Re: [MSX] Hello from ObsoNET :-)
That's REALLY cool! Congratulations, this is the kind of conectivity that MSX always needed. []'s Marco Antonio On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, ObsoNET wrote: Hello obsoletes. This is a message sent from a MSX connected to Internet with ObsoNET beta 1. Well, not exactly: the MSX is connected to a Linux PC which is in turn connected to Internet with a modem. But hey, it is cool, isn't it? ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re:[2] [MSX] Re: msx digest, Vol 1 #129 - 2 msgs
On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, Francisco Alvarez wrote: Regards (and Ricardo, everybody says that hijo sux, why? :D ) Hmmm, that's a very very long story. But, to summarize, it is enough to say that Ricardo Bittencourt is famous in Brazil due to the huge amount of his vaporwares! Yes, that's true. :-((( --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Jon De Schrijder wrote: I just wanted to say that from time to time I have very good contacts with the japanese hardware people and Tsujikawa even asked me to join his project. Too bad I don't have that much time left for MSX and I'm already writing VHDL all day for my job. This is very good! Then you should know VHDL much better than me. Your hardware projects are being implemented in FPGA or directly to ASIC? What are your synthesis tools? About the approach of replacing chips in stead of making a new board: I don't think you can do it for all MSX chips, since some chips probably also contain analog logic (the VDP?), and thus can't be rebuilt with an FPGA only. In fact, PSG outputs are analog, one output per channel. FPGAs outputs are digital. Given that all MSX models just connect the three outputs together for mixing these signals, I created a digital mixer (a 4-to-6 bit adder) and connected the output (6 bits) to a good and old R-2R digital to analog converter. And this is connected in place of the original pin 4 of PSG. Something similar will happen to the VDP. Regards and success to all hardware people out there ! Thanks! Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Laurens Holst wrote: Yet, these efforts aren't joined, which I think *really* is a shame. If all these people would join their efforts, I honestly believe a one-chip MSX for example could be made right now, or at least in the not-so-distant future, say, within the year! Joining the efforts will take some time. It is possible, but that's not a trivial question. First of all, the design methodologies should be standardized. After that, agreements can be made. So, I must say I really agree with Snout here! As I read in Ikeda's MSX-Print the Japanese people who built the TMS9918 already tried to contact people from Brazil to cooperate, and I think it would be nice if that offer would be accepted! The main problem here is that Japanese people had contacted us too late, because our VDP is in progress, I guess it is 40% done. So, in my point of view, a MSX1 VDP VHDL code, right now, is not a good deal. Well, in any case, keep up the good work, and keep us updated! I think it's great to let us know like this on the mailinglist, 'cause usually 'we' aren't informed about such projects this well. Ok! Usually I don't post info about the development because, sometimes, the predicted development time doesn't match with the real, and this can seem to be some kind of vaporware. For avoiding this, I prefer to talk less and produce more. But, if someone ask me how is our chip-replacement project, sure I will answer with the real project state. For example, the PSG was remade in 2 months, but the VDP, which is not ready, I am working for more than 8 months. Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Snout wrote: But the efforts of changing to a standardized methodology could lead to rapid realisation of a one-chip MSX. At least, that's the way I see it. Yes, I agree, and as a hardware developer, I am here open for discussions. So, what about the japanese hardware guys? Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
Altera chips and synthesis tools. So, I definately hope the negociations work out. Even though I don't know shit about VHDL programming (well I looked in to it once, actually, but I First of all, VHDL is not a programming language. Remember that! VHDL is one kind of hardware description language, which everyone can use instead of the huges schematic diagrams. Can you imagine the size of the schematic diagram of the entire Z80? In VHDL it becomes readable. don't recall much of it) a technology-independent approach sounds promising, so I definately hope you will come up with a standardized design method. In the end, because it is created by several people with different approaches and programming styles it will probably also turn out to be the best method because I think it'll be flexible and been thought through thoroughly. Yes, that's what I think. If somebody wants, I can explain what is the basis of my coding style. Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Dark Soul wrote: SCC/SCC+ are already implemented in FPGA by Ademir Carchano. Does anyone know his working e-mail? His page is down... Actually his e-mail is also down. What do you wanna know about Ademir projects? Maybe I can talk to him. []'s --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
be explained when needed. The above rules are essential, they facilitate the comprehension of the code and leads to better results (designs that run with higher clock speed and demands less FPGA area). Any doubts? Don't hesitate to ask me. --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Dark Soul wrote: SCC/SCC+ are already implemented in FPGA by Ademir Carchano. Does anyone know his working e-mail? His page is down... Actually his e-mail is also down. What do you wanna know about Ademir projects? Maybe I can talk to him. I want to buy his MegaIDE cartridge. It's a very awesome piece of hardware... Dark Soul e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I will check the price with Ademir. If he has some available, I can work for a while as an international sales representative. Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Dark Soul wrote: PSG implemented in an FPGA. Excellent work. If you will be able to do the same for MSX-Music and SCC/SCC+ chips, you will shake this world ;) It is possible, but I don't have enough specifications of how MSX-Music and SCC/SCC+ work. In fact, I only could make the PSG because Ricardo Bittencourt had gave me some hints for implementing the noise generator, which he had discovered while programming BrMSX. If you can point to some sites with detailed documentation of SCC/SCC+ (not only programming info, mainly electronic info, i.e., how these chips work), it would help me a lot! Meanwhile, I will take some pictures. The next goal is a MSX1 VDP replacement (also in an FPGA, probably the same model). Greetings from Brazil. --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
Well, I think it is a matter of negotiation between the VHDL-coders. Personally, I didn't like the agreement proposed by Tsujikawa. And there is another problem: my design methodology is based in chip replacement, and Tsujikawa's methodology consists in creating new boards. This method is much more difficult for debugging, and testing each chip-replacement becomes impossible, because they are not pin-compatible with the original ones. If we can choose an standardized design methodology, I think we can exchange our codes. My VHDL coding-style is technology-independent, which means that one can use it for implementing in Xilinx FPGAs, in Altera FPGAs, and also for ASIC fabrication. AFAIK, as I saw in Kunihiko's VDP code, I could not connect it directly in place of the original VDP. Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Snout wrote: On www.msx.org we currently have a small discussion about the developers of FPGA devices. Quote from me: Personally, I think the Japanese and Brazilian FPGA-developers should contact each other in order to make one big and VERY useful FPGA-chip (which could be used as a basis for/in the one-chip MSX!). I'd like to know your opinion on this, either on msx.org or on the mailinglist ;) For the entire discussion : http://www.msx.org/index.asp?frame=/news.asp?newsid=673 Greetings, Sander http://www.msx.org http://www.benjaminb.nl - Original Message - From: Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 17:56 Subject: Re: [MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!! PSG implemented in an FPGA. Excellent work. If you will be able to do the same for MSX-Music and SCC/SCC+ chips, you will shake this world ;) SCC/SCC+ are already implemented in FPGA by Ademir Carchano. MSX-Music chip has a clone, used in game machines. Technobytes (www.tecnobytes.8k.com) produce their FM Sound Stereo (available for only US$45+SH) cartridge now with this chip, and not with the original YM anymore. The FM Sound Stereo cartridge was demonstrated in MSX Rio 2002 and everybody who listened its sound agrees that it's the same as the original FM chip (BTW, Slotman bought one and is very happy with it). ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
[MSX] PSG REPLACEMENT WORKS FINE!!!
Hi people, I am in my lab right now (yes, in a Sunday), this was the only way for having some spare time for mounting a small circuit board for testing the PSG implemented in an FPGA. The VHDL code was already exhaustively tested through out simulations (using Xilinx CAD software, Xilinx Foundation 3.1i), so what was missing is a connection between the FPGA board and the MSX1 (Brazilian Expert 1.0 model). I finished the connections some minutes ago. The scheme is the following: one removes the original PSG, connects the DIP40 socket that I am using, which has the wiring ready for the FPGA board (Xilinx XCS30XL-VQ100), turns on the MSX, loads the FPGA configuration (in this moment the FPGA becomes from a unuseful chip into an authentic PSG-replacement), gives a reset in the MSX and it works fine! Right now I am listening for the thousand time the main theme from Venom Strikes Back, which is a great test, because it uses the 3 audio channels, the envelope generator and the noise channel. As I expected, everything works fine, which shows that the simulations are very efficient. And it has an advantage: the original PSG cannot work with a clock higher than 4MHz, this PSG that I developed goes until 60MHz (using the FPGA indicated above, I already made other simulations with other chips, and I seems to work above 100MHz of maximum clock!!!) The the result is the following: now we have a PSG replacement, and it can be used in any MSX, whatever the clock is. In this case, we do not need to insert wait-states or any other bad trick when someone want to use a faster CPU (like Z180, Z380 or others). For those who does not understang what I made, in the next weeks I will take some pictures and put them in a directory in my homepage. In the next Jau' MSX meeting I will make a presentation and a demonstration of this prototype. I guarantee that it will be very interesting! Now let's go to the questions and answers! Greetings from Brazil. --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better ___ MSX mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Info page: http://lists.stack.nl/mailman/listinfo/msx
Re: UZIX telnet experiment
Yes, it works! I will copy here what I got. Nice job! For me, it couldn't be better. For small applications, the speed is acceptable, so we can move on! Greetings from Brazil! PS: a convertion of CR (or LF) to CR+LF would be better, but it's not important, the important is that it WORKS!!! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better UZIX operating system at (localhost) Kernel 0.2.1 on a MSX uzix login: Password: S ASH (ver. 1.0f) guest@uzix$ -al: No such file or directory guest@uzix$ ./ ../ testje dit_is_een_tes file guest@uzix$ /hom e/guest guest@uzix$ test ls exit guest@uzix$ guest@uzix$ -a: No such file or direc tory guest@uzix$ 512 drwxr-xr-x 2 @25./ 512 drwxr-xr-x 4 @30 ../ 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 @364 testje 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 @375 dit_is_ee n_tes 17-rw-r--r-- 1 @352 file guest@uzix$ guest@uzix$ guest@uzix$ gues t@uzix$ 512 drwxr-xr-x 2 @25./ 512 drwxr-xr-x 4 @30 ../ 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 @364 testje 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 @375 dit_is_een_tes 17 -rw-r--r-- 1 @352 file guest@uzix$ /home/guest guest@uzix$ guest@uzix$ . / ../ user/ guest/ guest@uzix$ PI D TTY STATTIME COMMAND 1 0 Waitfor 00:00:00 init 10 0 Sleep 00:00:00 login 18 0 Ready 00:02:40 telnetd 7 0 Ready 00:17:38 pppd 6 0 Ready 00:00:30 tcpipmo d 21 0 Ready 00:00:00 telnetd 22 0 Sleep 00:00:00 telnetd 23 30 Waitfor 00:00:00 -sh 24 30 Running 00:00:00 ps guest @uzix$ On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Tristan wrote: Hi people, The webserver is down atm... It didnt keep up with all hits very well, but at least some managed to get the html :) For now, I've loaded telnetd instead of httpd, so you guys can telnet into the MSX and have a look at UZIX. Just use any telnet application and connect to msx.rulez.nl. Use username 'guest' with password 'guest'. There can be only one connection at a time, so try again later if you get a connection refused. When you get in, have a look at the various commands you can try by entering 'ls /bin'. You can see which processes are running with 'ps -a'. Some unix experience is welcome, but there is documentation available via 'man command'. Please do not use 'tee', it will hang because telnetd doesnt pass ctrl-d correctly or something. Warning. This is *beta* software. There are still plenty bugs so things might go wrong. Also please be kind and use logout to finish your session so another person can login. Do not just disconnect because that will hang the telnet daemon. Have fun, Tristan -- a.k.a. OmegaMSX @ Undernet #msx (http://www.undernet.org) FUNET MSX archive maintainer (ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/msx) MSX Radio operator (http://www.live365.com/stations/266034) WWW: http://httpd.chello.nl/~t.zondag01 -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MSX running UZIX webserver
Yes, It works! Nice job for you and Adriano Cunha! But where is the imagnes? It seems to be that 2 images should appear. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] old Fords never die, just get better On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Tristan wrote: Hi all, Check my MSX running the UZIX 0.2.1 webserver: http://msx.rulez.nl:81 :) I hope it stays up for a few days. Bye, Tristan -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: TC8566AF datasheet available (pdf)
On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Thanks Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz [EMAIL PROTECTED], the TC8566AF datasheet (which is the diskcontroller used by Panasonic MSX computers, including the MSX turbo R) is on my website. Finally FudebaPoz released this datasheet! :P Not exactly. I had started to digitize the pages, but the software used by the scanner really did not want to help (crashes, crashes and more crashes). But I can confirm that this version is reliable. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: 4 free
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Brendan Cross wrote: Excuse my ignorance, but what is a Datacorder? It is a tape-recorder, a standard cassette recorder, conected to the MSX through the cassette port. It is used as a storage device, saving MSX software with speeds of 1200 or 2400bps (with the standard internal circuit, but I know some people who achieved 4800bps and more). Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: 4 free
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Wouter Dijkslag wrote: 1 motor:goto 1 This will turn on and turn off the relay so fast that you won't listen anything! 1 motoron:motoroff:run The line above will work. For who bought recently a Turbo-R (ST or GT) it is always good to remember that it doesn't has this relay, so it won't make any noise by using these commands. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: UZIX is dead
On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: (3) UZIX doesn't run comfortably on my machine - running from flop is **s**l**o**w** and my HD interface was not supported (heheh ;-)) If I had a Novaxis, you can bet UZIX would run on it. But I don't have even a HD interface (Dal Poz borrowed his Sunrise IDE to me, that's why UZIX has HD support). But it's not an excuse to me to not work on UZIX. I didn't borrowed Sunrise IDE, I lent Sunrise IDE for you. You borrowed my Sunrise IDE. This shows how fudeba you are! ;-) Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: Toeprom: eprom programmer
On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Hans Otten wrote: [... eprom programmer ...] But here my question: There are four jumpers on the top marked 27512, 32 etc. Does anyone know what the function and settings of these jumpers are? To me, it seems to be an eprom selection. You should connect the jumper in the right position according to the eprom which you are programming. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: Exclusive interview about Konami and the S.C.C.
