jhalbrecht
Experienced Member
Background
I have a couple SSM VB1B video cards. I'll refer to them by their serial # The one I have working is 1133, the other I'll call SN BB because 'Bad Board' is etched with an electric pen on the foil near the SN which is blank. I'll start a separate thread with the BB sn most likely when I get back from VCF West. They were both kinda working.... I had trouble actually writing characters to them. The address selection didn't seem to be working. I took another shot at them in the last couple days and with the help of Martin's Amon I made much progress. Using the SEarch command of Amon I found the address of some strings displayed on the video monitor. I used that address with the ENter command and there we go I can write to the card. But the address I found was not how I had the switches set. Anyway I yanked out the DM8131 Comparator from BB placing it in 1133. Cool! It addresses correctly. The weirdness of BB memory addressing I'll cover later in another thread.
Hardware
DM8131 Substitution?
Are there any substitute parts / part numbers for the DM8131? I ordered four of them from Ebay but I'm thinking/hoping I might have something suitable in stock...
Top line distortion
Notice on left card 1133 with the addressing working the top line is distorted looks a bit like vertical stability. The second image is the BB card notice how clean this 1st line looks. And a detail of the "Bad Board" etching SN.
Any suggestions for addressing the top line problem?
Amon HL loading
I experimented with writing some text and assembling in z80pack emulator then used Amon HL to upload the .HEX file. Maybe a buffer over run, or timing I don't know. But I had to end up breaking the text into two files with two ORGs and using HL twice. If I had just a single .HEX file for all the text it appeared to only read ~ half.
text.prn
b.prn
Source code?
In another thread Need help getting SSM VB1B video board working But I don't see the .ASM linked. Is there somewhere I might download this file? Any other gems for the VB1B?
Conclusion
Well with all that I'm pretty pleased with how the VB1B sn 1131 is working. I'd like to clean up that first line and find some source code for a driver... It's been working consistently for hours and I've cycled the power several times.
C ya....
I have a couple SSM VB1B video cards. I'll refer to them by their serial # The one I have working is 1133, the other I'll call SN BB because 'Bad Board' is etched with an electric pen on the foil near the SN which is blank. I'll start a separate thread with the BB sn most likely when I get back from VCF West. They were both kinda working.... I had trouble actually writing characters to them. The address selection didn't seem to be working. I took another shot at them in the last couple days and with the help of Martin's Amon I made much progress. Using the SEarch command of Amon I found the address of some strings displayed on the video monitor. I used that address with the ENter command and there we go I can write to the card. But the address I found was not how I had the switches set. Anyway I yanked out the DM8131 Comparator from BB placing it in 1133. Cool! It addresses correctly. The weirdness of BB memory addressing I'll cover later in another thread.
Hardware
- Imsai 8080
- Imsai MPU-A
- SSM VB1B
- Vector Graphic 8k static
- 88-2SIOJP
- Cromemco 8k bytesaver with MeMon at A000 (Can't have two many ROM monitors...)
DM8131 Substitution?
Are there any substitute parts / part numbers for the DM8131? I ordered four of them from Ebay but I'm thinking/hoping I might have something suitable in stock...
Top line distortion
Notice on left card 1133 with the addressing working the top line is distorted looks a bit like vertical stability. The second image is the BB card notice how clean this 1st line looks. And a detail of the "Bad Board" etching SN.
Any suggestions for addressing the top line problem?
Amon HL loading
I experimented with writing some text and assembling in z80pack emulator then used Amon HL to upload the .HEX file. Maybe a buffer over run, or timing I don't know. But I had to end up breaking the text into two files with two ORGs and using HL twice. If I had just a single .HEX file for all the text it appeared to only read ~ half.
text.prn
Code:
EC00 org 0ec00h
;db 'a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9'
;db 'Start of 64 chars end.'
EC00 3031323334 db '01234567891123456789212345678931'
EC20 2020202020 db ' '
EC40 3031323334 db '01234567891123456789212345678931'
EC60 2020202020 db ' '
EC80 5374617274 db 'Start of 32 character line end'
ECA0 2020202020 db ' '
ECC0 4A65666620 DB 'Jeff will try to upload this to '
ECE0 2020202020 db ' '
ED00 7468652053 db 'the SSM VB1B using Amon HL. '
ED20 2020202020 db ' '
ED40 2020202020 db ' '
ED60 2020202020 db ' '
ED80 2020202020 db ' '
EDA0 596F752061 db 'You are reading this it worked! '
EDC0 2020202020 db ' '
EDE0 2020202020 db ' '
EE00 2020202020 db ' '
EE20 2020202020 db ' '
Code:
EDC0 org 0EDc0h
EDC0 2020202020 db ' '
EDE0 2020202020 db ' '
EE00 2020202020 db ' '
EE20 2020202020 db ' '
EE40 596F752061 db 'You are reading this it worked! '
EE60 2020202020 db ' '
EE80 2020202020 db ' '
EEA0 2020202020 db ' '
Source code?
In another thread Need help getting SSM VB1B video board working But I don't see the .ASM linked. Is there somewhere I might download this file? Any other gems for the VB1B?
Conclusion
Well with all that I'm pretty pleased with how the VB1B sn 1131 is working. I'd like to clean up that first line and find some source code for a driver... It's been working consistently for hours and I've cycled the power several times.
C ya....
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