New member - RetroElectroDad

Section where new members can tell us a little bit about themselves (and their own set-up) and existing members can say "hello and welcome" to them?
RetroElectroDad
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Joined: 11 Jul 2014 12:45

New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by RetroElectroDad »

Hi All,

My name is Trevor, I just joined the forum today after being pointed in this direction by Dave when I bought a MAGROM and I'm a compulsive collector of vintage micros and games consoles. That sounds a little like an AA introduction and I think this collecting lark is a bit of an addiction for me! I'm a software developer for GE by day and much of the rest of the time is taken by my wife and son (8) and daughter (6 in two days) but I do manage to snatch an hour here and there to indulge my retro hobby.

My first micros were the ZX81, then swiftly after a TI-99/4a when black and white with no sound just didn't cut it and on which I really started to program with BASIC. I then moved on to Atari 8-bits where I treacly got into 6502 machine language as unfortunately the TI had little to no access to the hardware. The Memotech always fascinated me as it always looked like the sexiest of the vintage micros, it really seemed to be fully featured and well thought-out and in some ways was what the TI-99/4a could have been with the same graphics and sound chips.

I have a little bit of a hankering to try out some Z80 machine code and my MTX512 seemed to be the ideal machine to do that so here I am hoping to find some hints and tips for developing on this lovely machine. With it I'm starting from scratch on the OS, processor and assembler, though the VDP is not a mystery to me from my BASIC days and after learning to program the TI in TMS9900 assembler over the last couple of years.

Regards,
Trev
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Dave
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Dave »

Hi Trevor,

Welcome here too !

With your programmers head on, I'm sure that getting to grips with the Z80 will be an easy task for you and we can look forward to a host of new Memotech software soon :-)

If you are looking for information on the VDP, you might fine some stuff of interest in my "Technical Library"

http://primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/t ... design.htm

regards
Dave
Martin A
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Martin A »

Welcome to the forums.

Gosh Dave promoting his site already!

There are other sources if Info too:

Andy's site has listings of the System and Disc roms as well as his hardware add-ons and software http://www.nyangau.org/memotech/memotech.htm

You'll find a LOT of useful Z80 bits here http://www.z80.info/
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Dave
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Dave »

Martin A wrote:
Gosh Dave promoting his site already!
What do you mean already?

- I was a bit slow there it took me 16 minutes to get in with the link!
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Crazyboss
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Crazyboss »

Welcome to the Forum :)

I think it should be pretty easy for you to program the MTX, have you ordered the REMEMORIZER too? Then its easy to save work on SD card. A nice device, we all wish we had in the 80's (ofcause we didn want to pay for that kind of hardware in the 80's) Might have cost 10000 pounds or so :)

If you still have some sourcecode fromt he texas maybe you can convert it to mtx :)
//CLAUS - Webmaster at www.mtxworld.dk
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1024MAK
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by 1024MAK »

Welcome on board Trev!

:D :D :D

Mark
:!: Standby alert :!:
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb :!:
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :D

Not as many MTXs as Dave! :lol:
RetroElectroDad
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by RetroElectroDad »

Thanks for the welcomes!

I can see that I'm going to have to get my request in for the REMEMORIZER in order to do any Z80 assembler on the MTX. I may start with emulation for now but I do like to use the original hardware with modern add-ons.

I was considering looking at a couple of recent TI home brews that are particularly good as I know the TI quite well now. I think I may have to start with some baby steps first though.
Martin A
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Martin A »

A cross assembler and an emulator can work quite nicely, I did the magrom software that way.

It proved to be a much faster development cycle, than it would have been if I had to blow a new rom for each stage.

If you write using the CPM tools on Memu, you can crank up the CPU speed when compiling to save time.
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Crazyboss
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by Crazyboss »

In fact I use a English Crosscompiler called AS80, you can find it online. It works under 64bit windows, before I had to use the DOSBOX.

can easy assemble a sourcefile into z80 binary before you enterkey is released ;) e.g 12000 lines of assembler code.

other cross assemblers might be the same. Other people like to use the cp/m assemblers which you can run from MEMU, also with high speed, but I doubt its as quick as using the AS80 :) but its a madder for taste and a madder of which assembler you like.

The as80 even can correct you. If you write wrong opcodes, maybe its kind of "dangerous" but you can just write
ld hl,bc (it will automatic tread it as ld h,b and ld l,c).

I think it do it with the EX opcode too, no madder if you write:
ex de,hl or ex hl,de

about the Texas CPU I know its a 16bit cpu, it could be nice to have some kind of converter if possible could convert its assembler to z80, then we could port more games from the Texas. Not sure if its possible ;)
//CLAUS - Webmaster at www.mtxworld.dk
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1024MAK
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Re: New member - RetroElectroDad

Post by 1024MAK »

:!: Standby alert :!:
“There are four lights!”
Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb :!:
Looking forward to summer in Somerset later in the year :D

Not as many MTXs as Dave! :lol:
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