On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Sander Zuidema wrote: As an example, in Brazil we didn't have any representatives of any japanese gamehouses. So we had no choice other than copying. This is a chicken-or-the-egg discussion we had many times. We had so many discussions that I can't remember anyone! Are there no games because of the copying or is there copying because there are no games? I think at least a little of both. That's a possibility, it's true that even with representatives in Brazil the piracy wouldn't stop, but the absence of such gamehouses were an extra stimulus for piracing! Brazilian MSX users could have united and contact Japanese software houses, so they would release software in Brazil. In that time it would be extremely expensive, and the brazilian users weren't united. But just remember for the future COPY - BAD BUYING - GOOD ;) Ok, you are right. But if we have no software the hardware wouldn't survive! In such situations I tend to agree with copy-protection techniques, even if we have some loss of compatibility, just because with it the time to piracy-beginning is larger. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: Exclusive interview about Konami and the S.C.C.
On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, Sander Zuidema wrote: Another quote from the interview --- SONY Corp. was a major obstacle in the large-scale development of the S.C.C.: too much competition and too much danger to work on a project that was staying on sand (crackers made too much damage to the MSX standard: in Europe, cracked games arrived 6 months before the official cartridges this killed the MSX standard in France). --- Shall we end the Martos discussion now? :) No. If the cracked version always arrived earlier than the official one, this is a big lack of competence of the softwarehouses. As an example, in Brazil we didn't have any representatives of any japanese gamehouses. So we had no choice other than copying. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: SVI738 MSX upgrade problems
On Sun, 22 Apr 2001, JP Grobler wrote: Pin 1 on the 27512 is adress line 15 Pin 1 on the 27256 it is Vpp Should it be grounded? One solution is to be connected to gnd, and the other is Vdd. The issue here is just to fix the logical level, since you are using just half the eprom. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz Dal Poz Motorsport! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MEP is Close !!!
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Arnaud de Klerk wrote: PS: I think that Arnold is coming to the dark side of the force (aka M$) And it's people like you that made me close down the MEP. This is really a stupid, unthoughfull remark. As you know, I HAD NEVER SENT any e-mails to you asking to close your site. And if you think that my remark is stupid, you should know that it's much more stupid to close the MEP. That's incredible, people never recognise a joke, tsc tsc tsc... Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MEP is Close !!!
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Arnaud de Klerk wrote: PS: I think that Arnold is coming to the dark side of the force (aka M$) And it's people like you that made me close down the MEP. This is really a stupid, unthoughfull remark. Please skip that remark from my side. It's a stupid and unthoughtfull as I mentioned myself... Sorry! That's too late... Anyway, I hope that you don't give up MSX just as MSX Power Replay. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: Please stop fire! (was: Re: MEP is Close !!!)
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Snatcher wrote: Hello Arnaud, PS: I think that Arnold is coming to the dark side of the force (aka M$) And it's people like you that made me close down the MEP. This is really a stupid, unthoughfull remark. Hold on fire, I'm sure DalPoz was just kidding when he wrote that. Oh! At least one could understand me correctly! Maybe people are getting nervous and taking precipitated decisions. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: Uzix questions (was: shooting MEP or something)
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Nestor wrote: 1) Uzix is getting better and better. A new version is probably coming out soon. Dalpoz also offered himself to code the fast-disk-routines. Will it be HD instalable? Will it have a LILO to choose uzix/MSX-DOS? Will it handle 32Mb partitions some day? Don't answer now but after the commercials! X-) Well, after those commercials, here is the answers: yes, yes, yes But you will have to wait... Don't give up! Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MEP is Close !!!
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Benoît Delvaux wrote: But I can't agree with the vision "No future for MSX" that Arnaud shows on his site: in some months comes the ASCII emulator, and that's an important step to go to the MSX 3, the computer of our dreams since 10 years MSX isn't an obsolete computer, his new version will be the computer of the future !!! I also can't agree with Arnold, whatelse let's see: since all the original manufacturers had stopped the production of MSX and all of its peripherals, some users and groups could create: - many SCSI interfaces - ATA-IDE interface - Moonsound - GFX9000 - EVA (and EVA-IDE) - Many excellent games - MUST and VIP - UZIX - FlyBrowser running over UZIX (I saw it personally) - and we can't forget Tsujikawa's VDP over FPGA project! I don't have anything against ASCII projects, but I don't like their approach for a new MSX. IMHO, I would bet in Tsujikawa's approach, for some reasons: - It promises to be hardware compatible - It's a way for rebuilding chips in an affordable way - It's reconfigurable - I also work with FPGAs (reconfigurable logic) So, I still think that MSX has a future, but I am realistic: MSX is commercially dead, however who cares? MSX is not electronically dead while one of us is still plugging it to the electrical net. Let's keep the hobby, producing good software and hardware! Greetings from Brazil! Perhaps, some day, you could see a very old car being monitorated by a MSX built-in computer, ops, I think I am saying too much, better stop by here. PS: I think that Arnold is coming to the dark side of the force (aka M$) ------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: About MSX Power Replay
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Rafael Corrales Pulido wrote: MadriSX meetings will continue as MSX friends meetings and our club will start to be only as a friends group, this is the only way we can continue due the bad situation in our own enviroment. :-( Sorry for all the people who believes in us, I feel really bad taking this hard decision, but my life is before the MSX and I can not continue like now. Damn it! Some of the Brazilian users were thinking about visiting, in some year (this one or the next), some Spanish and Dutch MSX fairs. At least, I hope that Nishi could go to Tilburg and MadriSX this year. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MEP is Close !!!
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Pablo Vasques Bravo-Villalba wrote: Hi, Dal Poz! Hi, Parn! Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: So, I still think that MSX has a future, but I am realistic: MSX is commercially dead, however who cares? MSX is not electronically dead while one of us is still plugging it to the electrical net. Although you say you don't agree with Arnaud, in fact Arnaud just said he didn't see a commercial future for MSX. Which despite Italo Valerio's efforts, I believe it's true. We just don't have enough Italos. :-/ And even if we had enough Italos, other problems would arise, like the sprouting of "anti-MSX" Italos. I am not an emulator user, but I still think that Arnaud's work is much useful for everyone. I someone creates a new piece of hardware, it's good to test with all the available software, which was easy to find through out MEP. Everyone is losing from MEP's closing. Ademir Carchano's ideas, for example, are way better than current MSX architecture, however one can realize he walks a very tough path -- a commendable one, but still tough. Even with a better product, failure is always a possi- bility. MSX architecture has very limitations, but what about compatibility? If it cannot run current MSX software, then it's not a MSX. And if it's not a MSX, then what's the relationship between his architecture and us? In fact, after seeing two great guys coming out from the MSX scene, something that I wouldn't like to see is Padial, Ademir and ESE coming out. Ademir's architecture is better than Turbo-R's, but don't forget MSX! PS: I think that Arnold is coming to the dark side of the force (aka M$) Why do you think that and what does this have to do with anything? :) Why do I think that? Just because people who complained about Arnaud's work probably is against old machines and all them can see os PC+M$. It's very difficult to be an MSX user and still be active, productive and helpful. I think Arnaud did a lot for MSX, and I hope one day he feels like coming back, but only if it means FUN! You don't have to be active, productive and helpful simultaneously. Being just one of these is enough! I am active and I try to be helpful, but I know that I am not productive, but it's far better then giving up MSX. After all, this is what MSX should be like. :) Fortunately I think that all of us agree with you! Greetings from brazil! ------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "Dal Poz Motorsport!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: wd273 emulation.
On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Sean Young wrote: Alex, IIRC you had the datasheet for the Panasonic disk controller (TC8566), do you happened to have scanned it? Sometime ago, Alex Wulms sent a hardcopy of the TC8566AF datasheet to me by snail mail. One of my goals was to create a digital version of the datasheet. Initially I tried to pass it through a scanner, but I found that it would be easier to read the entire documentation and to type it directly into a word processor and generate a pdf file. But I found a great amount of comments written by Alex Wulms in the datasheet that seems to be very important, but in the hardcopy they are almost unreadable. So I stopped typing the text, but I had forgotten to ask Alex Wulms for some help. Alex, did you have moved the TC8566AF datasheet from The Neatherlands to Belgium? If so, could you please send me an e-mail explaining the contents of your comments in this datasheet? The original datasheet seems to have some obscure points. With this I could finish typing the electronic version. Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz"Dal Poz Motorsport" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
Re: MSX2 in Brazil
On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Ivan Latorre wrote: I was wondering if MSX2 computers were sold in Brazil (I mean that if they were distributed to shops by big companies like Sony, Sanyo, Philips, ...). I´ve read that two companies (Gradiente and Expert) sold MSX1s. I also was wondering if other companies sold MSX1s in Brazil. The companies are Gradiente and Sharp, and the respectives MSXs were called Expert and HotBit. All MSX2 produced in Brazil were transformations over the original MSX1s made in Brazil. Unfortunatelly, Gradiente and Sharp had never made an original MSX2 from factory, so our only choice was to install adaptation boards originally created by Ademir Carchano for exchanging the VDP, add SUBROM in the appropriated slot and the necessary VRAM (always 128kb). Some years later an adaptation board was designed for transforming Experts and HotBits into MSX2+. Thanks for your interest in Brazilian MSXs! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz"Dal Poz Motorsport" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
RE: MSX Beurs Bussum...
