shred Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 I've been having a play with the MESS Super-80 emulation. It all seems to run quite well - many thanks Robbert and the others responsible for emulating this machine. I copied my BASIC tape to a wave file and it played straight in - not bad for a 28 year old audio cassette. I also have BASIC in ROM, but the BASIC tape was the only obviously 300 baud oneI had. Most of my tapes were made using a heavily modded 2400 baud tape interface. My machine was modified to run with a floppy drive using an interface made by MCE. Does anyone know how hard it would be for me to write some sort of floppy drive emulation? I converted most disks to images on my PC a few years ago, so I've already crossed that bridge. I have no desire to run CP/M, since I migrated all my Super-80 CP/M software to a CP/M emulator many years ago. I'm interested in running "Super-80 DOS", which was a very primitive track-based operating system. Hopefully, the primitive nature of S80 DOS would make it easier to emulate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted March 30, 2009 Share Posted March 30, 2009 Hello there shred, it's not often I come across a Super-80 user any more. The only 2400 baud system I remember was written by some guy in Brisbane? I tried it and could never get anything to load. The 3000 baud system worked really well though. Fast and totally reliable. I've never tried adding any disk support, as I never owned a suitable disk drive. I think I do have the Super80 DOS, and Twinboot software laying about somewhere. But my problem is I know nothing much about drives and drive controllers, or how to connect them to anything. So you're probably on your own there. But if you get it to work, I'd most probably add it to the official MESS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted March 31, 2009 Author Share Posted March 31, 2009 The disk system used a WD2793 controller. I had a poke around in some of the source for MESS and found an emulation of the WD17xx controllers, which mentions WD2793, so it might not be that hard to emulate the disk controller. I guess the Microbee disk emulation would be a good start. The Z80 DMA chip associated with the UFDC might be a bit more challenging though. The 2400 baud tape system was designed by a guy called "Terry Nunn" and yes, I think he was from Queensland. My experience with it was similar to your experience with the 3000 baud tape setup. It worked really well and was much more reliable than the original 300 baud tape system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Ah yes, I vaguely remember Terry Nunn. I had no trouble with 300 or 600 baud. 1200 never worked, although it does in MESS. Don't think MESS emulates any of the disk-based Microbees at this time. Good luck, let me know if you make any progress! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fatal Rose Posted April 12, 2009 Share Posted April 12, 2009 I've never even herd of this. Tell me more... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted April 14, 2009 Author Share Posted April 14, 2009 (edited) I've never even herd of this. Tell me more... There's some background info on the Super-80 here: Super-80 Wikipedia article Edited April 14, 2009 by shred Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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