How to write the .DSK files to Floppy Disk for the Sharp MZ-80B ?

The answer is quite simple, first of all there you need an old computer with harddisk with installed the operating system DOS/FreeDOS and a Floppy Drive 5¼. The tool to use is the CPDWrite (Copy Protected Disk Writer) v1.03 and some floppy disk image in .DSK format for the Sharp MZ-80B.

Below you can download the archive containing many floppy disk in .DSK format and the utility to write files on Floppy Disk.

The original archive was downloaded from this web page, but unfortunately the only one floppy disk that seemed to be more interesting ‘DISK15.DSK’ containing the games for this computer was corrupted. I found the problem and i have fixed with the use of a hex editor, the fixed version was included in the archive.

Download:

• CPDWrite v1.03 (1447)
• MZ-80B (DSK) Floppy Images (1473)

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from Wikipedia:

The Sharp MZ is a series of personal computers sold in Japan and Europe (particularly Germany and Great Britain) by Sharp beginning in 1978.

Although commonly believed to stand for “Microcomputer Z80″, the term MZ actually has its roots in the MZ-40K, a home computer kit produced by Sharp in 1978 which was based on Fujitsu’s 4-bit MB8843 processor and provided a simple hexadecimal keypad for input. This was soon followed by the MZ-80K, K2, C, and K2E, all of which were based on 8-bit LH0080A Sharp CPU (compatible to Zilog Z80A) with an alphanumeric keyboard.

From the first Z80 processor-based model to the MZ-2200 in 1983, the MZ computers included the PC, monitor, keyboard, and tape-based recorder in a single unit, similar to Commodore’s PET series. It was also notable for not including a programming language or operating system in ROM, like the IBM PC. This allowed a host of third-party companies, starting with Hudson Soft, to produce many languages and OSes for the system. In an era when floppy disk drives were too expensive for most home users, the MZ’s built-in tape drive was considered faster and more reliable than the drive on competing computers; however, this meant that the MZ series was relatively slow to adopt floppy drives as a standard accessory.

The MZ series is divided into several lines, including the text-based MZ-80K series, the graphics-based MZ-80B series, and the MZ-3500/5500 series, based on a completely different architecture. In 1982, Sharp’s television division released the X1, a completely new computer. The X series proved to outsell Sharp’s own MZ series, and in response, Sharp released the MZ-1500/2500 machines, which featured powered-up graphics and sound capabilities. However, this series saw little marketplace success, and eventually the company abandoned the line in favor of the X68000 series.

The MZ name lives on as the initials of two of Sharp’s most well-known products: the Mebius line of PCs, and the Zaurus line of personal digital assistants.

Sharp MZ-80B Loading Basic from Disk Drive CE 510:

source: wikipedia

It’s been six long years of Design and Testing of the FPGA Arcade Replay Board and now finally is available for purchase.

Price is 199 Euro for the version without composite/SVHS output, 229 Euro with.

FPGA Arcade Replay features:

• Very large FPGA with high IO pin count for expansion.64 MByte of DDR memory.
• Six layer PCB for high performance and stability.
• 24 bit HD DAC with DVI / HDMI / VGA and legacy 15K monitor support.
• Video line buffer / filter for highest quality output.
• 24 bit / 192KHz audio DAC.
• Flexible clock generator.
• Small board size, fits in standard itx/atx case.
• Lots of expansion for custom daughterboards or IO adapters (JAMMA for arcade cab use).
• Optional dual host USB with dedicated CPU for low latency.
• Daughterboard with Ethernet, fast USB and optional 68060 processor being designed.
• Designed from the ground up to support multiple platforms (Amiga, Atari and others)

source: fpgaarcade.com

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: Avatar, Nostalgia, Really Proud Lamers, Antarctica, Flimsoft, Genesis Project, Laxity, Hackersoft and Rewind.

Download:

• Phase Out Preview + (1188)
• XOR +7DS [pal/ntsc] (1112)
• Outbreak Preview (1108)
• Lights On +6HD (1057)
• Lights On (1067)
• The Last Ninja +8D (1073)
• TRAZ +7DH (1112)
• Boxing Game Preview &D (1102)
• I-Ball Revisited +35D (1067)
• Tork Fighter-8 + (1086)
• All Games in One Archive (2692)

source: csdb.dk

This is the official demo party results from Flashback 2013 (Top 3 Entries only). See also the CSDB Flashback 2013 section for more informations and download.

C64 Demo:

• Famous Australians Vol.1 by Fairlight, Offence, Prosonix

C64 Music:

• Back2_V_arsity by Viruz
• Night by NioByte
• Resurgence by Triton
  • Flashback zero-thirteen by Genesis Project

C64 Graphics:

• Party On, Fishbone by iLKke
• Knock by rexbeng
• Seafarer by Senex

Download: Flashback 2013 full Party stuff (1149)

source: csdb.dk

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from Wikipedia:

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A was an early home computer, released in June 1981, originally at a price of US$525. It was an enhanced version of the less successful TI-99/4 model, which was released in late 1979 at a price of $1,150. The TI-99/4A added an additional graphics mode, “lowercase” characters consisting of small capitals, and a full travel keyboard. Its predecessor, the TI-99/4, featured a calculator-style chiclet keyboard and a character set that lacked lowercase text.