On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Ghostscript for Windows? Yes, there is. I use it here at my university. I just don't know where you can get it (sorry, I'm not using NT now). How about ftp://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/simtel.net/win95/print/gs403* ? Greetings, - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz "in name of the wind, congratulations!" [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] See also http://www.faq.msxnet.org/
Re: fMSX and PSG Player (Bittencourt)
On Wed, 31 May 2000, Ricardo Bittencourt wrote: Of course upgrading PSGP is a better idea. I don't think that anyone is still using fmsx-dos 1.4, then upgrading PSGP is almost mandatory!!! I didn't tell him what was better, I told him what was faster :) I know, but now we are asking you to release a new version of PSGP! Right now I'm spending my time in other projects which have higher priority. So any update on PSG Player will take a while to get released. Ok, but then put it into your task-list. Greetings from Brazil! Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz turning your path into the best! [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: two liners art gallery
On Sun, 23 Apr 2000, Ricardo Bittencourt Vidigal Leitao wrote: It's called "two liners art gallery", because two-liners programming is much more an art than a science :) Point your browsers to ... http://www.lsi.usp.br/~ricardo/msx/twoliner ... and don't forget to send comments ! Well, you really have shown that programming is an art! I think that, in RBRace line 2, where you print the score, you should change the comma (,) by a double comma (,,), so the score will be printed on the line below the "game over". The descriptions are very funny, mainly the "Genius" one. Why didn't you never showed us "Nemesis Dawn" demo? Don't say that you made it yestarday! That's a very good page, even if you don't run the programs. I don't think that the download links are necessary, you can just copy and paste the programs. Greetings from Brazil! --------------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozturning your path into the best! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: PCB layout
On Tue, 11 Apr 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there someone in the msx list who can lay-out pcb's and has access to someone who can make pcb's (dual layer). Since i have only the schematics (and no time.) I have some experience on doing PCB layout. I am used to use a software known as Tango, which provides fast results, and has multilayer capability. But, first of all, PCB layout and construction has some costs, depending on the area, number of board layers and complexity of the PCB design. Do you have these informations about your design? If not, then would you like to send me this schematics? Which software did you use to design this schematics? After seeing the schematics I can ask the PCB manufacturer for their prices. Is this ok for your? Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz fazendo o SEU caminho melhor! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: Lynx-clone and POP3 mail reader developers
On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Pierre Gielen wrote: Now, screen output on UZIX is made by CHPUT. It implies in one interslot call for each character being displayed. A "write(stdout, X, 1)" is the fastest way of sending a character to the screen. And, believe me, it's faster than BDOS function 2... Why not implement direct screen output in UZIX, or rather, in the C-library, so that all programs can use standard C functions and still benefit from very high speed screen writes? Interslotcalls for every character you write still slow down your programs considerably. If you've seen how great direct screen writes work in CP/M 3.0 for the MSX (yes, another OS), you'll never even consider using BIOS calls again. I have already talked to Adriano Cunha about this. My idea was exactly the same, but he said that there's no enough space in the kernel for that. Actually, the maximum kernel length is 16kb, but in the future he will do a multi-page kernel, which will solve this limitation. Greetings from Brazil! ------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz fazendo o SEU caminho melhor! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: Lynx-clone and POP3 mail reader developers
On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Laurens Holst wrote: On Wed, 15 Mar 2000, Laurens Holst wrote: And have you tried scrolling (a part of) the screen without direct access??? Nah, definately direct access. I did. The scroll of FudeBrowser is full screen and quite fast, and made only with BIOS calls. No direct access. Doh, only changing register 23 isn't very difficult, even with BIOS calls. But for example in screen 5, the BIOS only supports low-speed copies. And in screen 4, you only use SetVDP_Write and SetVDP_Read and use INIR and OTIR for block I/O... Or maybe there is a BIOS call which does about the same. That indeed won't be too slow. Fudebrowser is for MSX1!!! So, there's no use for register 23. And it uses SCREEN2. Is that possible? Some time ago I didn't think so. Try it and see! Greetings from Brazil --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz turning your path the best! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: F1-Spirit passwords
On Wed, 15 Mar 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yep, that's the end-demo. Exaclty, and it really worths to listen to the end-demo music with SCC! Greetings from Brazil! Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz [EMAIL PROTECTED] schreef in nieuwsbericht [EMAIL PROTECTED]:ðÐÁ^ÀÐÁ^ÐÁ^pÐÁ^ `ÐÁ^0ÐÁ^... I think that the best password is MITAIYOENDDEMO Greetings from Brazil! On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: lame answer, but why use the Game Master instead? BTW you know the password MAXPOINT? It allows you to play all the races even with 0 points. --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz turning your path the best! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: F1-Spirit passwords
I think that the best password is MITAIYOENDDEMO Greetings from Brazil! On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: lame answer, but why use the Game Master instead? BTW you know the password MAXPOINT? It allows you to play all the races even with 0 points. --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz turning your path the best! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes) in the body (not the subject) of the message. Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] More information on MSX can be found in the following places: The MSX faq: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ The MSX newsgroup: comp.sys.msx The MSX IRC channel: #MSX on Undernet
Re: Ide controller for msx
On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Richard Gerrits wrote: Today I was cleaning out my room and I found an old 8 bit isa ide+floppy controller. Could it be used (with some modifications) on a MSX? Directly, it's not possible. It would require some aditional interface and lot of software. But I don't know if MSX would accept the required IDE transfer speed. AFAIK, Henrik Gilvad's interface uses an internal buffer to receive IDE's data, that's a better solution (some kind of shared memory). Greetings from Brazil! --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz fazendo o SEU caminho melhor! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Identify title for this cartridge
On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Manuel Soler wrote: Can anybody visit members.xoom.com/z80msx/front.gif members.xoom.com/z80msx/back.gif and see if you can identify what is the title for that cartridge? I don't know this cartridge, but the images seems to be equal to the game called "Mirai". Greetings from Brazil! ------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz doing YOUR path to become better! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: We need people to write for XSW-Magazine...
On Sat, 20 Nov 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: That's the way, ah-hah, ah-hah, I like it, ah-hah, ah-hah... That music is really cool! What is the name and the group that sings it? Sorry for the off-topic! []'s --- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Poz fazendo o SEU caminho melhor! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: DiskROM *MOTOR OFF*
On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Would I reach the same result if I call STOPDRV from the other interface? Yes. Each interface call the others (if they exists) to stop their drives. Disassemble the DiskROM to check this... I can't do this. I don't have 2 disk-interfaces, so I wouldn't understand when one diskrom is looking for another. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: DiskROM *MOTOR OFF*
On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, MkII wrote: This calls the STOPDRV routine from diskrom (entry point 4029h). But I don't know what will happen if you have 2 disk-interfaces connected to one MSX. Does somebody know? OK, thanks. Now I'm calling the STOPDRV routine for each valid DiskROM found in the table at #FB21. It works very smooth. Perhaps it will spin down hard disks and similar devices but that's OK since the game gathers all system resources and no scatter disk access is done during gameplay. Adriano Cunha has already said that STOPDRV stops all drives, so it's not necessary to call it for each diskrom. By the way, it will stop harddisks (as said in this list a long time ago), so when you try read data from harddisks, you'll get some trouble. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: DiskROM *MOTOR OFF*
On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Yes. Each interface call the others (if they exists) to stop their drives. Disassemble the DiskROM to check this... I can't do this. I don't have 2 disk-interfaces, so I wouldn't understand when one diskrom is looking for another. You are fudeba. Just disassemble the function and you'll see that it uses FB21h to finds another interface and call 4029h of it! What I had said is sill valid. I don't have a full system variables table inside my memory, and FB21h is one of the variables which I didn't know. So, who is not fudeba? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: DiskROM *MOTOR OFF*
On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, MkII wrote: I'll be using proper logical drive sensitive routines, but I don't find the motor off entry point address in my documentation, and old messages about this topic have vanished from my mailbox. I don't know if this works with all kinds of disk-interfaces, but I'm used to do the following: LD IX,04029H LD IY,(0F347H) CALL 0001CH This calls the STOPDRV routine from diskrom (entry point 4029h). But I don't know what will happen if you have 2 disk-interfaces connected to one MSX. Does somebody know? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: DiskROM *MOTOR OFF*
On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: This calls the STOPDRV routine from diskrom (entry point 4029h). But I don't know what will happen if you have 2 disk-interfaces connected to one MSX. Does somebody know? All disk-drives stop spinning. Would I reach the same result if I call STOPDRV from the other interface? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Memory Mapper mirror effect?
On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Anyone knows if there are memory mappers with mirror effect (i.e., for example, a 128k mapper (8 pages), if I select page 16, I'll get page 8). I don't know any, but maybe there is... Sure there is! I don't know how Turbo-R's Mapper works, but standard mappers have mirror effect. If you select block 16, you'll get block 0, and the same will happen if you select block 8. (blocks are numbered from 0 to 7). But the most interesting is to select the same block in different RAM pages. You can write a byte in one address, and in another address the same byte appears! Really cool! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Nothing just a test...
On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, R van der Zon wrote: Am I removed from the mailinglist? I don't think so. - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: Japanese voltage
On Fri, 3 Sep 1999, Maarten ter Huurne wrote: At 02:51 PM 9/2/99 -0300, you wrote: 4.5% is reasonable, but Laurens said it would change from 220V to 330V, a 50% increase! Eh... Laurens wrote 230V (I just looked it up). Well, so that's no problem. But I thought the voltage was going to be increased to 240V. Anyway, this plan has been around for years, so manufacturers can make sure in advance their equipment will accept a higher current. 240V is no problem, either. []'s - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: Japanese voltage
On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Patrick Kramer wrote: On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: I don't think it's possible. But if done, you'll have to exchange all of your equipment based on electric motors and transformers connected directly to the electric network. It would be too expensive! Other approach would be to connect a transformer to each electric/eletronic equipment that you have. Too expensive and too heavy! Well...they're doing it gradually over a x-year period (1 volt a year I thought). Actually it's not that big a deal. It's a 4.5% raise. I don't know what the guaranteed tolerances are, but if they are able to decrease them, the upper limit could remain the same. 4.5% is reasonable, but Laurens said it would change from 220V to 330V, a 50% increase! Theoretically, equipment will last shorter, either because of the extra heat generated, or because of the extra current. The heat that must be dissipated by the regulator is (8-5)*3 = 9 watts. A 4.5% increase would yield 8.36 V on the input of the regulator. This gives (8.36-5)*3=10.1 watts. Sure, sure, sure! One solution could be a switching power supply. But, for common small electronic equipments, the power consumption will increase. Then, why the electric company wants to increase the voltage? Most (if not all) problems with electronic equipment will be more heat in the power supply (and maybe more heat in the whole apparatus). Best solution for a MSX would be to buy one of these cheap (PC) switch-mode power supplies, they are non-linear and will consume LESS current if fed with a higher voltage (V*I remains roughly the same). Some of them are rated for 100-240 volt without switching anything (like the charger for my camcorder). In electronic equipments you can use switching power supply, but what will happen with electrical machines (synchronous motors, induction motors, series and parallel motors)? With synchronous and induction motors, there will be an increase in the phase difference between voltage and current waveforms, keeping the same average power, but decreasing the power factor (cos phi). So, the loss in the transmition and distribution lines will be increased. Probably the electric company will compel users to increase capacitor banks to improve the power factor. What do you think about it? With series and parallel motors, the rotation will increase, and also the power consumption. So, if the objective is to reduce the power loss in the transmission and distribution lines, increasing the voltage won't be a solution! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Japanese voltage
On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Ivan Latorre wrote: Hello I have just bought a Turbo R and I would like to know what voltage the computer can resist. On the type plate of the computer it is shown that the mains voltage is 100V (60/50Hz). The power-supply has electronic voltage regulator, so the problem consists in limitations of the power transformer. Jesus (from Club Hnostar) told me that the computer can receive 125V because this voltage is transformed again internally. But this is an increase of a 25% of the recommended voltage... Here in Brazil, the voltage is 127V, and my Turbo-R A1ST works fine. And it's 27% above the specification! I can obtain a 220V-115V transformer (220V is the voltage in Spain) but it is hard to find a 220V-100V because there are not mass-produced. 115V is just fine. You can use it. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Japanese voltage
On Wed, 1 Sep 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: Here in Brazil, the voltage is 127V, and my Turbo-R A1ST works fine. And it's 27% above the specification! My MSX2+ computer has a quite bad look... If you have white characters at a blue background you can se purple corners around the letters... Could this be because the voltage it recieves is too low? Perhaps. It is possible, but if it is true, I would say that the composite video modulators are very bad designed. After I had made a transcodification of my TR ST from NTSC to PAL-M, the color had became perfect! No other MSX produced in Brazil has the video quality of a Turbo-R. By the way, a voltage of 127V!!! How strange (it's not a 'nice' number)... But anyways here in Holland the voltage will increase from 220V to 230V The reason is simple: the energy distribution network is tri-phase (like all over the world), so after the distribution power transformer we have 220V from phase to phase (before the transformer we have 13.8kV from phase to phase). The transformer has the primary interconnected in "delta" (or triangle), which implies that there is no neutral in the primary. The secondary is interconnected in "Y" (or star), which implies that there is neutral in the secondary. Since the system is symmetric, we have the following phasors diagram: . /|\ / |V\ / |1 \ V12 / |0 \ V13 /|\ /_._\ / __/ \__ \ /__/V20 V30\__\ // \\ .---. V23 where the central point is the neutral, and the others points are the phases. Due to the symmetry of the tri-phase system, the angle between two phase-to-phase voltages is 120 degrees, so the phase-to-neutral voltage is related to the phase-to-phase voltage by the following formula: V = V * sqrt(3) phase-to-phasephase-to-neutral Since the phase-to-phase voltage in Brazil is 220V, we have that the phase-to-neutral is 127V. someday in the future (don't know exactly when; in 2003 or so). Will this have a bad effect on my MSX (will it last less long)??? And if the 'purple corners'-problem is because of a too-low voltage... will the increase solve my problem? I don't think it's possible. But if done, you'll have to exchange all of your equipment based on electric motors and transformers connected directly to the electric network. It would be too expensive! Other approach would be to connect a transformer to each electric/eletronic equipment that you have. Too expensive and too heavy! Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Zanac EX BrMSX Pt. II
On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Pablo Vasques Bravo-Villalba wrote: Jorge Vidal Wulff wrote: Hi,I just downloaded BrMSX v 2.02 and it also crashes with Zanac EX, just like V2.01.What could this beAnyone else has had this problem. You must have a bad ROM dump or something. I tested it with the disk version (for memory mapper) and it worked just fine, without any problems. `:) I tested with Zanac-Ex downloaded from Funet, and it works fine using: brmsx zanac-ex.rom -roma 5 -msx2 And it runs Hydefos almost fine, except due to strong flickering. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: So? What's the difference between MSX BASIC 4.0 and 4.1?
