Question about Epson PX-8 ROM building - help needed
Peter Dassow
I was able to obtain a fully working Epson PX-8 (Geneva) laptop, which
runs very well (with a ROM based CP/M 2.2), I can even work with the
floppy disk drive emulator PX8VFS.
See also my new info page at http://www.z80.eu/epsonpx8.html ...
Unfortunately it would be nice to work *only* with the computer itself
without having to use the floppy drive emulator.
This can be done with micro cassette tapes or with (EP)ROMs.
Tapes are somewhat slow and limited, so using ROMs will be better.
At http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/px8/proms.html a description can
be found how to build your own (EP)ROMs, but the ROM conversion program
named 'PROMFO.COM' can't be download from the given URL (Cereal Port
BBS). I figured out that there is a telnet based BBS also, but it seems
to be offline, too.
So the first question is where to find 'PROMFO.COM', and the second, has
somebody already used this tool, e.g. to build an EPROM with TurboPASCAL
3.0 ?
Regards
Peter
All...@localhost.net
wrote:
I have the code and all but never used it as is. I did use the
PXROM.C source to derive the eprom format and created a tool for
myself in Z80 assembly. It's specific to my modified prommerII eprom
writer and doesn't write an intermediate file as I never thought that
was needed.
I don't have source on pc, never needed it there.
Allison
Peter Dassow
Allison,
after hours of surfing, I found all three program alternatives (not with
Google, but visiting several BBS and archive.org also).
Even the pxrom.c was on archive.org (a website called WEB G ?), so I do
not need further help. F. J. Kraan should update his website, because
many of the links were outdated/not working (but his page give the right
hints to look further... so thanks to him again).
The only program which seems to be working was PROMFORM v1 (the newer
version v2 does not work properly, the generated files are wrong
structured). I updated my web page about the PX-8 so nobody will have
such an odyssey as I had experienced.
I created also a ROM for the PX-8 with Turbo PASCAL 3 and this can be
downloaded there, too.
Regards
Peter
All...@localhost.net
wrote:
Hi,
Yes, thats why I wrote an asm version because none of the sources and
peices were complete or functional.
The technical manuals are on line and that may also confirm things.
Allison
F.J. Kraan
> Even the pxrom.c was on archive.org (a website called WEB G ?), so I do
> not need further help. F. J. Kraan should update his website, because
Yeah, lazy guy ;-).
On another note: the ROM format is very similar to the standard Epson
floppy format. So creating a ROM builder based on vfwrite.c
(file:///home/fjkraan/knijsterbek/sitearchive/Electrickery/comp/px4/vfloppy/vfloppy14.tgz)
_should_ be trival, at least for Linux. I'll put that on my todo list.
Greetings,
Fred Jan
Peter Dassow
Now you wasn't lazy, you updated already some of your pages ;-)
Btw. I saw there is a working software emulator for the Epson PX-8 at
http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshiya/
... but to work with it, you need at least the system ROM, the FONT FOM
and the UTIL ROM ... what a pitty, didn't find these yet :-(
Would be nice to use the emulator for testing self made ROM images.
Regards
Peter
F.J. Kraan
> F.J. Kraan wrote:
>>> Even the pxrom.c was on archive.org (a website called WEB G ?), so I
>>> do not need further help. F. J. Kraan should update his website, because
>>
>> Yeah, lazy guy ;-).
>>
>> On another note: the ROM format is very similar to the standard Epson
>> floppy format. So creating a ROM builder based on vfwrite.c
>> (file:///home/fjkraan/knijsterbek/sitearchive/Electrickery/comp/px4/vfloppy/vfloppy14.tgz)
>> _should_ be trival, at least for Linux. I'll put that on my todo list.
>
> Now you wasn't lazy, you updated already some of your pages ;-)
But it took seven years as the previous page was from 2003 :-).
> Btw. I saw there is a working software emulator for the Epson PX-8 at
> http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshiya/
> ... but to work with it, you need at least the system ROM, the FONT ROM
> and the UTIL ROM ... what a pitty, didn't find these yet :-(
The system and UTIL rom are at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/px8/roms/
The FONT ROM is at:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/px4/roms/
I got it from Toshiya TAKEDA, and according to him, it should work for
both the PX8 and PX-4.
