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MTX Plus+
Software
MTXPlus+ was designed to be 100% compatible with
the original MTX computer, to the extent that it would be able
to run original MTX software without modification - albeit that
some of the software would only be useable at the same clock
speed as the MTX (4MHz). The only significant incompatibility in
the design is that loading and saving to cassette tape is not
supported.
I decided that including tape support would be of very
limited benefit and certainly not worth the effort. Cassette
tape recorders have been obsolete for years and are becoming
harder to find, even in the world of retro computers. Although
an audio interface could have been included to allow sound files
to be loaded and saved from/to, for example, a PC sound card,
there are far better ways of adding cheap, removable, storage
facilities. Since Lez's kit of
parts included a
Compact
Flash (CF) card reader, this was the obvious choice for
MTXPlus+.
Even though the use of CF storage for MTX based computers is
something of a novelty, the use of alternative media to
cassette tape is not. Software emulators, including
Andy Key's
excellent MEMU, support a
variety of file formats and Andy's
REMEMOrizer hardware add-on for the MTX supports the same
file formats using
SD card.
Andy's site has a good
explanation of the various file formats on his site, but in
brief, the most common file types are :-
| Type |
Description |
| .mtx |
a binary copy of an MTX tape file (probably the
most common file type seen) |
| .run |
games for the SDX disk system to be
run from MTX Disc BASIC |
| .bas |
games for the FDX or SDX disk systems, to
be run from the associated BASIC program |
| .com |
games for the FDX or SDX disk CP/M systems to
be run from CP/M |
To simplify file exchange between MTXPlus+
and other MTX based systems, MTXPlus+ will support
the same file types on
FAT32 formatted CF media. Initially, the basic system will
support .run and .mtx files through
the MTX BASIC "Load" and "Save"
commands. Martin has written software to integrate CF with the
original MTX ROM, the original ROM tape routines have been
patched to call CF functions in the MTXPlus+ support
ROM.
Martin increased the number of .run
files available while developing
MAGROM by converting other file formats to .run
for MAGROM to fill up the 512KB flash on the board. Not all .run
files have been successfully used with MAGROM and it is likely
that some files will also fail to load from the CF interface of
MTXPlus+.
Martin has suggested that it would be good to
document the results from testing various software programs with
the CF card interface, test results can be found on the
Software
Compatibility page.
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