On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Ricardo Bittencourt Vidigal Leitao wrote: BTW, I scanned the entire YM2413 application manual. It's about 2Mb. Does anyone have space to host this? I can also scan the V9918/28/29, Y8950 and AY-3-8912 if someone host the files... BTW, I scanned the entire TC8566AF datasheet, but I didn't use an OCR, so the actual size is 12.5Mb (34 GIF files). I hope to pass the files through an OCR this weekend, so next week it should be available. You know I have space to host this and some others datasheets, the only restriction is that YOU must create the entire homepage for that. If you have time for that, you has just "won" an extra space! BTW again, why V9938 doesn't have the register 24? Did they think it was a gay thing to add this register? I think that, like MPEG3, register 24 was cancelled because it would be completely unuseful. Greetings from Brazil! ----- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: FDC (was: UZIX DOS2)
On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Alex Wulms wrote: ] Right! Thanks. Could you send us an overview about Wavy FDC? Wavy contains the TC8566AF, just like the MSX turbo R. A couple of weeks ago I sent the TC8566AF datasheets to somebody in Brazil. I don't remember his name at this moment. That's me! I received (didn't I tell you?) the datasheets, and I thank you very much! Anyway, I'm still planning to scan the TC8566AF datasheets some day and put them on my homepage. Don't worry, I'll do it (don't you remember that I asked you if I could pass into a scanner and put on a web-page?). So, Sanyo Wavy FDC works exactly like TR FDC? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: FDC (was: UZIX DOS2)
On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, Alex Wulms wrote: ] Is Wavy supported by FastCopy? Yes. See my homepage for the drivers. Right! Thanks. Could you send us an overview about Wavy FDC? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: OPLL emulation (was: AW: philosophical view of emulation vsreal thing)
On Thu, 15 Jul 1999, AkA DanSHakU wrote: Second, AFAIK that OPL is not equal to the OPLL used on the FM-PAC (MSX-Music). I know of no way to create the OPLL hardware voices on an OPLx chip, unless there is some way to extracht OPL data for these voices from the OPLL. do a romdump of the fm-pac You can get a romdump of the original FMPAC cartridge in http://www.lsi.usp.br/~ricardo/brmsxdl.htm Go to the bottom of the page and see FMPAC.ROM Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: FDC (was: UZIX DOS2)
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Maarten ter Huurne wrote: About incompatibility, that can be avoided by making sure there are drivers for every FDC ever used for MSX. I know only 4 different ones: Philips/SONY (mem), turbo R (mem), Sanyo Wavy (IO), Brazilian FDCs (IO). Maybe there are more, but the number is managable. So, Sanyo Wavy uses port-based FDC??? Does anyone can describe how does it work? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: UZIX DOS2
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Alex Wulms wrote: ] About incompatibility, that can be avoided by making sure there are drivers ] for every FDC ever used for MSX. I know only 4 different ones: Philips/SONY ] (mem), turbo R (mem), Sanyo Wavy (IO), Brazilian FDCs (IO). Maybe there are ] more, but the number is managable. Sanyo Wavy uses mem as well. Only at a slightly different address then turbo R. Could you talk about more details about this FDC? I have never seen any Sanyo MSX. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: web browser for msx
On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: You're thinking about a 2400 bps modem. Using ACCNET, we can achieve higher bit-rates. No, I wasn't. I myself have a 33k6 modem for my MSX (ISDN for my PC), but when having a 14k4 modem loading images etc. can go very slow, especially on the internet of nowadays. But this isn't a MSX related problem, all kinds of computer connected through standard telephone lines have this problem. What can we do? Develop a new wireless technology? That could be possible, but I don't have financial resources. :-((( The main idea of FudeBrowser is to break this limitation doing the hard-work directly on the web-server! I think this can also be done on an MSX. You'll have to wait for the images to be decrunched, ok, but you also have to wait for them to be downloaded. And if this decrunch-process is written well, you can do other things while decrunching. But htz-files are compressed! The idea is very good: to compress the html data do achieve the fastest transfer, and to not use much complex algorithm techniques, to not overload Z80. In this way, FudeBrowser will be very faster than any other browsers running over Pentium and above. That's very good! Certainly Fudebrowser's author will release a version designed to run under your stack. Fine by me. But it will still take some time until it's finished. Ok. Meanwhile, Fudebrowser will be improved, perhaps with a MSX2 version. The "i" kernel is finished? Congratulations for you!!! It's good to see that MSX still has much future for professional applications. It already was finished a year ago (working Dos1-only). However, it still isn't Dos2-compatible, and bla and blu and it also still doesn't support the TCP/IP-protocol. So, your next task is, after finishing stack TCP/IP, "i" kernel will run it, right? Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: web browser for msx
On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: BTW, I think Lynx is an ugly browser. It works very fast, but is a little limited. Though very fit for MSX, because MSX-modems most of the time haven't got that much bandwidth. You're thinking about a 2400 bps modem. Using ACCNET, we can achieve higher bit-rates. The only disadvantage is the way it is displayed, it hasn't got graphics and a variable font. But you'll have to live with that. The main idea of FudeBrowser is to break this limitation doing the hard-work directly on the web-server! I think that it would be the right path for network services, but we have two problems: 1. Actually there's no TCP/IP stack working on MSX I and Trunks are working on it... At the moment Trunks works on the protocols, and I work on the interfaces. That's very good! Certainly Fudebrowser's author will release a version designed to run under your stack. 2. TCP/IP requires multitasking OS, which by itself spends CPU processing power. Z80 at 3.57MHz can run efficiently a multitasking OS and TCP/IP applications? I don't think so. Well 1. You definately don't NEED multitasking for TCP/IP. Unless you call the recieving of bytes on the interrupt multitasking... However, it is useful to have it, because if you are for example downloading a file you can extract another in the meantime. And 2. A Z80 can definately run a multitasking-environment. The "i" kernel is already finished, and it multitasks like hell. However, it still needs some thorough modifications, but I'm working on that. The "i" kernel is finished? Congratulations for you!!! It's good to see that MSX still has much future for professional applications. Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: I still have some stuff for Klaas de Wind...
On Fri, 23 Apr 1999, Rieks W. Torringa wrote: What Klaas de Wind died? Is that a bad joke? It is bad, but it's not a joke I'm afraid. He died February 17th this year. He was the founder of Msx club friesland if i am right... That's right. And the last few years a member of the editorial of our diskmagazine (Defender). Would it be bad if I ask what had happened to Klass de Wind before he having died? We from Brazil are very sorry (and why there were no news in this list that day?) - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: Speed difference between disk formatted on PC and MSX
On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, jam wrote: AW I agree on this explanation. You can doublecheck this theory by AW analyzing the track with some kind of track analysis tool. If I AW remember correctly, there exists some kind of japanese copy program AW which can analyze the track for you. Though, I do not remember its AW name. I think you're speaking about Formula :) It's one of the best copying program for MSX. It uses low-level access to the disk controller, so it only works with some controllers. BTW, it works on my Turbo-R perfectly. Where can I download it? Is it commercial or free software? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM , CS signals , A14,15 signals ROM pagination
On Wed, 7 Apr 1999, Leonard Silva de Oliveira wrote: Bastiaan Hubers wrote: Euh... I (we) am (are) still waiting. :) I finished the schematics for the mapper with 32kb SRAMs I packed it with rar and it's a 31kb file May I send it to the mailing list or I send in private to you ? If you intend to send in private, send to mee, too! [EMAIL PROTECTED] Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM , CS signals , A14,15 signals ROM pagination
On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Leonard Silva de Oliveira wrote: Damn ... in a distraction I sent the atatchment to the mailing list ... sorry all ! Don't be sorry, I thank you for doing it! The file was very small, and everyone who asked for it should have received. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 1.44 MB. disks?