Maybe I should organize it a bit better, but here the lazy part kicks in
again ;-).
> Would be nice to use the emulator for testing self made ROM images.
Probably faster than the real stuff. But I think writing emulators is
probably more fun than actually use them.
>
> Regards
> Peter
Greetings,
Fred Jan
Peter Dassow
>>
>> Now you wasn't lazy, you updated already some of your pages ;-)
>
> But it took seven years as the previous page was from 2003 :-).
That's nothing compared to the age of the PX8 ;-)
>> Btw. I saw there is a working software emulator for the Epson PX-8 at
>> http://homepage3.nifty.com/takeda-toshiya/
>
> The system and UTIL rom are at:
> ...
> The FONT ROM is at:
> ...
>> Would be nice to use the emulator for testing self made ROM images.
>
> Probably faster than the real stuff. But I think writing emulators is
> probably more fun than actually use them.
Ok, I was able to re-create the ROM binaries and it works great.
I tested my self created Turbo PASCAL ROM, discovered errors, rebuild
the ROM and now it works perfect, too.
I added also screenshots from the working emulator, and I repackaged the
emulator with these ROMs also, so it is a lot of easier to use it instantly.
See again at http://www.z80.eu/epsonpx8.html ...
Regards
Peter
F.J. Kraan
>
> Ok, I was able to re-create the ROM binaries and it works great.
> I tested my self created Turbo PASCAL ROM, discovered errors, rebuild
> the ROM and now it works perfect, too.
> I added also screenshots from the working emulator, and I repackaged the
> emulator with these ROMs also, so it is a lot of easier to use it
> instantly.
This gets quite nice indeed. It even runs in Wine, so I don have to boot
some Windows box for this. Now if selecting ROMs would be an startup
option.
Someone written an d88 disk format create/read/write utility yet? :-)...
> See again at http://www.z80.eu/epsonpx8.html ...
>
> Regards
> Peter
Greetings,
Fred Jan
F.J. Kraan
> Someone written an d88 disk format create/read/write utility yet? :-)...
To anwser my own question, the t2d utility is easy to adapt for unix and
does a good job of converting td0 disks to d88. The two tf-20 floppy
images I had are readable by the PX-8 emulator...
See http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/px8/t2d_ux.tgz for the t2d source
and the two d88 images.
Fred Jan
Peter Dassow
"A bit" unhandy for transferring single files from the PC harddisk into
the HC-80 / PX-8 emulator.
I would *really* appreciate to have a simple way, otherwise I have to
look further for a .td0 disk image manipulation program (to
extract/exchange single files from/to the floppy disk image).
So a tool to manipulate files within a .d88 image would still be perfect.
At the moment, I am exchanging files from or to the .d88 image for the
PX8 by creating ROM files, so I virtually insert several created roms to
copy files to a blank virtual .d88 disk image file.
Sounds strange, but works also (larger files must be splitted).
Regards
Peter
F.J. Kraan
> F.J. Kraan wrote:
>>
>> See http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/px8/t2d_ux.tgz for the t2d
>> source and the two d88 images.
>
> "A bit" unhandy for transferring single files from the PC harddisk into
> the HC-80 / PX-8 emulator.
Sure, but it were the first actual d88 images I have seen for the PX-8.
> I would *really* appreciate to have a simple way, otherwise I have to
> look further for a .td0 disk image manipulation program (to
> extract/exchange single files from/to the floppy disk image).
> So a tool to manipulate files within a .d88 image would still be perfect.
The d88 format doesn't look that complicated, certainly with an example
and some source present. A reader and writer could be doable, given I
already have something similar. But it would work only for this
particular format of sector size, sector count and directory location.
The td0 format is compressed, so starting with that is just more work.
>
> At the moment, I am exchanging files from or to the .d88 image for the
> PX8 by creating ROM files, so I virtually insert several created roms to
> copy files to a blank virtual .d88 disk image file.
> Sounds strange, but works also (larger files must be splitted).
I hacked the PX8.EXE image to accept a B.ROM and C.ROM, allowing me to
attach any ROM image with a soft link. A even better option would be
making it a startup option.
beech...@gmail.com
I would pay reasonable amounts.
unk
Let me check to see if everything still works.
Do you have the plastic rom carriers? They could easily be 3d-printed if
you don't.
What kind of fun stuff?