The TI-99/4A’s CPU, motherboard, and ROM cartridge (“Solid State Software”) slot were built into a single console, along with the keyboard. The power regulator board is housed below and in front of the cartridge slot under the sloped area to the right of the keyboard. This area gets very hot so users commonly refer to it as the “coffee cup warmer”. The external power supply, which was different according to the country of sale, was merely a step-down transformer.

Available peripherals included a 5¼” floppy disk drive and controller, an RS-232 card comprising two serial ports and one parallel port, a P-code card for Pascal support, a thermal printer, an acoustic coupler, a tape drive using standard audio cassettes as media, and a 32 KB memory expansion card. The TI-99/4 was sold with both the computer and a monitor (a modified 13″ Zenith Color TV) as Texas Instruments could not get their RF Modulator FCC approved in time. The TI-99/4A did ship with an RF Modulator.

In the early 1980s, TI was known as a pioneer in speech synthesis, and a highly popular plug-in speech synthesizer module was available for the TI-99/4 and 4A. Speech synthesizers were offered free with the purchase of a number of cartridges and were used by many TI-written video games (notable titles offered with speech during this promotion were Alpiner and Parsec). The synthesizer used a variant of linear predictive coding and had a small in-built vocabulary. The original intent was to release small cartridges that plugged directly into the synthesizer unit, which would increase the device’s built in vocabulary. However, the success of software text-to-speech in the Terminal Emulator II cartridge cancelled that plan. Most speech synthesizers were still shipped with the door that opened on the top, although very few had the connector inside. There are no known speech modules in existence for those few units with the connector. In many games (mostly those produced by TI), the speech synthesizer had relatively realistic voices. For example, Alpiner’s speech included male and female voices and could be quite sarcastic when the player made a bad move.

Playing Alpiner Cartridge:

source: wikipedia

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I had to build the power cable (8.5 – 10 volts), video Composite output and In/Out tape, because was not given with the computer as standard.

from Wikipedia:

MicroBee (Micro Bee) was a series of home computers by Applied Technology, later known as MicroBee Systems.

The original MicroBee computer was designed in Australia by a team including Owen Hill and Matthew Starr. It was based on features available on the DG-Z80 and DG-640 S-100 cards developed by David Griffiths, TCT-PCG S-100 card developed by TCT Micro Design and MW6545 S-100 card developed by Dr John Wilmshurst. It was originally packaged as a two board unit, with the lower “main board” containing the keyboard, Zilog Z80 microprocessor, Synertek 6545 CRT controller, 2 kB of “screen” RAM, 2 kB of character ROM (128 characters) and 2 kB of Programmable Character Graphics (PCG) RAM (128 characters). Each byte in the screen RAM addressed a character in either the character ROM or PCG RAM. A second board, termed the “core board”, contained the memory, and on later models also included a floppy disk controller.

The computer was conceived as a kit, with assembly instructions included in Your Computer magazine, in June 1982. After a successful bid for the New South Wales Department of Education computer tender, the computer was repackaged in a two-tone beige and black case, and sold pre-built. The 16 kB ROM held the MicroWorld BASIC interpreter written by Matthew Starr and DGOS (David Griffiths Operating System) compatible System Monitor. In addition to the 16 kB ROM, there is additional ROM socket for optional programs such as WORDBEE (Word processor) or EDASM (a Z80 Editor/Assembler that was written by Ron Harris).

Original MicroBees ran at a clock speed of 2 MHz, with a video dot clock of 12 MHz, which was sufficient to display 64 × 16 characters (512 × 256 pixels) on a modified television or composite monitor. The original machines were supplied with 16 or 32 kB of static RAM, and stored programs on cassette, using 1200 Baud encoding.

source: wikipedia

Today a friend, that i thank him immensely, gave me a large amount of chips.

The donation amounts to:

• 70+ Z80 CPU.
• 14+ Z80 CTC (Counter / Timer Channels)
• 200+ 74XXX TTL chips.

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups:  Alf Yngve, The New Dimension, Bad Taste, Really Proud Lamers, Antarctica, The Hidden Farts, Genesis Project, Laxity and TRIAD.

Download:

• Bank Run (1081)
• gPng v1 (1051)
• Ann Gong +3HD (1093)
• Hit the Brick +1ED (1054)
• Axiens HS (1090)
• MArkanoid +4HD 101% (1088)
• Dot Gobbler +1D (1082)
• Trance Sector CE +8HD [pal/ntsc] (1061)
• Radar Simulation +D (1240)
• Guns \'n\' Ghosts +9MD 101% (1291)
• All Games in One Archive (2695)

source: csdb.dk

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from Wikipedia:

The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The e in the name stands for enhanced, referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in that were only available as upgrades and add-ons in earlier models. It also improved upon expandability and added a few new features, which, all combined, made it very attractive to first-time computer shoppers as a general-purpose machine. The Apple IIe has the distinction of being the longest-lived computer in Apple’s history, having been manufactured and sold for nearly 11 years with relatively few changes.

