> The disk drive seems to be an 5.25" drive. Does anyone know more about them?
> Are they double-sided? How many sectors per track, number of tracks?
It's a standard 5,25" 360Kb PC diskdrive. (40T, double-sided, 9sect/trk)
For a trivia: The floppydrive unit itself was not build by Sharp: It's from
Elebra. :)
The interface, case and powersupply where Sharp's.
Elebra was a tradicional brazilian maker of floppydrives and hard-disks for PC
computers.
Today they're a shadow of themselves, smashed by a irresponsible sundelly
importations wave liberated by the 1991 president... Sad. (
http://www.elebra.com.br/ )
A great part of the Brazilian computer related companies break down a few years
later. Even worse for MSX related companies... :(
But forget about it, there's nothing more to do. And that "president" was
impeached anyway.
> Does it use a wd279x interface? And is it I/O port based?
Yes, it uses a wd279x. But it's not I/O port based. I have the I/O addresses
wrote somewhere at home, but I need to found it before I can send it to
you... :P
As far I can remember, it uses the addr space betwen 7ff0h and 7ff4h at the end
of the interface's slot.
On other hand, the 3rd part brazilian diskdrive interfaces used the wd279x and
95% where I/O port based. This I/O port follows the Brazilian Microsol Standard.
A lot of disk manipulation (copy, edition, format, correction) software were
programmed here following this standard (ports D0H to D4H).
It's possible to add support for I/O port based floppyinterface on MESS even
before doing the memory layout modifications, right? What do you think? Isn't it
better than the patch method currently being used?
In that case, I can send you the specs as soon I go home.
For both interfaces, I think you only need the [ports <-> wd297x register]
mapping, right? Because you aready have the wd279x emulator anyway.
> > > What features do they have? What's the keyboard layout?
> >
> > Versions 1.0 have their own nonstandard kbd layout. Versions >=1.1 have ABNT
> > keyboards. ABNT means "Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas" (Brazilian
> > Association of Technical Standards? :)
>
> Do you have a layout of the keyboard matrix? That'd be very helpful. :) Also
> what keys do these machines have -- any non-standard keys?
Yes. Mainly the "Ç" key, at the rigth side of the "L" key. There are some
special keys for accentuation too. I'll search docs about the keyboard matrix of
Expert and Hotbit.
Regards,
FRS
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