G'day from Australia,
I have aquired a Micromation M/net, which was in horrible condition, with 3 x 8" floppy drives, fujitu 9" HDD and a 12" 4008 Shugart. It is all in a sorry state, but has provided affordable housing for generations of rodents etc.... '-)
After numerous repairs, I believe I have a working Z64 Z80 main board, a doubler floppy controller with UART and a Qume 8" floppy working, but cant get a thing to display as the login requires CPM to boot and load the bios and I cant tell if CP/m is loading.
The Z54 unit doesn't have a BIOS, just some proms that attempt to read from the floppy and (hard disk, but i don't know if it has boot code for the HDD). Floppy boot code is on the Doubler.
The problem is that even though i have repaired the hardware (I can see life on the cro), I can't get a floppy to boot (dont know if my original floppies ar dud), or I can't see any output to check via a serial port. Unfortunately, you only get a prompt when the bloody thing has successfully loaded cp/m.
I thought I could simply put a z80 monitor into the EPROM socket on the Z64 but the problem is that whilst I found a nice sample Monitor with support for the 8251, the Z64 has no serial port on its own bus, but access's it via the Doubler Floppy controller.
The z64 board has room for 2716 2K Eprom. You then change the address of the doubler and end up with the NEW z64 rom at F000-f7ff and the doubler is at f800 onwards.
So instead of address the uart directly, you need to address the uart via the Doubler as described in the double manual i will attach. Refer page 21 onwards.
This is where my confusion starts.....
The read and write control seems to need the /wr and /pdbin as per 8-4 of the doubler manual. Are these in the scratch ram address? How do I access the UART from the Z64?
Anyway, I haven't done assembly for 35 years, and then only on a childs level so steep learning curve ahead.
I just need a eprom that can tell the z64 to print a text string via the doubler serial port so I can see if the z64 and terminal hardware are actually working. Right now I have no reference point to confirm if everything is working. I hope then to convert / rewite a monitor program for useful further debugging.
I would appreciate any help or suggestions you might have time to make. I have attached the doubler, z64 and sample code from the z80 monitor that supports 8251 uart.
Attached is a sample monitor but it is a directly attached 8251 (big jade). There is also the Manual for the Doubler card, and you can download the z64 processor manual if you need to look from here.
Thanks in Advance and stay safe.
I have aquired a Micromation M/net, which was in horrible condition, with 3 x 8" floppy drives, fujitu 9" HDD and a 12" 4008 Shugart. It is all in a sorry state, but has provided affordable housing for generations of rodents etc.... '-)
After numerous repairs, I believe I have a working Z64 Z80 main board, a doubler floppy controller with UART and a Qume 8" floppy working, but cant get a thing to display as the login requires CPM to boot and load the bios and I cant tell if CP/m is loading.
The Z54 unit doesn't have a BIOS, just some proms that attempt to read from the floppy and (hard disk, but i don't know if it has boot code for the HDD). Floppy boot code is on the Doubler.
The problem is that even though i have repaired the hardware (I can see life on the cro), I can't get a floppy to boot (dont know if my original floppies ar dud), or I can't see any output to check via a serial port. Unfortunately, you only get a prompt when the bloody thing has successfully loaded cp/m.
I thought I could simply put a z80 monitor into the EPROM socket on the Z64 but the problem is that whilst I found a nice sample Monitor with support for the 8251, the Z64 has no serial port on its own bus, but access's it via the Doubler Floppy controller.
The z64 board has room for 2716 2K Eprom. You then change the address of the doubler and end up with the NEW z64 rom at F000-f7ff and the doubler is at f800 onwards.
So instead of address the uart directly, you need to address the uart via the Doubler as described in the double manual i will attach. Refer page 21 onwards.
This is where my confusion starts.....
The read and write control seems to need the /wr and /pdbin as per 8-4 of the doubler manual. Are these in the scratch ram address? How do I access the UART from the Z64?
Anyway, I haven't done assembly for 35 years, and then only on a childs level so steep learning curve ahead.
I just need a eprom that can tell the z64 to print a text string via the doubler serial port so I can see if the z64 and terminal hardware are actually working. Right now I have no reference point to confirm if everything is working. I hope then to convert / rewite a monitor program for useful further debugging.
I would appreciate any help or suggestions you might have time to make. I have attached the doubler, z64 and sample code from the z80 monitor that supports 8251 uart.
Attached is a sample monitor but it is a directly attached 8251 (big jade). There is also the Manual for the Doubler card, and you can download the z64 processor manual if you need to look from here.
Thanks in Advance and stay safe.