Recent posts

#11

B

Programming / Bootstrapping from FAT formatt...

Last post by Benedikt - Yesterday at 19:57

Imagine the following scenario:

• A 3.5" drive is connected as drive B
• The disk in it has a FAT file system
• It already contains binaries for some other platform(s), e.g. MS-DOS, MSX-DOS, Enterprise 128, Atari ST
• We want an additional binary for CPCs

Is there any somewhat convenient way to load and run anything from that disk from Basic?
E.g. a few lines to load a "CPCDOS.SYS" from a known, continuous sequence of sectors?

Thank you in advance!

#12

Applications (CPC and CPC-related) / Re: UniDOS, the new multi-devi...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 19:46

Which parts of the Nova RAM does unidos use for me to avoid? 

#13

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Nova - NVRAM + RTC for Ams...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 19:44

Any chance for another 2 Nova cards?

#14

C

Programming / Re: Any interest in a CPC reve...

Last post by crabfists - Yesterday at 19:39

I uploaded a new build of CPC Analyser. 

New features:

• CPC 6128 support
• Lua scripting support - for custom viewers.

Fixes:

• Improved snapshot compatibility

Lots of other improvements...

Unfortunately, I have temporarily removed external ROM support due to complications with getting 6128 support working.

Get it from here.
https://colourclash.co.uk/cpc-analyser/

#15

B

Programming / Re: bits 5 and 3 of F register...

Last post by Benedikt - Yesterday at 19:38

Prodatron  Some smart coders whose nicknames start by 'T' have used the OUTI undocumented flag behaviour to great effect!
And in that case it's pretty useful to know that Carry is affected, because the original doc is wrong.

Explain that to the UA880D currently driving my CPC.

By the way: Has this document already been mentioned?

#16

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Amstrad CPCnext: Would you...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 19:15

Over-simplifying a bit, but if you imagine that a 16 bit machine needs twice as much memory to deal with the equivalent amount of graphics and so on, an CPC with 64k is like an ST or Amiga with only 128k, and 256k is comparable to a stock Amiga 500. In reality, without audio samples to deal with or whatever else, 128k feels about right for the CPC, 64k is uncomfortably tight and 256k is luxury.

Hm. Isn't the Amiga even more hungry than the ST when it comes to screen memory consumption? I am under the impression that it spends 64k for graphics, whereas the ST stands at 32k. Can't seem to remember where I have read that info, but by quick referencing I see that the Amiga has 4x the on-screen colours per resolution compared to the ST...

The A1000 had 256k onboard ram, so if, say, 1/4 of that is reserved for graphics, then that would make it an exact 16bit equivalent to a 464. Has anyone made any games or demos for that one and only true Amiga, lately?

The Amiga can have 32 colours on screen as opposed to the ST's 16, so it's more like 40K if my maths is right. You could up that to 48K if you're using EHB (nobody does) or a Dual Playfield setup with 7 foreground and 8 background colours.

But anything for an 256K OCS Amiga is a bit rare, it's very tight for memory - a similar situation to the 464 for sure.

That must be an unexpanded Amiga.  These days Amiga 500s can have AGA and almost a gb of RAM

#17

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Amstrad CPCnext: Would you...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 19:11

BTW: About CPC and RAM-Banking you did forget to mention some feature...

8 KB of expansion RAM can be banked in at every multiple of &2000, this enhances banking quite useful! No other computer has that nice little gem. That's what I call Nova-Blast! 

I think multiface 2 does that

#18

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Amstrad CPCnext: Would you...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 18:52

Foe those with a Mega65, it really is a perfect machine for a great CPC core.  Unfortunately a CPC core isn't here yet.  Proce may out people off, 666 euros to me is ok... but sadly for me they charge a LOT for postage to Australia making it really expensive.  I still bought one and cannot praise the hardware enough.  Spectrum Next can also be a CPC but the keyboard isn't as nice as the Mega65.  If someone can make a Mega65 core? TOBIFLEX perhaps?  That would make a Mega65 a must have CPC if the core supports all the hardware...

Specs here
https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/TE0765-06-T001CK-MEGA65-highly-advanced-C64-and-C65-compatible-8-bit-computer

#19

Amstrad CPC hardware / Re: Designing and building the...

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 18:44

I thought there are already replacement gate arrays 

#20

Programming / Re: Z80 clusters

Last post by zhulien - Yesterday at 18:37

I am awaiting my 2nd cplink card so I can finalize an API to support a few variants of offloaded capabilities.

1. Virtual z80s either hosted online or on your own webserver

2. CPLink support leveraging off the existing PI side software to use megabytes of RAM and some other features it has, not yet a virtual CPU but I am looking at options for this too.

3. And of course utilizing the resources of multiple networked CPCs connected to the same network.

Resources: cpu, ram, audio, storage, speech etc ..

All from a unified programming model.