At 12:58 22-05-97 -0400, you wrote:
>Can some one explain to me what is Turbo R relative to MSX standards?.
>
>I keep hearing about this, I asked some questions about it on the newsgroup
>but no one cared to answer.
Ahhhh ;)
MSX turboR was released in 2 versions, the Panasonic FS-A1ST in 1990, and
the Panasonic FS-A1GT in 1991.
Minimum turboR memory spec's are a 256 kB memory mapper, but the 'GT' has
512kB.
The turboR has, next to the Z80 (which is integrated in the MSX-Engine, a
single chip which also does I/O 'n stuff) a R800 processor. Basically this
is a customized Z180, although some may disagree. Truth however is that the
R800 supports the same UNDOCUMENTED opcodes as the Z180. (Z80 has
undocumented SLL instructions where the R800 has some weird 'test and set'
instructions)
There is a lot of disagreement on the R800 speed. Fact is, it's about 8
times faster than a 3.58 MHz Z80. (ADD HL,DE instruction is 20 times faster
I believe)
Altough the external databus is still 8 bits, the internal stucture is pure
16 bit. The turboR was therefor marketed by Panasonic as a 16-bit system.
(There's even a cool instruction that multiplies two 16 bit numbers to form
a 32 bit answer in HLDE :)
Other things in turboR are standard MSX-DOS 2.31 build in (2.30 in 'ST')
and a PCM-channel. The MSX-MUSIC like in most MSX2+'s and the FM-PAC is
also added to the standard.
The FS-A1ST has a firmware wordprocessor, but aimed at the Japanese
language, and also 8kB SRAM. The FS-A1GT has a firmware GUI, called
MSX-View and has 16kB SRAM. The fun is, that 16kB SRAM is actually an
SRAM-Disk. So you can just call it drive D:! (The ROM which the MSX-View
and MSX-DOS2 programs are on in drive C:, a ROM-drive) This way you'll
instantly boot into MSX-DOS2, faster than any PC!
The turboR standard also standardizes many things like slot-layout, for
example the RAM should always be in slot 3.
That about all I can think of right now. I'm a proud owner of a GT, and I'm
pretty damn happy with it too! :)
>Also, GEN80 vs ZEN80 assemblers, are they different or the same?
I don't know ZEN80, but I prefer WB-ASS2 or COMPASS anyway...
Greetz,
Patriek
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