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ZCN, NC100.CARD and NC200.card, what about on NC150 ?

Started by genesis8, 20:05, 08 April 19

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genesis8

Hello,


does someone have a NC100.CARD and/OR NC200.CARD with ZCN and/or Fuzix to be used with a Notepad Emulator ?


ZCN documentation doesnt mention the NC150, can the ZCN.BIN for NC100 work on NC150 and use the 128 Kb like the NC200 has ?
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GUNHED

http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

genesis8

No I already have ZCN, I was asking if someone had an image of a PCMCIA card image (.CARD) already with ZCN installed to use with the Notepad emulator.
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Ygdrazil

Hi there
Does anyone have a CARD file with FUZIX installed (or a build of FUZIX)?
Regards,Ygdrazil


Quote from: genesis8 on 19:50, 09 April 19No I already have ZCN, I was asking if someone had an image of a PCMCIA card image (.CARD) already with ZCN installed to use with the Notepad emulator.

genesis8

I tried to compile fuzix but didn't succeed, asked the question here but got no reply. I should do it on fuzix site.
____________
Amstrad news site at Genesis8 Amstrad Page

GUNHED

http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

genesis8

Yes, I will install zcn on my nc150 or 200 though.
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GUNHED

Ok, the question is... How to put stuff on the PCMCIA card?
http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

genesis8

Xmodem transfer hence my other thread about it or I suppose disk transfer on nc200 then on PCMCIA card .
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mr.freeze

Hi,

If you want, this weekend, I could install ZCN and give you the card's image. I have a NC100 with a 1Mb card.
But if you own an NC100, I don't understand what stops you to do it yourself ?

GUNHED

Would be great if you could post files / card image.  :)
http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

mr.freeze

Will do it :-)
My old PC with a serial port has OpenBSD in it and I use 'cu' with a X-modem compatible software to tranfer files and nothing is greyed :-p, total control.

I've noticed that, if the last block of 128 bytes contains a '26' decimal byte (CP/M EOF), the bytes following the first occurence of it will be ignored. I don't think it concerns ZCN but it is good to know.

mr.freeze

Here it is! In attachment, a 1M card image with ZCN 1.3 and, unless I'm drunk with excitment, all the provided utilities and games but without the docs. Deepl proposes strange translations sometimes lol.
I suppose you already know that, but to boot ZCN, you have to press Function and X.
Here is the content of the drives:

       
  • A: the executables in the bin/ of the zcn archive
  • B: the executables in bin/extra/ and most of support/
  • C: contains pmarc and rogue
  • D: A bonus, Turbo Pascal 3
You can edit the image from a Unix-class system or Windows with a tool named zcntool, provided with the nc100em emulator : https://www.ncus.org.uk/utils.htm#nc100em

PS:
What a pleasure I had to use TP3 on a Z80 machine after all this time  :D
I've configured TP3 to the NC100 screen. The screen is too small to show all the options of the main menu but it is usable if you know the shortcuts. The editor works well. Use ^S, ^D, ^X and ^E to move the cursor to, resp., the left, right, down and up. (Ansi mode (option 6 of TINST) works well in full screen if you are connected with a terminal emulator through the serial line)

To compile the Microcalc demo:

       
  • launch turbo
  • choose if you want the error messages or not. It doesn't matter here.
  • type 'o' to enter the compilation options menu
  • type 'c' to select compilation on disk. MC is too big to be compiled in memory.
  • type 'q' to return to the main menu.
  • type 'c' to invoke the compiler.
  • choose 'mc' for the name. That will compile mc.pas.
  • listen to the transistors of your little NC screech while compiling. It can't hurt it to get some exercise after all this time.
PPS:
My poor Thinkpad T60 is compiling Fuzix for 4h now, no error, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

mr.freeze

Hello! I hope you are well?
My brave T60 managed to compile Fuzix but before that, I had to fix a bug:  to fix it, in Kernel/platform-amstradnc/tc8521.c, change the return type of  platform_rtc_secs() from uint8_fast_t to uint_fast8_t.
Also, I had to install the srecord package (Debian and Ubuntu) and make sure that yacc is linked to byacc and not bison.
However. Well, I'm sure that your excitement is reduced now, I'm sorry about that. The kernel halts while booting. I've looked at the code and it seems to happen at the moment where the TTY is initialised. I will have a further look.

Jungsi

Sorry for my silly question:
How to put the image file on the pcmcia card? :-)

TynH

Quote from: Jungsi on 22:19, 10 May 19
Sorry for my silly question:
How to put the image file on the pcmcia card? :-)


dd

genesis8

Can the NC100 ZCN uses the 128 Kb of the NC150 ?
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mr.freeze

Quote from: Jungsi on 22:19, 10 May 19
Sorry for my silly question:
How to put the image file on the pcmcia card? :-)
Good question! I've modified 'romdump', included in nc100em to dump the memory card via X-Modem but I'm not aware of an equivalent 'restore' program.
I've used 'cu' to send the files in batch to the NC thanks to the 'sb' tool of the lrzsz package which supports X/Y-Modem batch mode and 'qterm' on the other end. Installing ZCN manually is quite easy.

If you are interested, I could develop a software to transfer an image to the card? That could be fun!

By the way, I've dumped the ROM of my NC100, which is a UK 1.06 with MD5 checksum of b8c838100e7f46c99ec16f5abd7b0bd2. Maybe, it could be of interest to add it to the Wiki?
Quote from: genesis8 on 20:43, 11 May 19
Can the NC100 ZCN uses the 128 Kb of the NC150 ?
Is ZCN run at all on the NC150? If I've understood well, the NC150 has a NC200 firmware but is locked in the shell of a NC100?

edit: checksum fixed

mr.freeze

Quote from: TynH on 16:54, 11 May 19

dd
In a moment of distraction, I amused myself by inserting objects into holes. Like a return to childhood. And I discovered that my SRAM PCMCIA type I card enters and fit well in the PCMICA type II slot of my Thinkpad. The slot is bigger than the card, it's why I didn't tried that before.

The machine has OpenBSD installed but seems to recognize my memory card as a serial interface and then fails to allocate I/O space, well, because it is not really a serial interface, I guess.
Which system are you using?

Anyway, I'll experiment that under Linux when I will have the time and the envy.

mr.freeze

Sorry, I'm under the impression that I monopolize this thread. It's just to tell that I've just written a program to transfer a file to to the SRAM via X-Modem. But, well. How to say. It works but it is not in a good shape but like Michael Crichton said, books aren't written, they're rewritten. Same for software, I guess. If you're interested tell me and I will provide the effort to rewrite this and give it to you under a liberal license.

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