On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Alwin Henseler wrote: Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The 2793 floppycontroller HAS the capacity to handle 500 Kbit/s (apparantly, this was used for larger 8 inch disks -a lnnngg, lnnngg, time ago). Are you SURE??? If WD2793 has this capacity, then let's do a big research! Texas Instruments TMS 2793 (is the same FDC) datasheets say so (no doubt), and I don't think they lie. The 2793 works with a 'bit clock' that is a combination of some quartz input frequency (mostly 1 or 2, and can be 4 MHz.), and both hardware- and software-settable dividers. Like 2 MHz. divided by 8 - 250 Kbits/sec. I was looking my old magazines, when I saw an advertisement of a address-based interface (by Technoahead), and there says that there's a clock of 16MHz!!! Perhaps they didn't use WD2793, but if the clock can be so high, then with a hardware modification we can use WD2793 for 500kbit/s. Resulting bit clocks are mentioned of 125, 250 (DD disks) AND 500 (8" and HD disks) KHz., or Kbits/sec, if you wish. And how can we set the right transfer rate in MSX? AFAIK, there's no port/address where we can set it. [...Z80 clockcycle counts...] Did you verify a clockcycles table for this instructions? They're a bit different from my values. A bit different? You mean: 1 clocktick different..!! Approximately. I think that I have already counted this M1 extra cycle. One rule became clear, of which I have never found an exception yet: Clockcycles taken by the Z80 in a MSX are the same as is stated in Z80 datasheets (I used Zilog's), PLUS ONE. Yes, all emulator makers have confirmed it. This behaviour matches perfectly MSX definition: Z80 CPU, with 1 wait state in M1 (machine cycle one). In other words: normal Z80 timing, with every intruction taking 1 clockcycle extra. Ofcourse same timings apply for Turbo-R in Z80 mode. Ok. Is there some way of disabling these extra clockcycle? -Do the INI in the above loop for starters (!): increases pointers, AND sets flags! I didn't understand. Could you explain what do you mean? According to Zilog docs, the INI instruction DOES change flags. How exactly, I don't know. It's kind a like with the IN F,(C) instruction, Zilog says: affects flags (and it does), but doesn't say how. I only suggested that maybe you could use this effect. Maybe you can find a description of the exact behaviour on Sean Young's pages (http://www.msxnet.org). We can ask Ricardo Bittencourt (BrMSX's author) for which flags are affected by the INI instruction. I think that only bits 3 and 5 of the flag-register are affected, plus the Z-flag (when B is decreased and becomes 0). Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
tions, making it more powerfull or versatile. Or keep the hardware as simple as possible, limiting its possibilities. Your idea is interesting, but is incompatible with almost all Megarom games. Perhaps it's possible to compatibilize them. But how could I load the RAMdisk-software? Don't say by tape! (..) But how about with Megaram alone? What's the use for a megaRAM alone, if it's normal RAM based (clearing data with power-off)? Don't you always need another drive to save the data more permanent? Well, my idea was to put a battery in my Megaram, and modify the ROM code to not erase the MegaramDisk contents after a (soft or hard) reset. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM (and 1.44MB disks)
On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Maarten ter Huurne wrote: At 05:25 PM 03/25/99 -0300, you wrote: I don't think that (mega)ROM cartridges are interesting. They're hard to copy, unmodifiable (in principle) and much expensive. They are nice if you collect games. But if you only want to play them, disk combined with mappper/MegaRAM is easier and cheaper. Nice to collect games? But if you're a game collector, you'll want a lot of games, and cartridges will use too much space in your room. Disks are phisically much more compact, and this is a good advantage for game collectors. Some Brazilian guys are fanatical crackers but not for piracy, just for fun! Japanese software was copy protected because they knew that WE would copy it, not the most part of the Japaneses. I don't think a commercial company would care if their games are copied in a country where they aren't available in the stores. I do, else, there's almost no reason for their copy protection. Cartridge is extra quality (no loading time, more durable) compared to disk. Also, it is harder to copy. And much much much more expensive! The cost/benefit relation is much poorer than for disks. Most of what you pay for a game is not the hardware, but the development. Even if ROM hardware is a lot more expensive than disks, it will make only a small difference on the selling price. This is true only nowadays. In that time, EPROMs were very expensive. Henrik Gilvad once told me. Is he the guy that created the IDE interface for MSX? Yes. And also the MoonSound, GFX9000 and some other hardware. So, I would say that he is the "Ademir Carchano" from the Neatherlands! :-) Then, there's still a chance only for Turbo-R. The built-in FDC can handle HD according to Henrik. But you would need to write a new diskROM... Yes, and some hardware modifications, too. My turbo R already has a HD drive inside, to replace the broken original drive. Other modifications wouldn't be necessary, would they? To be a replacement, no. But if you want to use the 1.44Mb capabilities of your FDC, at least will need to allow the photo-diode signal from your drive to be connected to the FDC. Remember: this photo-diode indicates if a high density (1.44Mb) disk is being used. Some people say that WD2793 can handle 500kbit/s transfer rate. Is it true? I'm not sure. I heard that FDCs of MSX2s (don't know the part number) weren't fast enough. But I've never verified that. Last year I made a simple test, connecting a 1.44Mb drive in my port based interface. With 720kb disks it works, but with 1.44Mb disks it doesn't. Perhaps increasing the value of the cristal (i.e., exchanging the cristal) it can work. Am I speaking nonsense? My idea was a buffer for an entire track (or maybe cylinder?) Would that make any difference in performance? I think that if the "read sector" command can be given within the time a sector gap takes to pass the drive head, reading single sectors will already occur at top speed. The main idea is: I want to make smaller sector gaps, then I can format a track with 1 more sector, increasing disk capacity. With small gaps, the time won't be enough, and so it would be necessary to make an entire track buffer. It would be a real benefit: - 720K disks are hard to find, 1.44MB disks are still available everywhere - double the amount of data fits on a single disk - disk transfer rate is doubled, making your MSX load faster Anyone interested in making a prototype? I am interested, but I don't know how should I create a diskrom compatible with the common diskroms. A diskROM for 1.44MB disks has two main features: - sector reading using the new floppy interface (easy to make) - support for 1.44MB floppy filesystem (may be difficult?) Then, your idea is to use a common diskrom, with the least modifications possible. The performance won't be very good, because standard disk interfaces has poor performance (compare with a PC interface, for instance). Anyway, the person who makes the hardware doesn't have to worry too much about the software. Designing the hardware and designing a sector read routine is something that should be done together. But all the other modifications to the diskROM are purely a software issue. I was thinking to create an entire new disk interface, but I don't know how the disk system variables related to work. So, I don't know how to create a better disk interface with backward compatibility. The biggest problem is that I don't have enough time, nowadays. A big problem for many MSXers... :( Perhaps Henrik Gilvad can implement a 1.44Mb interface using FPGA's. Since he has a good MSX hardware experience, he can do it spending much less time. Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Co
Re: MegaRAM (and 1.44MB disks)
On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Nice to collect games? But if you're a game collector, you'll want a lot of games, and cartridges will use too much space in your room. Disks are phisically much more compact, and this is a good advantage for game collectors. Since you live at LSI, and your room is just you desk, it's compreensible that you have only a drawer to put your things. But at my home, 1000km far away from here, I have much space for my things. And also for my MSX Expert. And many guys are in the same situation. So, your arguments doesn't count. :) Wrong, because I don't have a room at LSI, and wrong again because I don't live at LSI (Laboratory of Integrated Systems), I just work at LSI! That's a BIG difference. But my home is an apartment, and it's very hard to pick up my MSX magazines, and equally hard to use my disks. My MSX2 is stacked with my sound system, and my TR is above my TV!!! Someone could say that it's an heresy, but I really don't have enough space! An my arguments are also valid for anyone who lives in an apartment. Is he the guy that created the IDE interface for MSX? Yes. And also the MoonSound, GFX9000 and some other hardware. So, I would say that he is the "Ademir Carchano" from the Neatherlands! Yes. Also as Leonardo Padial is the "Ademir Carchano" of Spain. :) Good! MSX still have a good team of hardware makers. I also would like to be integrant of this selected group, but my knowledge is much lower (but can be improved!) :-) Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM (and 1.44MB disks)
On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Since you live at LSI, and your room is just you desk, it's compreensible that you have only a drawer to put your things. But at my home, 1000km far away from here, I have much space for my things. And also for my MSX Expert. And many guys are in the same situation. So, your arguments doesn't count. :) Wrong, because I don't have a room at LSI No. You just have a table. And a chair. And a Alpha or Sparc. That'all. :) No, I don't HAVE a chair and an Alpha or a Sparc. I CAN use a chair, a table and I use a Silicon Graphics INDY. I can use, but I don't have. Again, there's a big difference. and wrong again because I don't live at LSI (Laboratory of Integrated Systems), I just work at LSI! You LIVE there! You said! You said you'll never get out of there! Never get out of here because I work here, not because I live here. And if you verify what's the future of the electronic industry, you also will want to stay working at Unicamp (or something like that). You'll live the rest of your days there! You already has a label in your chest: "Property of LSI"! : This doesn't hinders me of doing part of my PhD course in another country. And it's not too funny like people say. An my arguments are also valid for anyone who lives in an apartment. Buy a house! And outside Sao Paulo! :) I know people who made it, and they are very repented. The reason is simple: they still work in Sao Paulo and now get a terrible trafic everyday!!! And to buy a house I'll need a lot of money. Do you want to sponsor me? Greetings from Brazil! ----- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: MegaRAM
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My project with MegaRAM uses a double-bank of mapped registers (16 bytes select ever 8kb block). And how do you think you'll make the registers? Will you use the even addresses to select LSB and odd addresses to select MSB? The great idea is more or less this: OUT (8Fh), A disable G-RAM (or enable ROM) OUT (8Eh), A enable LSB exp. address for bank switch OUT (8Ch), A enable MSB exp. address for bank switch That's not a good idea, because for each block switch with distance higher than FFh you'll need 2 OUTs and 2 LDs. I prefer "Circuit Cellar",by Steve Ciarcia I collect copies of circuit cellar on BYTE small systems journal (USA/1979~1988). Thanks for remind ! I don't know Circuit Cellar publications on BYTE magazine. I was talking about http://www.circuitcellar.com/ If you don't remember, Steve Ciarcia is the writter of the book called "Construct your own Microcomputer using Z80", McGrawHill. I have a copy, too. : And plan to make a PCB for this schemes. That will be very big! The most mysteriuos MegaRAM's feature is the mirror :) MSB of address bus (A15) is ignored by MegaRAM! Yes, the creator of Megaram (Ademir Carchano) told me that he ignored A15 to make the hardware much more simple, and to fit in a standard cartridge box. Jeannie...(ops!) Ademir... is a genious! I don't think so. He is a guy that had the chance of have a good documentation and very recent equipments, and much more knowledge about hardware than the most part of people in that time. (Blocks marked with "'" are mirrors of same block) Right. That can happen when you do a reset while Megaram is in "write enable mode". But I don't know how much memory will be detected as normal RAM. Does the BIOS verify if the mirror effect happens? Ok, the CHKRAM started on E000h, and decrease counter when search RAM... don't know how more is effective. Does anybody know exactly how the system search for slots in which there is RAM? MegaRAM are "RESET-insensitive". See technical informa tion and electrical diagram on CPU MSX Magazine nr 35. Don't trust in that magazine! I'll analyse the contents of those schematics to see if there aren't any bugs. The scheme do not use /RESET signal for clear MegaRAM registers. I'm based on CPU MSX scheme. That's right. But I see that schematic doesn't use the BUSDIR signal. Does anybody know how the BUSDIR signal should be used? Simple and good method: select (in descending order) each possible block, write its number in it in at some test address, and then (starting with block 0) check up until which block the block number matches what you find at the test address when selecting each block. Many faults for a test program... Then show us which faults you are seeing! Checking for multiple-redundance nodes, and check for individual address bus lines minimize time on search size of available RAM. What do you mean with multiple-redundance nodes? And checking for individual address bus lines only works for Megarams (or Mappers) with power of 2 kilobytes (starting with 16kb). Think how much time CPU need for measure the entire RAM connected at slots. This way is unreasonable! Very few time! That's perfectly possible. I shop 4 ICs WD2793BL... but no have schematics for!!! A friend of mine sended to me a copy of the port based disk interface, and I saw that it really uses WD2793 FDC. The same friend send to me the copy of diagrams of this interface, too. But I don't know to make adjust. I think that with the schematic, you can easily create an interface. What don't you know? But one of the difficulties is to understand how the all kinds of MSX hardware work, because the variability is really big I think 1st priority detect all kinds of RAM. That's the easy part. Not so easy. Several kinds of RAM is available: Cartridge 64kb RAM standart, MegaRAM, MegaRAM-Disk, Ext. Mapper, (new)G-RAM, 8/16/32kb SRAM modules... I said that's the easy part because the others are much more difficult. Found size of RAM isn't all of test... I need mark the Wait cicles required for read/write on any kinds of RAM available on system. That's not need and not possible! That's a hardware characteristic, and can't be software controlled. I collect tricks for detect this kinds. And I research tricks for that! Wait for G-RAM(TM) (MegaRAM with 16-bit registers) padronization. Will alocate 512Mbytes RAM/each slot. Is the "G" from "G-RAM" a abbreviation of "gambiarra"? :-) .br "G" vem de GODZILLA, ficou bacana ? Yes, but I think that "gambiarra" is much more funny! Mas nao espalha meu, senao posso me dar mal ! : Mas voce ja' espalhou aqui! /.br Greetings from Br
