROM%22+nec+8201+gary+weber>) >> and it doesn’t seem to be available on the open web. I am unfamiliar with >> discord servers, but I see comments saying they are meant for private >> discussions, so maybe that’s the problem? >> >> Which reminds me, a while back on this mailing list we were talking about >> searchability and making sure knowledge is archived in multiple locations. >> I mentioned you and your most excellent web8201.net site, but I don’t >> know if you saw it. I said, >> >>> *“When I needed to implement VARPTR on the NEC PC-8201, I distinctly >>> recalled seeing a solution on web8201. Googling with various search >>> engines, even specifying the site >>> <https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aweb8201.net+varptr&udm=14&oq=site%3Aweb8201.net+varptr&sclient=gws-wiz-modeless-web-only> >>> explicitly, turned up nothing except people saying VARPTR doesn’t exist in >>> N82 BASIC. When I finally stumbled upon the VARPTR page >>> <https://web8201.net/default.asp?content=XCompat.asp> again, I tried to >>> save it in the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, the web8201.net >>> <http://web8201.net> server is configured so that web crawlers (like Google >>> and Internet Archive) get redirected >>> <http://waybackmachine.org/https://web8201.net/default.asp?content=XCompat.asp> >>> to https://default.asp/ <https://default.asp/>. I hope we can create a >>> public mirror of web8201.net <http://web8201.net> as it contains >>> information that I haven’t seen anywhere else.”* >> >> >> If you want, I can try to help you figure it out. I don’t know Microsoft >> IIS-10, but I believe it should be just a small configuration change to fix >> the issue. >> >> —b9 >> >> P.S. Your NEC VARPTR >> <https://web8201.net/default.asp?content=XCompat.asp> code has some >> minor typos. In line 40020, address 64455 is skipped. In line 40040, the >> variable *H* is used to mean both the address in memory and the >> character position in the string. Here’s a patched version which has those >> fixed and some other tweaks to reduce RAM and string space usage. >> >> 39999 'VARPTR >> 40000 H=0:L=0:TY=0:A=64448! >> 40010 POKEA,205:POKEA+1,175:POKEA+2,73:POKEA+3,235 >> 40020 POKEA+4,58:POKEA+5,139:POKEA+6,250:POKEA+7,201 >> 40030 L=LEN(VY$):IFL<1ORL>7THENPRINT"Invalid VY$!":STOP >> 40040 A=64457!:FORH=1TOL:POKEA,ASC(MID$(VY$,H,1)):A=A+1:NEXT:POKEA,0 >> 40050 POKE63912,201:POKE63913,251:EXEC64448 >> 40060 L=PEEK(63912!):H=PEEK(63913!):TY=PEEK(63911!) >> 40070 RETURN >> 40080 ' VARPTR for NEC 8201/8300 by Gary Weber of web8201.net >> 40090 ' Entry: VY$ must contain the name of variable of interest >> 40100 ' Exit: H & L contain variable's address, TY contains type >> 40110 ' Example: >> 40120 ' 100 A$="This is a sample string." >> 40130 ' 110 VY$="A$":GOSUB 40000 >> 40140 ' 120 PRINT "VARPTR of ";VY$;" is ";L+(H*256) >> 40141 ' >> 40144 ' Notes from hackerb9: >> 40150 ' Name in VY$ must be UPPERCASE. >> 40160 ' For EXEC, NEC's HL is @63912/3, register A is @63911. >> 40170 ' Address 64457 is an 8-byte, NULL-terminated copy of VY$. >> 40180 ' Line 40050 sets HL=64457. (64457 = 201 + 251*256). >> >> >> On Mon, Sep 28, 2026 at 11:41 AM Gary Weber <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Investigation into this type of project began in 2021. Well.... Guess >>> what? >>> [image: image.png] >>> >>> My big write-up is out on the Slabtop Computers discord server in the >>> #NEC channel so I didn't want to duplicate it here. >>> >>> But, basically, I'm looking for volunteers to help with testing the >>> mountain of features in this "pre-alpha" option ROM. >>> >>> -- >>> Gary Weber >>> [email protected] >>> >>
