MTX & Tatung Einstein Speculator source code release

[Tony Brewer]

MTX version:

mtxspec.zip

(238.42 KiB) Downloaded 1869 times

Tatung Einstein version:

einspec.zip

(228.3 KiB) Downloaded 1932 times

Original MTX source files have been lost. Luckily I still have Einstein source on 3" diskettes which allowed me (10 years ago) to regenerate the MTX source after disassembling the MTX object code.

I used Microsoft M80 and L80 to assemble and link the source files, the same as was done at Memotech. Einstein version has two .sub files to make assembling & linking easier and these can be used to create MTX versions. Source code assembles to match object code perfectly, e.g. with MyZ80.

[Dave]

Hi Tony,

it's been a while!

Great to see you here, thanks very much for sharing this

regards
Dave

[Tony Brewer]

Hello Dave, high time the Speculator source code was in the public domain. It is copyright (c) Tony Brewer but anyone can do anything with it.

[Dave]

Hi Tony,

It's still generous of you to share it.

Whether or not anyone choses to do anything to with it (and I hope that they do), it's great that this is being preserved, it was groundbreaking in its time. Just a shame that there were not that many Memotech users to take advantage of it at the time

regards
Dave

[Tony Brewer]

The first thing someone could try is assembling & linking the MTX version. See SPEC1.TXT for linking order. Note that the M prefix is omitted from actual source files in zip file. Original files were named MSPx.MAC but I changed to SPx.MAC for the Einstein. The SPL80.SUB shown below is not 100% right; SPL should start 2400H after SPK1. Maybe needs /P:2500, before SPL/M. It's a long time since I used L80 and much much longer since I created an MTX program file.

Code: Select all

;MTX version of SPM80.SUB

M80 =SPC/L
M80 =SPD/L
M80 =SPG/L
M80 =SPI/L
M80 =SPK1/L
M80 =SPK/L
M80 =SPL/L
M80 =SPM1/L
M80 =SPM/L
M80 =SPP/L
M80 =SPS/L
M80 =SPT/L


;MTX version of SPL80.SUB

L80 /P:100,SPK1,SPC,SPP,SPD,SPI,SPG,SPK,SPM1,SPS,SPM,SPT,SPL/M

[1024MAK]

Yes, thank you Tony. Much appreciated

Mark

[Tony Brewer]

Another thing someone could try is to use the Sinclair ROM code. I couldn't do this because it was not public-domain at the time. Instead I put the Speculator-specific code between various ROM entry points that I supported, as the source code will show you.

I think the Sinclair cassette loading routines would work if the INs from port 254 are patched to input from CTC port 3 and bit 0 tested, provided the NMI routine was switched from screen update to a fast single key test (for toggling screen refresh on/off, the latter during tape loading).

[Tony Brewer]

Copyright notice added to source code .zip files yesterday evening (thanks for the suggestion Dave).