Re: MegaRAM
necessary that the software be present to the bus, so one memory block will be fixed. I think that this restriction is much worse with Memory Mapper. Not so! Software inside the megaRAM could copy some of itself into other RAM, and call that copied code. That code could even switch away the megaRAM entirely. Many diskROMs do this kind of thing. Good idea! But not so good for machines with only 64kb of RAM, that is always full. But how could I load the RAMdisk-software? Don't say by tape! Examples: With harddisk-interface megaRAM connected, install megaRAM software. Reset, and: harddisk + megaRAM-disk available. But how about with Megaram alone? Install software from floppy. Reset with CTRL: drive A=megaRAM-disk, B=floppy (or the other way round). With battery backup-upped SRAM: install megaRAM-software on any machine with a diskdrive, then use megaRAM-disk on ANY machine (with OR without other drive). Or use Flash EPROM for the megaRAM? The best idea! Greetings from Brazil! ----------------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MSX2 memory mappers
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Alwin Henseler wrote: Ooohh, it's really hard to explain those Brazilians all about memory mappers! (don't they have any?). Not all Brazilians (or am I being so repetitive?). I converted several games from Memory Mapper to Megaram, and I never had Memory Mapper! Some facts: An MSX2 doesn't need to have a memory mapper to be a true MSX-2. Example: Sony HB-G900. 64K RAM, no mapper, but true MSX-2, nothing wrong with it. That's what I said! Sony HB-F9P: 128 K, mapper Smaller: Almost every Japanese-built MSX2 or 2+: 64K mapper Philips NMS 8220 has only 64K, but this IS a mapper. Really a 128K mapper with 2nd half empty, so switching blocks, you get: Block 0, 1, 2, 3, "nothing", "nothing", "nothing", "nothing", block 0 again, 1 again, 2 again, 3 again, "nothing", "nothing", "nothing", "nothing", 0 again, 1 again, etc. Then, it can be expanded to 128kb. Not standard? Absolutely standard! Mapper=64K = 4 blocks (0-3), selecting block 0, 1, 2, 3 gets you mapper blocks 0, 1, 2, 3 - all ok. Reading the mapper ports on this machine would return other values as you might expect, but reading mapper ports SHOULD be considered unreliable, right? Not only unreliable, but a wrong procedure, since the MSX Technical Handbook prevents it. Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: MegaRAM
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Patrick Kramer wrote: This mystery can be solved quite simply if you look at the specifications of the MSX slot. In a cartridge slot, you have three signals, just for the convenience of the hardware designer: CS1: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 1 CS2: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 2 CS12: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 1 or 2 I already knew this signals, but I never understood how to create a ROM in pages 0 and 3. Well, you don't need these signals then. Example: if you want to have a 16K ROM in page 0, you would have to select this ROM whenever the slot is selected, AND address space -3fff is addressed. This means A14 and A15 MUST be low. So as a _CS for the ROM you would have _SLTSL OR A14 OR A15. Wow! Now many many things are becoming clear!!! But how can be made cartridges with 64kb of normal continuous RAM? Well, only use _SLTSL as a _CS for the RAM. There is no need for page-related chip selects as all pages are addressed. (A14 and A15 are used) That's what I was thinking. I don't know why here, in Brazil, we had had many informations about software, but almost nothing about hardware. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Maarten ter Huurne wrote: ROM version of Royal Blood is 1MB. 8-megabit Megarom??? That's impressive! Is it downloadable in any site? I don't think so. I know it exists because Takamichi has one. It contains a bit of SRAM as well. There is also a disk version of this game, so the ROM version is interesting mostly as a curiousity. I downloaded from Funet, but I didn't have time to test it. I have also seen a Korean compilation cartridge (probably illegal) which contains many 16K ROMs combined in a single cartridge. It had a ROM of 2MB. I still have the ROM image on my harddisk. I don't think that (mega)ROM cartridges are interesting. They're hard to copy, unmodifiable (in principle) and much expensive. Why didn't people from Japan create a kind of Megaram? Maybe they don't like doing illegal things? Take it easy! Don't get me wrong, I copied lots of MSX games. Only recently I started buying games (MSX and PSX). Now I have a part-time job (Java programming) and I can afford them, before I needed all my money for hardware (MSX2, color monitor, FM-PAC). Ok, I was thinking that you was blaming me for software piracy. I copied some MSX games, but I never sold copies. I never take profit of others work. But there wasn't any kind of Japanese representatives here, so we didn't have another way of acquireing Japanese software for MSX. I get the feeling the Japanese are not as fanatical crackers and copiers like Dutch, Spanish or Brazillians. Although maybe under the surface the Japanese are not the perfect citizens they may appear to be? Otherwise, why would games released for the Japanese market alone be copy protected? Some Brazilian guys are fanatical crackers but not for piracy, just for fun! Japanese software was copy protected because they knew that WE would copy it, not the most part of the Japaneses. I was talking about one manufacturer (for example, Konami) sells Megaram cartridges and sell disks with the games separately. This would be much cheaper. If they wanted to go for disks, they wouldn't really need a MegaRAM cartridge. They would just write the game in such a way that it runs on the internal RAM. After all, Japanese MSX2/2+ software all works on 64K RAM. I agree completely! I see no reason to make Megarom cartridges instead of make disks. Cartridge is extra quality (no loading time, more durable) compared to disk. Also, it is harder to copy. And much much much more expensive! The cost/benefit relation is much poorer than for disks. around 1990 we had to rely on imports for games like SD Snatcher and Solid Snake. Importing games? Wasn't it too slow and too expensive? It was slow and expensive, but clubs offered that service and it was used. It was the only way to get originals. By the way, SD Snatcher is more expensive now than it was back then... Then it became a good investment! :-) Total: 71 clockcicles. Conclusion: you're right, it's not possible to use 1.2Mb or 1.44Mb disks with Z80 at 3.57MHz. It's BAD! Henrik Gilvad once told me. Is he the guy that created the IDE interface for MSX? Then, there's still a chance only for Turbo-R. The built-in FDC can handle HD according to Henrik. But you would need to write a new diskROM... Yes, and some hardware modifications, too. For normal MSX1/2/2+, 7MHz is an option. But old FDCs can't handle HD speeds either, so they would have to be replaced. Some people say that WD2793 can handle 500kbit/s transfer rate. Is it true? Another option is to use some kind of buffered hardware. Like Superdisk connected to IDE, as Peter Burkhard mentioned. Right, buffered hardware is the best solution. But a Superdisk drive is quite expensive, maybe someone wants to make a buffered HD floppy interface? It could be very simple: two banks of 512 bytes (1 sector) of RAM. Could be two ICs or a single dual-ported IC. One bank is filled by the FDC, while the other is LDIR-ed to MSX main RAM. Although 3.5MHz is too slow for polling the FDC, it would be fast enough for LDIR-ing. After LDIR-ing an entire sector it would poll for moment the next sector is available. My idea was a buffer for an entire track (or maybe cylinder?) It would be a real benefit: - 720K disks are hard to find, 1.44MB disks are still available everywhere - double the amount of data fits on a single disk - disk transfer rate is doubled, making your MSX load faster Anyone interested in making a prototype? I am interested, but I don't know how should I create a diskrom compatible with the common diskroms. The biggest problem is that I don't have enough time, nowadays. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAM
Re: MegaRAM
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: No, with the IDE-Interface and a LS120 you can read 1,44MB disks And what is this LS120? And can you write and format 1.44Mb disks with it? DalPoz, esse "LS120" e' um tipo novo de drive que suporta discos com capacidade de ate' 120Mb, esse disco tem as mesmas dimensoes de um disco de 3.5" comum. Alem desse disco especial o drive LS120 suporta tranquilamente discos de 3.5" normais (de 720Kb ou 1.44Mb). (espero que o pessoal da lista nao fiquem chateados por eu nao ter escrito em ingles, minha cabeca nao esta' muito boa agora, acho que e' gripe) Thank you for this Spanish explanation. Ofcourse, all non-spanish (or what is it, Brazilian?) speaking people already know what this is. They are much smarter. We're sorry, this answer were written by a japanese friend of mine, and he explained what is this LS120 drive. He apologizes for this portuguese answer, but he says he is a bit ill, and give a very short answer, only to give an idea of what is this LS120. The above answer is in Portuguese, the language spoken in Brazil (not Spanish!), and if I asked, it's because I didn't know what is it. PLEEZ MAN!!! English... Ok! Next time it will be a private e-mail. But take it easy! Some time ago (2 years) many people answered e-mails in dutch, and I never complained about it! Of course, English is the official language of this list, we don't want to discuss about it (we simply agree, and that's all) Ok, If I'm correct LS120 is a FDC (Floppy Disc Controller)??? He said it's some kind of special disk drive, that can handle 120Mb disks (not zipdisks) and standard 3.5" disks (including 720kb and 1.44Mb). Greetings from Brazil! ------------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: MegaRAM
On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha wrote: Jeannie...(ops!) Ademir... is a genious! I don't think so. He is a guy that had the chance of have a good documentation and very recent equipments, and much more knowledge about hardware than the most part of people in that time. Ademir Carchano is a very dedicated man. Yes, that's true! You heared his histories in Jau MSX Meeting. And they were very incredible! Making "dumping" against who had pirated his hardware! VERY FUNNY!!! You know about his "guess" of MegaROM functionality just disassembling Konami ROMs. And his knowledge about MSX2/2+/TR, mainly disassembling ROM code. He has his merits. Yes, many merits, but this doesn't make him a genious, only a very smart man. Does anybody know exactly how the system search for slots in which there is RAM? Disassembly the MSX ROM, Dal Poz... With BrMSX fudebugger, that's what i'll do! Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, jam wrote: Hello, Marco Antonio: MP BTW, memory mapper wasn't born jointly with MSX2. Many MSX2 that I MP knew had only 64kb of RAM. Does your 8235 have internal Memory MP Mapper? You are wrong. Every MSX2 must have Memory Mapper. Even with only 64K of RAM, it's mapped RAM. Read the MSX2 Technical Handbook (by ASCII) and check it. There says that Mapper isn't mandatory for MSX2! Many people already said it. BTW, my MSX2 doesn't have Mapper, only 64kb of standard RAM, and it is a MSX2. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM , CS signals , A14,15 signals ROM pagination
On Sat, 20 Mar 1999, Leonard Silva de Oliveira wrote: (A14 and A15 are used) Every time if you need to make memory mapper control ... exept if YOU WANT the mirror effect ! =) I also made a simple memory mapper with S-Ram ... If anyone have interest I may publish my schematics ... =) I am interested! Could you send your schematics to me through e-mail? P.S.: I'm SURE tham ANY MSX can run both types of ROM on the page 0 (AB or CD types) This can happen only with the help of the mirror effect! Alwin Henseler said that he traced the main ROM to see that. Anyone tried to do a rom wich works in the page 3 I think (but I am not sure) that this can be done only with the help of the mirror effect. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Sat, 20 Mar 1999, jam wrote: Hola Marco Antonio: MP Total: 71 clockcicles. Conclusion: you're right, it's not possible to MP use 1.2Mb or 1.44Mb disks with Z80 at 3.57MHz. It's BAD! MP MP Then, there's still a chance only for Turbo-R. Not only ... What about MSX2 with 7 MHz kit? ;-) A very good idea! I didn't remember about that, because it's home made. But it solves our problem of Z80 timeout. Perhaps all MSX (including MSX1) could be converted to operate at 7MHz. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: page 1 diskloading (was: 64K VRAM?)
