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The Memotech MTX Series

Memotech Compact Flash System

- 80 Column Board Add-on

  

 -  one ?)

Introduction

CFX is a spin off of the Compact Flash storage system developed for MTXPlus+, our modern day, fully compatible, MTX "super computer". It uses a modified Memotech SDX ROM to give an MTX computer the ability to load and save data from a CF card using MTX BASIC "USER" extensions. Both CFX and MTXPlus+ make extensive use of the code developed by Andy Key for his MEMU, REMEMOrizer and REMEMOTECH projects described on the Memotech pages on his website.

CFX is self contained - it does not require any modifications to the MTX motherboard ROMs.

The CFX ROM provides versions of both the MTX SDX BASIC ROM and a CP/M ROM based on Andy's SCPM ROM.

Andy's SCPM ROM was written to enable CP/M to run on a Memotech computer without the need for an 80-Column card, the MTX VDP was used to generate a low quality 56 column text mode. Andy also patched NewWord to run in this 56 column mode. The SCPM ROM was eventually used in Memotech's Video Wall product.

Bill Brendling had some interest in CFX, but felt (quite rightly) that the system would be enhanced if it had better video output in the CP/M mode, commenting on the MTX Forum in 2015 that "A new 80 column capable graphics card would complement the CFX in the same way that the original MTX 80 column card complemented the SDX. For simpli[city], microprocessor generated video is perhaps the way to go. I think it would be possible to do something with a Parallax Propeller, a 24LC256 serial EEPROM and a handful of resistors. It would not be fully graphics capable (the Propeller chip only has 32KB of on-board RAM and no interface to external RAM). But at least as capable as the original MTX 80 column card, and perhaps even reproduce the same hardware interface."

Bill went off and quietly developed such a system and demoed it during Memofest 2016.

From the Parallax website . . . "The Propeller microcontroller is designed to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, and without the need for interrupts or the dictates of an onboard operating system. Each of the Propeller P8X32A’s eight symmetrical cores can access all 32 I/O pins and other shared system resources. Each core also has its own memory and a set of configurable hardware for creating, releasing, and re-creating software-defined peripherals as needed. "

The information below is courtesy of Bill, it describes the functions provided by the prototype board that he demo'ed at Memofest 2016. With Bill's support, this functionality has now been incorporated into an upgraded CFX - CFX Version 2.

 ________________________________________________ 

MTX 80 Column VGA Display Board

Bill Brendling

 

A while ago I suggested on the forum that it should be possible to build an 80 column display with just a couple of chips. I thought that such a statement should be corroborated, so I have built a demo. The semiconductors (Parallax Propeller, serial EEPROM, voltage regulator) cost approx £10, the remainder (Rs, Cs, PCB, connectors) I had to hand.

Capabilities:

  •  80 column x 24 line text

  • 64 foreground and 64 background colours, 2 bits each for red, green and blue.

  • Same 512 character font as the original MTX 80 column board

  • 160 x 96 pixel graphics using the graphics character font

 

The display is controlled by bytes written to a single Z80 port. In the prototype, the address used is 0x71 (113 decimal). This conflicts with that used for the RTC for MTC+, however since the address decoding is performed by the Propeller firmware this can easily be changed. The following codes are recognised by the development firmware:

 

 
Byte sequence Effect
0x03 xx yy Move cursor to column and row given by bytes xx and yy.
0x04 nn Set background colour to nn, where bits 0&1 give blue, bits 2&3 give green, 4&5 give red, and 7&8 are ignored.
0x05 Erase to end of line
0x06 nn Set foreground colour to nn, as for background colour.
0x08 Cursor left
0x09 Tab to next tab stop (multiple of 8 characters)
0x0A Cursor down
0x0B Cursor up
0x0C Clear screen
0x0D Carriage return (cursor to beginning of line)
0x0E Blink on
0x0F Blink off
0x10 Select standard alpha font
0x11 Select alternate alpha font
0x12 Select lower half of graphics font
0x13 Select upper half of graphics font
0x19 Cursor right
0x1A Home cursor
0x1C Inverse on
0x1D Inverse off
0x1E Display cursor
0x1F Hide cursor
0x20 - 0x7E Display character always using standard font
0x7F Delete character under cursor
0x80 - 0xFF Display character using selected font

In the future, it should be possible to implement more of the MTX control & escape codes in the firmware.

NB : These control codes are applicable only to Bill's development version of the 80 Column board. The "final" version of the firmware to be included in the CFX-II board are documented on the CFX-II pages.

The video output connector has 8 connections, of which only the first 6 are essential:

Pin Description VGA Pin
1 Ground 5, 6, 7,  8, 10
2 Red 1
3 Green 2
4 Blue 3
5 Horizontal Sync 13
6 Vertical Sync 14
7 Ground 5, 6, 7, 8, 10
8 5V  

 

It should be noted that, while it is possible to drive the board from machine code, or using the OUT statement in BASIC, it is not really a stand alone add-on. It does not include a Z80 ROM to provide MTX drivers. It will work much better, paired with something, such as Martin's CFX, which has a ROM that could be revised to provide CP/M and BASIC support for the VGA board. This is actually no different to the original Memotech 80 column card, which relied upon the SDX ROM to provide drivers.

