1
CPM WORKS WELL (Beam)
2
REAL Disks Support (read/write/format?)
3
Improved RAW/WAV Tape loader
4
ZX Spectrum Emulation!
REAL DISKS
==========
Ok
well Pale now talks to real 5 1/4" lynx floppy disks
thanks due to Simon Owens Fdraw and John Eliots LIBDSK libraries.
I havcent got a real lynx to test the disks out on but John Koushappas
has sent me some LynxDOS and CPM disks from which I´ve figured out
the formats. At the moment disks can be read and written to
although
formatting is only possible under LynxDOS. It is possible to convert
a LynxDOS disk into a (?usuable) CPM disk using the SYSGEN program
from the CPM Master disk
however it should be noted that the sector interleave
will not be the same as a real CPM disk. I do not know if
this would cause problems with reading such disks on a real lynx.
CPM
====
WOW!! A lot of effort went into cracking this one. Load
the CPMMASTER.LDF disk into drive0 and use XROM followed by EXT BOOT
to start CPM. CTRL-C usually quits from any program running.
In the drop down ´More´ panel off the control panel there´s
all the disk status monitors and also a ´LOAD TPA´ which
will allow you to load in a .COM program and then run it with ´RUN TPA´
If you want to save the current program in TPA to the current disk
then work out the .COM length in 256 byte blocks
ie: LIST.COM is 1024 bytes long or 4 blocks
then use SAVE 4 LIST.COM
and the TPA program (or other data you loaded there eg: overlays)
will be written onto the disk.
Thanks to John Koushappas there are a few disks provided with PALE:
LynxDOS Utilities Disk
Lynx CPM Master Disk
Other disks may be found on Russell Davies´ Lynx Archive website
ZX Spectrum
===========
I was taking a break from PALE for a moment and threw together
this little spectrum emulator using the PALE core.
Use one of USER1 or USER2 to create a new machine using the ROM
builder. Use Speccy48-1.ROM & Speccy48-2.ROM in the lowest
two ROM slots. Make sure the hardware type is set to HACKSPeccy.
It runs a fair few programs
though the speed is a bit ´iffy´.
To load spectrum programs use the ´LOAD SPECCY´ button
which converts
spectrum TAP format files into a raw file that is placed directly
into the RAW/WAV virtual tape deck in PALE. Then use LOAD "" on the
spectrum and press the PLAY key ´>´ on the tape deck. You can speed
up the emulator if you dont want to wait in realtime for the program
to load. Don´t forget to turn off the tape deck after the program
has loaded or you will get sound corruption.