On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, shevek wrote: On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Jon De Schrijder wrote: But this routine is only provided in MSX-DOS(2) environment; when in BASIC, a RET instruction is placed at #F36E. So: disktransfer in page1 in BASIC is probably not possible (or perhaps the F37D entry temporarily changes the #F36E hook; didn't test it); This is logical: BASIC ROM is normally selected in page 1. It is not that logical. I want to make a program that is started from basic but switches ram to page 1. Than calling the diskrom on f37d with dma in page 1 would be useful. Until now, I always avoided it, but I would like to know if it would work on every MSX. If so, I could just as well use it... I am sure that for Turbo-R and for port-based disk interfaces (Brazilian ones) you can do that. For other interfaces, I am not sure, but it should be possible. PS: I traced the Turbo-R's diskrom, and I can guarantee that! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Alex Wulms wrote: ] Ok, but this means that using DMA in page 1 is against MSX standard, or ] not? I can say three things about accessing data in page 1: 1) It is no problem at all under MSX-DOS when you use address #0005 to access the BDOS. 2) It might be a problem when you are working under basic, using address #F37D to access the BDOS. Though, I'm not sure about that. Why it might be a problem? 3) It is definitely a problem if you call phydio directly, either via 0x144 in the BIOS or via 0x4010 in the diskrom. I ever used this routine calling 0144h or FFA7h and I have never had problems! What's the matter? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, shevek wrote: On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, shevek wrote: On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: For the most part of diskroms, DMA can be in page 1, because they have access to FDC through addresses 7FF8h-7FFCh and also BFF8h-BFFCh, and they transfer a small routine to F1BFh (or something like that) that allows a disk transfer to happen in page 1. Is that MSX-standard or just the case on many MSXs? The standard doesn't say anything about the method that the diskrom should use. So, it's just the case on many MSXs. The standard only says that the interface should use memory addresses to transfer data between CPU and FDC. Ok, but this means that using DMA in page 1 is against MSX standard, or not? Given that the standatd doesn't say anything about this, it's not against the MSX standard! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, shevek wrote: On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: For the most part of diskroms, DMA can be in page 1, because they have access to FDC through addresses 7FF8h-7FFCh and also BFF8h-BFFCh, and they transfer a small routine to F1BFh (or something like that) that allows a disk transfer to happen in page 1. Is that MSX-standard or just the case on many MSXs? The standard doesn't say anything about the method that the diskrom should use. So, it's just the case on many MSXs. The standard only says that the interface should use memory addresses to transfer data between CPU and FDC. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, jam wrote: Hi, Marco Antonio Maybe you mean the NMS 8220? That machine had only 64K RAM (normal memory mapper), but did still have 128K VRAM, like every MSX2 I've ever seen... MP MP How can 64kb of RAM be memory mapper? Memory Mapper with only 4 memory MP blocks is a bit unuseful! Why do you think it's unuseful? Because the main function of Memory Mapper is to enable access to more than 64kb of RAM in a single slot. For example, it's very useful for accessing the entire RAM using only the #8000-#BFFF segment. My MSX2 has 64kb of standard RAM and to access other pages I used to do some LDIRs (i.e., I can handle that). And DOS2 *needs* the memory to be mapped in order to manage the RAM properly. And does DOS2 work with 64kb of Memory Mapper? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: Maybe you mean the NMS 8220? That machine had only 64K RAM (normal memory mapper), but did still have 128K VRAM, like every MSX2 I've ever seen... How can 64kb of RAM be memory mapper? Memory Mapper with only 4 memory blocks is a bit unuseful! NOT!!! With a non-memorymapped 64k RAM the blocks are on fixed adresses. If a small game for example executes from #C000, and it has the fielddata at #8000. Well if you include a music-replayer which uses the area #8000 for music-data, then you can switch the music-data to that adres with memory-mapped RAM, but you can't do that with non-memorymapped 64k RAM... So now you understand that 64k mapped and 64k fixed are not the same? All right, I used to do some LDIRs, but now I see that the big deal is some kind of "hardware data transfer". Conclusion: the utility is a "high speed data transfer" between memory pages. I agree with you, it is useful, but not too much. Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Alex Wulms wrote: This mystery can be solved quite simply if you look at the specifications of the MSX slot. In a cartridge slot, you have three signals, just for the convenience of the hardware designer: CS1: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 1 CS2: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 2 CS12: This signal becomes active if the Z80 addresses memory in page 1 or 2 I already knew this signals, but I never understood how to create a ROM in pages 0 and 3. As you might understand, the cartridges which are 'mirrored' all over the place simply ignore the CSx signals. While the megarom cartridges, which can only be addressed in page 1 and 2, use the CS12 signal. Then, normal Konami Megaroms use CS12 signal, and Konami SCC Megaroms don't use. Is that right? Funny to realize that all these amazing discoveries are well documented. We should definetely get a good site up and running with all technical documentation available about the MSX. It will save a lot of people a lot of time with tracing and disassembling the MSX ROMS. Yes, it will save too much time! But how can be made cartridges with 64kb of normal continuous RAM? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: 64K VRAM?
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, shevek wrote: On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: How can 64kb of RAM be memory mapper? Memory Mapper with only 4 memory blocks is a bit unuseful! Not at all. With a mapper every 16kB page can be switched on , 4000, 8000 or C000. This is useful for example when you want to use a lot of memory under BASIC. You can lift the bottom of your program to C000 (F676 if I remember correctly) and then use page 2 as data-area. With a 64kB mapper this still gives you 48kB to use, in stead of the 16kB you would have without a mapper. Yes, it's F676h that points to the bottom of the basic program. But the main utility of the Memory Mapper is to create a block switching system that allows the slot to contain much more than 64kb of RAM. Using Memory Mapper only to exchange memory contents isn't a big deal, because you still can do it using LDIR (or using a famous technique called swap, like this:) LD HL,source LD DE,destination LD BC,4000h LOOP: LD A,(HL) EX AF,AF' LD A,(DE) LD (HL),A EX AF,AF' LD (DE),A INC HL INC DE DEC BC LD A,B OR C JR NZ,LOOP RET Of course Memory Mapper if much faster, but it's not much flexible, because the block size to be exchanged is fixed in 16kb. If you want to change 8kb basic programs, you'll need to use the above technique. Is there a program that takes profit of the 64kb memory mapped? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
RE: MegaRAM
hat you find at the test address when selecting each block. (...) I think that this method has a fault Many faults for a test program... Then show us which faults you are seeing! If it exists, you can change the MegaRAM-disk from (EP)ROM state into RAM state and vice versa (using both I/O ports), and detect that - MegaRAM-disk. Yes, but usually there's no need for that. ROM state is ON or OFF. No ROM are mapped on MegaRAM Disk. Sure! That's another small detail that I had forgotten to show. The FDC used in European MSX machines is either a TMS 1793 or 2793(...) All other European MSX's, and separate disk interfaces (Philips, Toshiba, Sony etc.) that I've seen, use the TMS 2793. I shop 4 ICs WD2793BL... but no have schematics for!!! A friend of mine sended to me a copy of the port based disk interface, and I saw that it really uses WD2793 FDC. So, now I answered Alwin's question. So do I. Recently, Alex Wulms explained to me how these FDCs work, and they work like the port based FDC. The main difference is that addresses 7FF8h-7FFBh is mapped to ports D0h-D4h. There are other minor differences, but they are not important. More tech info for help me on FDC concepts ? FDC concepts? port D0h or address 7FF8h - read=status write=command port D1h or address 7FF9h - current track number port D2h or address 7FFAh - sector number port D3h or address 7FFBh - data I/O port D4h or address 7FFCh - drive select, side select and motor on/off For Turbo-R FDC, things are completely different. The commands and the status are composed by many bytes, that must be read or written sequentially to address 7FF4h, when address 7FF2h indicates that the FDC is ready to receive or send the next byte of the command or status. 7FF5h is the data I/O. 7FF3h is a port where we should write 20h or 30h for certain operations, but I don't know the purpose. Does anybody know? I had talked to Alex Wulms and he had said it has these datasheets, but that's only in paper. So, I couldn't get it. If you know some cheap way of sending information from paper to other countries, please contact me. Only few copies are "sactisfaction" for me. But international snail mail will be too much expensive. Ok, that's a good idea. The main idea is to get the knowledge used to make the disk copier and create an entire new operating system, much more efficient. Marco, a name of project (SODA) is definitive ? No, it can be changes when someone suggest a better name for it. But one of the difficulties is to understand how the all kinds of MSX hardware work, because the variability is really big I think 1st priority detect all kinds of RAM. That's the easy part. But we don't know how IDE, SCSI, MoonSound and GFX9000 work. Are there technical documentation available for download? You seem to know what you're talking about here, and I myself don't have a MegaRAM. Wait for G-RAM(TM) (MegaRAM with 16-bit registers) padronization. Will alocate 512Mbytes RAM/each slot. Is the "G" from "G-RAM" a abbreviation of "gambiarra"? :-) Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Maarten ter Huurne wrote: Lots of people have one. I am one of them. Philips 8235, 8245, 8250, 8255 and 8280 were all sold with 128K mapper. Only Philips did it? Did other manufacturers do only 256kb of Mapper built-in? Beyond Metal Gear 2, do you know other Megarom games with 512kb of more? Hydlide 3 is 512K. ROM version of Royal Blood is 1MB. 8-megabit Megarom??? That's impressive! Is it downloadable in any site? And nobody was interested in transforming MSX1 to MSX2? I don't think any company ever offered such a conversion. Conversions from MSX2 to MSX2+ were offered though. Some included only V9958, others included new ROMs and/or internal MSX-MUSIC. Here in Brazil the only way to get MSX2 was doing conversions! Only actually Ademir Carchano produces boards of MSX2+, previously all MSX2 and MSX2+ were converted from MSX1. But ROM cartridges are very expensive. A memory expansion with exactly the same format than Megarom games was a more intelligent solution than buying several cartridges. Why didn't people from Japan create a kind of Megaram? Maybe they don't like doing illegal things? Take it easy! I was talking about one manufacturer (for example, Konami) sells Megaram cartridges and sell disks with the games separately. This would be much cheaper. Anyway, they did finally create one: the ESE-SCC. But it's main use is as a RAMdisk/DOS2 cartridge. That's a good idea, but was made very time before the Megaroms cartridges had been manufactured. The reason MegaRAM type cartridge was never developed in Europe is probably that 128K and 256K machines (SONY700) were sold. A lot of people had their MSXes memory expanded to run cracked megaROM games. Ok, that really explains everything. There was another problem here in Brazil (and perhaps in Europe too): there was no japanese softwarehouses representatives here! What were we supposed to do? In Europe, for a long time software was available in normal stores. But Was Japanese software available in normal stores? around 1990 we had to rely on imports for games like SD Snatcher and Solid Snake. I guess the European market was not profitable enough to make English versions of those games. One of the reasons was the large-scale copying. Importing games? Wasn't it too slow and too expensive? Do you know a FDC that supports 1.2Mb and 1.44Mb drives and is still being produced, and have good documentation? Note that 3.5MHz is too slow to allow reading of 1.44MB disks. The "inner loop" of the sector read routine is too slow to cope with the data flow. So if you want to create 1.44MB drives for MSX, you either have to use 7MHz Z80 or use some kind of buffer for reading sectors. Are you sure? A 720kb disk works with a FDC that handles 250kbits/s, a 1440kb disk works with a