 

The design consists of a Parallax Propeller chip (a fast, multi-core micro-controller), a serial EEPROM to contain the Propeller firmware and a 3.3v regulator. The Propeller has 32 I/O lines which are connected as follows:

 
Pins Connection
0 -7 VGA output
8 - 15 MTX Z80 address lines A0-A7
16 - 23 MTX Z80 data lines D0-D7
24 - 27 Z80 I/O lines /IORQ, /RD, /WR, /M1
28 & 29 Serial EEPROM I2C connection
30 & 31 Debug / program connector

 

The Propeller is a 3.3v chip, but its I/O pins are 5v tolerant (with current limiting), allowing it to be connected (via resistors) directly to the Z80 bus.

 

The prototype board contains a couple of bugs:

  • I mis-read the data sheet for the MPC1700 regulator I used. I thought it required a divider chain to produce 3.3v (similar to the 317 variable regulator). This turns out to be unnecessary, so the resistor to ground (R35) was replaced by a shorting link, and the resistor to rail (R34) omitted.

  •  The I2C clock and data connections from the Propeller to the EEPROM were reversed.

The debug / program connector I have included in the design allows for:

  • Re-programming the EEPROM in-situ. Hold the Propeller reset, and write to the EEPROM using I2C
  •  Dynamic loading of firmware. Pulse the Propeller reset, then load new firmware from external source using serial protocol on pins 30 & 31.
  •  Serial output (3.3v TTL) of firmware diagnostics.
Pin Description RPi Connection
1 Ground Gnd
2 Reset GPIO 17
3 Serial data in (3.3v logic level) TxD
4 Serial data out (3.3v logic level) RxD
5 EEPROM write protect Gnd or n/c
6 EEPROM I2C clock SCL1
7 EEPROM I2C data SDA1
8 5V 5v or n/c

I have also been using this project to begin to learn Kicad. Since this project is intended as a proof of principle, rather than a finished product, the current PCB layout is not particularly designed to match the MTX. Also it is optimised for hand etching. It would probably be worth redoing the layout before having any boards made professionally.

Much of the development was performed using a Raspberry Pi and a Propeller HAT. This was used to develop and test much of the Propeller firmware, particularly the VGA code before building the hardware. This was based upon the High-Res text code by Parallax, but with revisions to allow different foreground and background colours for each character cell.

It should be possible to use the Propeller HAT to program the EEPROM, but I failed to get that to work, and instead programmed it using I2C directly from the RPi following the instructions at http://www.richud.com/wiki/Rasberry_Pi_I2C_EEPROM_Program.

The commands used for programming were:

sudo raspi-gpio 17 op pn dl
eeprog-0.7.6-tear12/eeprog -f -16 -w 0 -t 5 -i MTX_Monitor_2.eeprom /dev/i2c-1 0x50
sudo raspi-gpio 17 ip

 There is more that could be done with the Propeller firmware:

  • Adding more control codes.
  • User definable characters (all 512) should be straight forward
  • I think it should be possible to add a two colour 320x240 graphics mode. The pixel buffer will have to overlay the text & attributes buffer, so it will not be possible to switch from one to the other without rewriting the screen. The Propeller does not have enough RAM to support 640x480 graphics even at two colour.
  •  Provide access to the serial port on the debug connector from the Memotech Z80.

The Propeller chip has 32KB of main RAM, which is loaded from the serial EEPROM on startup, so there is a limit of what can be included in one firmware version. Other features that could be provided by different firmware images include:

  • The current version produces 24 rows of text, as that is the CP/M standard. In order to do so on VGA it uses 8x20 character cells. This is convenient as the alpha font was produced by doubling the height of the original MTX Monitor characters, taken from MEMU (thanks Andy). However, other options would be 30 lines of 8x16 characters, 40 lines of 8x12 characters, or 60 lines of 8x8 characters. More lines of text require more space for the text & attributes buffer, but the font definition is smaller to compensate.
  •  The Propeller chip is using software decoding of the Z80 I/O requests. This minimises the chip count, but also means that the Propeller could respond to reads and writes to any Z80 I/O port. It may therefore be possible to produce a hardware emulation of the original Memotech 80 column board. This would, however, limit the capabilities of the VGA board.

Taking the design further, using software I/O decoding minimises the chip count, but is extravagant with Propeller pins (it uses 12 of them). Using external Z80 address decoding could free up some of these pins for other uses.


For one example, connecting the Propeller to an SD card would require 4 I/O pins from the propeller chip. For this to be worthwhile it would be necessary to include a ROM for the Z80 as well, which would also require address decoding. Still, a suitable PLD could provide all the decoding. Add that and a suitable EEPROM and you might have a five semiconductor board that could support 80 column CP/M. I leave that as an exercise for the reader (at least for now).

 

References:

 

 

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