Apple had planned to retire the Apple II series after the introduction of the Apple III in 1980; after that machine turned out to be a disastrous failure, management decided the further continuation of the Apple II was in the company’s best interest. So after three and a half years at a stand-still, came the introduction of a new Apple II model — the Apple IIe (codenamed “Diana” and “Super II”). The Apple IIe was released in January 1983, the successor to the Apple II Plus. Some of the hardware and software features of the Apple III were borrowed in the design of the Apple IIe. The culmination of these changes led to increased sales and greater market share of both home and small business use.

One of the most notable improvements of the Apple IIe is the addition of a full ASCII character set and keyboard. The most important addition is the ability to input and display lower-case letters. Other keyboard improvements include four-way cursor control and standard editing keys (Delete and Tab), two special Apple modifier keys (Open and Solid Apple), and a safe off-to-side relocation of the “Reset” key. The auto-repeat function (any key held down to repeat same character continuously) is now automatic, no longer requiring the “REPT” key (now gone) found on the previous model’s keyboard.

source: wikipedia

SID Duzz it, it’s a SID Music Editor by Geir Tjelta of SHAPE.

Download: SID Duzz It v2.1.6 (1076)

source: csdb.dk

Regenerator is an interactive disassembler for C64 binaries. Regenerator will load any standard C64 .PRG file (or VICE snapshot) and disassemble it for your convenience.

There are a few options you can choose to change the output and a few tools to make the output look better and more useful to programmers. Regenerator runs under M$ windows and need .net 3.5 (or 4.0) runtime.

New in version 1.3:

• Added REMOVE command to remove part of the data from dissasembly.
• Added EDIT BLOCKS window to Edit all the DATA, TEXT and REMOVED blocks manually.
• Added COPY to Clipboard functionality (insert key) with FULL or CODE only modes.
• Added possibility to add user-defined COMMENTS to the code. This can be done as a FULL line comment or as a SIDE comment!
• Added USER LABELS – you can now add a label to any address and it will be used in the disasembly. If there should be an automatic label generated for it then it will be overriden. Also added USER LABELS editor which is part of the old Label Prefixes window. You can add/edit and remove user labels within this screen and have a general overview of the user labels.
• Added high and low partial references to immediate opcodes. This means that code like LDX #$A0 STX smwhr LDX #$BB STX smwhr+1 will be disasembled as LDX #<pBBA0 STX smwhr LDX #>address STX smwhr+1. This includes loads and stores in different order and with different registers. There is also a context menu command that lets you disable this on a currently selected address (if auto creation fails). NOTE: excluded address in STA opcodes will not be generated like this!
• Fixed the Add BLANK LINE and Remove BLANK LINE so it actually works as it should.

Download: Regenerator disassembler v1.3 (1039)

source: csdb.dk

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Drag&Drop and Copy&Paste of ROM files or URLs. Very easy to try ROMs from websites!
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Applets can now be detached from the browser window.
• Once detached, all features are available including Full Screen.
• Full Screen is now multi-monitor aware.
• Updated, cleaner looks.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.30 (Needs Java 6) (1069)

source: javatari.org

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups:  TRIAD, Hokuto Force, The Hidden Farts and Laxity.

Download:

• Danger Valley +2ED (1134)
• Guardian HS (1103)
• Ballistix (AMIGA REMIX) +4FGD [pal/ntsc] (1034)
• Ponk (1082)
• War in Space (Krieg im W.) +3EFD [pal/ntsc] (1098)
• All Games in One Archive (2603)

source: csdb.dk

Tiny status update of the SD2Snes Cartridge from Ikari

Directly from the SD2Snes Homepage:

So I’ve been getting a lot of questions pertaining to current progress, understandably. ;)

SuperFX is still crawling along, I’ve gotten a basic CPU core control unit and partial instruction decoder to work which can run test code in simulation fine, albeit limited. But it doesn’t deal with the different memory delays, stalling and parallelism yet; also the SNES interface, plot logic and other supplementary stuff are still missing.

The SuperFX uses pipelining which is a thing I haven’t fully understood yet, so that’s going to take some brain work and likely multiple complete rewrites of the CPU core. I’d rather not give an estimated time of completion for that at the moment… ;) Implementing pipelining properly is important because game code is laid out to take advantage of it and will not run correctly otherwise.

Besides the SuperFX, kogami has discovered a BS memory mapping bug, a regression that snuck into firmware 0.1.5 where I rewrote the BS memory mapping based on my own RE efforts. Also some graphical corruption has been found when using the “Run previous game” feature (Start button). I expect to make a bug fix / minor release addressing these issues (possibly others) in a couple of weeks.

source: sd2snes.de