FDC that handles 500kbits/s. This means that the main routine should be able to read 12500 bytes per turn. It means that this routine should run 12500 times in 0.2 seconds. Then, the routine should spend a maximum of 16 microseconds. In a 3.57561149MHz, this means 57 clockcicles. LD HL,address LD C,D3h LOOP: IN A,(D0h) ; 12 clocks RRCA; 5 clocks JR NC,LOOP ; 9 or 12 clocks RRCA; 5 clocks RET NC ; 9 clocks INI ; 21 clocks (I guess) JP LOOP ; 10 clocks Total: 71 clockcicles. Conclusion: you're right, it's not possible to use 1.2Mb or 1.44Mb disks with Z80 at 3.57MHz. It's BAD! Then, there's still a chance only for Turbo-R. Greetings from Brazil! ----- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Manuel Bilderbeek wrote: Philips 8235, 8245, 8250, 8255 and 8280 were all sold with 128K mapper. Only Philips did it? Did other manufacturers do only 256kb of Mapper built-in? See the hardwarelist: e.g. SOny HB-F700P: 256KB of Mapper. Ok, I see. But my question if if all 128kb built-in MSX are from Philips. Hydlide 3 is 512K. ROM version of Royal Blood is 1MB. 8-megabit Megarom??? That's impressive! Is it downloadable in any site? It's on ftp.komkon.org/pub/MSX/Carts/Mega I believe. Yes, that's true! Thanks!!! Here in Brazil the only way to get MSX2 was doing conversions! Only actually Ademir Carchano produces boards of MSX2+, previously all MSX2 and MSX2+ were converted from MSX1. Which MSX1 machines were used? Only Hotbit and Gradiente? Yes, HotBit was made by Sharp, and Gradiente was the manufacturer of Expert. In Europe, for a long time software was available in normal stores. But Was Japanese software available in normal stores? Konami ROMs were. And some others too. Clubs imported software, later. But in the beginning, there were even made tape-versions of Japanese software, under license. (Like Zanac, e.g., see a previous thread about Eaglesoft/Aackosoft). Tape made under license? And why didn't it happen in Japan? And how did it happen? Importing games? Wasn't it too slow and too expensive? Appearantly not! Here in Brazil it would be. The import tax is absurdly high, the transport is slow, and the inspection is lazy. Total: 71 clockcicles. Conclusion: you're right, it's not possible to use 1.2Mb or 1.44Mb disks with Z80 at 3.57MHz. It's BAD! Too bad! Then, there's still a chance only for Turbo-R. And 7.16 MHz MSX2! Yes, and why not 7.16MHz MSX1? BTW, how does a 7.16MHz works? I didn't change the main clock of my MSX2 because I know that V9938 won't work. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Laurens Holst wrote: this MegaRam-module wasmade before the MSX2 was released??? Sure! It was created exactly after the born of Nemesis I. Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, J. Lautenbag wrote: this MegaRam-module wasmade before the MSX2 was released??? Sure! It was created exactly after the born of Nemesis I. Ehhh... Nemesis I says (C) 1986, my 8235/00 says (C) 1985, so MSX2 is older than Nemesis I! And if that's true, the memory mapper is older than your Megaram... I have never seen a MSX2 before 1987. And this copyright doesn't mean that the production really started at 1985. When did you buy your 8235? BTW, memory mapper wasn't born jointly with MSX2. Many MSX2 that I knew had only 64kb of RAM. Does your 8235 have internal Memory Mapper? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, J. Lautenbag wrote: I have never seen a MSX2 before 1987. And this copyright doesn't mean that the production really started at 1985. When did you buy your 8235? In 1990, second hand, but I think MSX2 was officially introduced somewhere in 1985, 1986. Wow! I had bought my first MSX1 in 1986. You had better equipment very before me! BTW, memory mapper wasn't born jointly with MSX2. Many MSX2 that I knew had only 64kb of RAM. Does your 8235 have internal Memory Mapper? Yes, it has 128 kB mapped. 128kb of Mapper? That's another thing that I didn't know! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Manuel Bilderbeek wrote: They did, Dutch magazines report MSX2 in 1986. This explain why there's so many MSX2 in Europe. Here in Brazil, we only can get MSX2 in 1988. So, I ever thinked that Megarom was born before MSX2. So, probably after the birth of MSX2! My manuals of the Sony HB-G900P also say (C) 1985 (and that is one of the very first MSX2 prototypes... But ok, it doesn't have a memory mapper... Was the 64kB RAM in the HB-F500P mapped?) I don't think so. When I send my MSX1 to be converted do MSX2 (adding an internal board), I didn't get memory mapper, keeping with 64kb. Memory Mapper started in Brazil as a cartridge! You're saying that the opposite is the truth, aren't you? Yups. That's strange. I think that it's more natural to expand memory first, and after expand video capabilities. It has. (Why don't you check the MSX hardwarelist on the FAQ) That's a good idea! But why the most part of Japanese game makers only had stopped to do MSX1 games in 1988? Because many, many, many MSX1 machines were sold in Japan and the rest of the world. And the games could still be played on MSX2. And nobody was interested in transforming MSX1 to MSX2? BTW, is there Megaram in the MSX hardware list? Ofcourse... If you only start to read it!! Yes, I found it. And there's a 128kb Megaram, I also have never seen that! Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Manuel Bilderbeek wrote: Yes, it has 128 kB mapped. 128kb of Mapper? That's another thing that I didn't know! So you _still_ haven't read the MSX hardwarelist??? ;-) To say the truth, I had read the MSX hardware list (do you remember that I pointed the bug in the Turbo-R's diskdrive connector?), but I didn't pay attention to the hardware list, only in Turbo-R hardware details. But, some minutes ago, I was filling out the guest book, so I didn't have seen the hardware list. Now I saw (and saw somethings very strange!) Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM (was: cracked 24k ROMs)
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, J. Lautenbag wrote: Ok, I didn't know that Memory Mapper of 128kb existed. But does someone have an MSX2 with 128kb of VRAM and only 128kb of Mapper? All Philips MSX2 (except the 8230 I think) had 128 kB VRAM and a 128 kB memory mapper. That's very good for VRAM and a few poor for RAM. And I still think that 128kb of VRAM for MSX2+ is too little. And did exist 128kb of memory mapper expansion cartridge? Beyond Metal Gear 2, do you know other Megarom games with 512kb of more? Hydlide 3? Yes, but sometime ago, someone in this list had talked about a 768kb Megarom game. Does someone know something about it? Greetings from Brazil! - Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Pablo Vasques Bravo-Villalba wrote: Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz wrote: Yep, and I think that's good, because when you turn on your MSX, the state is completely undefined, but there's no useful data in Megaram, so the current selected blocks aren't important. But after a reset, the conservative characteristics are ever used to allow the software loaded into Megaram to be restarted properly. This can happen specially when a block number isn't changed in region 4000h-5FFFh or 8000h-9FFFh. Is this the reason why I could run Konami's Game Master with almost any Konami MegaROM game? In my old Expert, the RAM is in slot 2. With the MegaRAM in slot 3, I can load all the game in MegaRAM (without starting it), then load Game Master in main memory and start it. This isn't possible with MSXs with main memory in slot 3, or is it? I think it's impossible, because when the system is booted, the systems scans for the slot that has the main RAM. When the RAM test is made in the slot where Megaram is, the current selected block is changed, and the game loaded into Megaram won't be recognised. This doesn't happen if Megaram is connected to a slot "after" the slot of the main RAM (because de memory scan is cancelled). But without a reset, you can also run in a MSX with RAM in slot 3. The requirement is that Game Master be installed in a slot "before" the slot where Megaram is connected. Greetings from Brazil! --------- Marco Antonio Simon Dal Pozhttp://www.lsi.usp.br/~mdalpoz [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Apple" (c) Copyright 1767, Sir Isaac Newton /"\ \ / CAMPANHA DA FITA ASCII - CONTRA MAIL HTML X ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN - AGAINST HTML MAIL / \ MSX Mailinglist. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the body (not subject) "unsubscribe msx [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (without the quotes :-) Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] (www.stack.nl/~wiebe/mailinglist/)
Re: MegaRAM
On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Alwin Henseler wrote: Marco Antonio Simon dal Poz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's great! It's becoming hard to find MSX people who handles with hardware nowadays. I don't! I did, and I still can/know how to, but I don't 'do' in MSX hardware anymore these days (sorry) That's ok, nobody can make money with MSX hardware nowadays. But I think that people who handles with hardware should be able to work together to create a new MSX more powerful and still keeping the backward compatibility. We can get the MSX disks with Megarom games ready to run in Megaram and run it directly in the emulator, without the necessity of extracting the .ROM files from the .DSK file. The main reason is to emulate, in the best possible way, hardwares that people used to use in MSX. That's what I meant! See: You have some original megaROM. Someone makes a crack of it, or a loader that can run it in hardware like the MegaRAM. Then there's an emulator. You say, logical is: have the emulator emulate that MegaRAM, so you can run these same cracks, modified versions, or with special loader. I say, logical is: emulate the megaROM itself, with the original ROM in there. If it can do that, no megaRAM emulation needed for that purpose. Then I say: both are logical! After Megaram had been created, some people created some software specific to take profit of Megaram. As a pure piece of MSX hardware, this sounds quite usefull, but for emulators, I don't really see the point. It's just another kind of memory expansion. That would best describe it. Yes, and there are some softwares that use it exactly in this way (and not just for Megarom simulation). For my personal use, that's a special utility: I use to load "Mega Assembler" to Megaram, just to keep the standard RAM (or Mapper) free. I use Megaram to simulate the presence of original cartridges. I still have a 256K memory mapper, where I added a write protect-switch for similar purposes. Make sure it's write protected when starting your machine (so that it's not used as normal RAM), put some software in it using a debugger or so, flip the write-protect switch, and voila, the RAM just became ROM, reset overwrite-proof. Can enormously speed up some devolopment or research work, if you have a use for it. Yep, that's very useful. How did you make this write-protection that can be enabled or disabled? This sounds very interesting if you have another slot with RAM. I'm sorry, I had forget this detail about Megaram: Megaram has only 4 registers for block numbers. This implies that, when you select a block over page 0, it will be selected on page 2, too. The same is valid for page 3, that acts on page 1, too. So, you can use Megaram on page 0 and page 3, but when you're in "block select mode" and do a LD A,04h / LD (h),A the block 4 is selected for the area h-1FFFh and also for 8000h-9FFFh. The opposite is also valid, when you do a LD A,04h / LD (8000h),A the block 4 is selected for the area 8000h-9FFFh and also for h-1FFFh. That's exactly what you said about many Megaroms (the most part of Konami ones). No, that makes this the same as with SCC's. Other Konami megaROMs have a different arrangement, and non-Konami megaROMs might not do this at all. Why does this make the same as with SCC's? AFAIK, all Konami Megaroms behave in this way. And I don't know why Konami had changed LD (4000h),A by LD (5000h),A and so on. BTW: --- Some non-megaROM use this effect too. Interesting story: Some time ago, I broke my head on this puzzle: there exist some (16 K. or so) ROMs, that have their software run in the -3FFFh range (jump/call-addresses all in that range). Sony's CrazyTrain and some versions of Konami's Athletic Land are examples of this. These cartridges start with the well known ASCII "AB", and what follows is a start-address somewhere in page 0. Is Crazy Train really made by Sony? AFAIK, it's made by Konami. Okay, so what? The point is, that the MSX doesn't recognise a cartridge in page 0, if it starts with "AB". (!?!!??) MSX doesn't recognise??? Then you found a bug in my SDC. Well, it's not really a bug, but that hinders that I write it to an EPROM and create a cartridge with it. I thought for a while, that maybe the crack authors re-arranged all those jump- and call-addresses. Naaahh, too much work. Really, too much work (and unuseful). Then I figured, maybe in the original cartridge, it once read "CD" (the MSX-2 subROM is recognised by this, also occupying page 0), and was changed in those crack versions to "AB", for whatever reason. Until I got my hands on an original of Athletic Land, and: it occupied page 0, and it started with "AB", and with start-address in page 0. But how could this thing start then? I didn't know that 41 42 xx xx can'
