Tatung Einstein

[athame]

Hi,

Ha we're still around. I still use my Tatung TC01 as a Z80 dev platform almost daily- probably the finest Z80 dev machine ever made - but enough oozing - I'm a total newbie to the site -I'm pretty familiar with my machine which is close but not quite up to the MSX spec.
it has a quirky ROM which is paged in and out of the first 16k of RAM
as required. There is 64k RAM total.
Graphics are colour on a TMS9129 with 32/40 col modes. There is a kludged 80 column mono card using the same chipset as the beeb.
On start up the Einey tries to boot the first 2 sectors off any disk you shove in it and drops into a ROM driven z80 monitor if you don't put a disk in. It runs a true z80 CP/M 2.2 clone Xtal Dos with a 52k tpa. It used 3 inch Floppy disks but mine is modded to use 3.5 720k as are most machines still in use.

Can anyone help a complete newb with how to go about porting for this machine please?

Phil

[stefano]

Welcome !

Eerm, have you looked here ?
http://www.z88dk.org/wiki/doku.php?id=platform:einstein

[athame]

Hi,

No I hadn't - I'm not sure how I would have found it without your link.
Thanks - I'll have fun with this I'm sure:)

Phil

[stefano]

Hope so
Sorry for the telegraph-style, please feel free to ask, when you'll be stuck

[RobertK]

On the Tatung Einstein, the -lm floating point library currently seems to interfere with the generic console, you get a broken screen when you run the program.
With the native console, it works correctly, and surprisingly also when runnnig the Generic Console on the TK02 80-column screen.

Please check this. I think we had such a similar problem before with the Galaksija target.

Try it with my float test program...

Code: Select all

// Floating point calculation test
// Author: RobertK, 2018-12-29

#include <stdio.h>

void main()
{   
  printf("\nhello world\n");
  printf("\npress any key to calculate 5*0.1...\n");
  fgetc_cons();        // wait for keypress          
  printf("\n5*0.1 is %.1f\n",5*0.1);
  printf("\npress any key to exit...\n");  
  fgetc_cons();        // wait for keypress          
}

...and this luxury compilation batch file.

Code: Select all

setlocal
rem Set your z88dk root path here
set z88root=C:\Misc\z88dk\

set path=%PATH%;%z88root%bin\
set zcccfg=%z88root%lib\config\
set z80_ozfiles=%z88root%lib\

del fct_einstein.dsk
del fct_einstein.com

REM Here we define "__EINSTEIN__" so that we know what CP/M machine our program is running on

zcc +cpm -subtype=einstein -lm -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=fputc_cons_generic -o FCT.COM floatcalctest.c -create-app -D__EINSTEIN__

endlocal

ren fct.dsk fct_einstein.dsk
ren fct.com fct_einstein.com

rem pause

[dom]

That's quite odd. I'll take a look when I've finished what I'm currently working on - probably a couple of days or so.

[dom]

That broke in a way which I didn't expect.

It seems that there were two issues:

- On the other VDP platforms, we force VDP mode 2 on startup. But on the Einstein it looked like it was defaulting to mode 0 but not setting up the VDP registers correctly. I've added a switch to mode 2 on startup.
- The second issue was that switching VDP modes wasn't being passed onto the VDP driver.

Hopefully working code will be producible from the nightly tomorrow. Apologies for having broken it.

[RobertK]

No problem at all, thank you for fixing it! Now it works fine.

[RobertK]

I've noticed that when clearing the screen on the Einstein (in 40-column mode), something red stays in the top left part of the screen:



While we are at it (I don't want to open a new topic), on the ABC 80 only part of the screen gets cleared:



A test program to reproduce this:

Code: Select all

/*
        cst.c - Clear Screen Test
        Author: RobertK, 2020-01-20
        
        Compile with:
        
        zcc +abc80 -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=fputc_cons_generic -subtype=hex -create-app -o cst_abc80 cst.c
        zcc +cpm -subtype=einstein -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=fputc_cons_generic -o CSTEST.COM cst.c -create-app -D__EINSTEIN__
                
*/

#include <stdio.h>

#if defined(__SV8000__)
        #define NO_KEYBOARD 1
#endif

#if defined(__SV8000__)
        #define TEXT_FILL_CHARACTER "X"
#else
        #define TEXT_FILL_CHARACTER "x"
#endif


void myCls()        // Clear the screen (generic or VT100 console)
{
        printf("%c",12);
        printf("\x0c");  // the "\x0c" (0x0c character) resets the cursor position to the top left corner
}
        
void FillScreen()        // Fills the screen with characters
{
        int XScreenSize,YScreenSize;        // dimensions of the text screen
        int x,y;        

        myCls();        // Clear the screen
        // determine text screen size
        screensize(&XScreenSize, &YScreenSize);

        gotoxy(2,2);
        printf("filling the screen...");
        
        // Fill the screen using the character "x"
        // On some systems we must not print at the bottom line because this would make the screen scroll
        for (x = 0; x <XScreenSize; ++x)
                for (y = 0; y <YScreenSize; ++y)
                {
                        gotoxy(x,y);
                        printf(TEXT_FILL_CHARACTER);
                }
}

void main()
{        
                        
        FillScreen();

        #if defined(NO_KEYBOARD)
                msleep(3000);
        #else
                gotoxy(2,2);
                printf("press any key");        
                gotoxy(2,3);
                printf("to clear screen...");        
                fgetc_cons();        // wait for keypress
        #endif        
        
        myCls();        // Clear the screen        
        
        msleep(1000);        // Wait one second

        #if defined(NO_KEYBOARD)
                gotoxy(2,2);
                printf("screen cleared...");        
                msleep(3000);
        #else
                gotoxy(2,2);
                printf("press any key to exit...");        
                fgetc_cons();        // wait for keypress
        #endif        
                        
        myCls();        // Clear the screen        
        return;
}

[dom]

I've corrected the abc80 issue now.

The Einstein looks like it was an issue in mode 1 and mode 2 only - the 32 column modes - the sprites end up being mapped into a region of memory that already had data. I've now cleared the memory down so the red blob goes away.

[RobertK]

Both issues are fixed now, thank you, I have updated my Mastermind RK game.