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RE: [N8VEM-S100:2269] Re: Jumpers on Z-80 CPU Card



Hi Neil!  Thanks!  John said  exactly what I was going to suggest.  Set the jump address to 0000H and remove the EPROM.  Possibly “JUMP_ENABLE” high or low depending on its state.

 

I can see there is a major design consideration we are going to have to address in the S-100 Utility board though.  Since the MSX engine it is the “rest of the guts” of an MSX machine minus the Z80 CPU, V9938, and AY-3-8910, its circuitry controls basically everything the Z80 CPU can ever see.  It has absolute control in an MSX computer.

 

MSX engine exclusivity is not true in an S-100 bus environment.  There could be all sorts of memory (ROMs) and IO outside the purview of the MSX engine circuitry.  We are going to have to make the board work in concert with the rest of the S-100 bus contents.

 

In fact, there is no assurance on an S-100 bus machine there is even a Z80 CPU present.  I suppose it is possible to have an 8088 or 6502 connected to the S-100 Utility board and S-100 VDP board and have a bizarre form of non-Z80 MSX.  Wow, that would be weird.

 

I would like the S-100 Utility board to be generally useful and not specific to MSX.  I think it could be a single board solution for ROM/RAM/serial/parallel in addition to a bare CPU board to bring up an S-100 machine with just two boards installed.  That would help builders with debugging CPU boards and S-100 systems in general.  However it looks like the S-100 Utility board is going to need some adjustments to share the bus.

 

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

 

From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of monahanz
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 10:42 PM
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [N8VEM-S100:2269] Re: Jumpers on Z-80 CPU Card

 

Interesting request Neil. Never tried that one. What exactly are you trying to do. Do you want to boot from an external ROM at 0H or somewhere else.
There probably is a way to fool the Z80 to boot externally.  Remember U18 forces NOP's on the bus (up to the required boot address).  I think if you remove it (and the ROM itself)  you may end up booting from 0H. However never tried that. Let's know how it works out.

John

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