Here is the starfield running from a bootblock loader (No MSDOS)
I threw my back out last week, so I could not move the old 8086 to a better place. I wanted to prepare this machine to boot from floppy disk.
The starfield above boots into VGA mode 13h (320×200 256 colors)
This one also has a Sound Blaster, so I can test music in a boot sector also!
My 8088 (v40) board has VGA also now.
I’m waiting for my ISA-PCMCIA card as replacement for a harddisk/floppy
I saw this article on Flipboard.
So true, we own several.
Am I happy with those? .. Well depends.
They all have their benefits. But I want the impossible.
One with all the benefits.
We choose the bag depending on the occasion, but for example a large bag is perfect for a far away vacation, sometimes we do daytrips which can be done with a smaller bag.
And I want an even smaller bag when going to the city to get something to eat when on holiday. Or the day trips to family or other cities in our country.
Also the means of transport matters.
Bike: Small one
Own car: Big bag and a small one
Plane: We have been all over the world, it depends on travel and transport in those countries.
I LOVE the ones with easy access. (Slingshot and mindshift)
Some of them have a way to take your tripod with you.
Sometimes we have to take two camera’s with us, so we don’t fight. (Vertex and Mindshift take two)
Lowepro Vertex 200 AW
Comes with a tripod holder, lots of pockets and easy adjustable. Plus it has a rain cover hidden in the bottom.
Hama
A real small bag. This one we use for day trips.
Holds camera plus a lens or our small binoculars.
Lowepro Slingshot Edge
This is another day trip bag. For when we need a little more room or take some food with us.
Love the sling concept, but not much used anymore.
Mindshift Gear Rotation 180 Horizon
I love this bag! We took this one with us to Peru and Bolivia.
Easy on the shoulders and back. I carried this one the whole day for several weeks.
The camera sling rests on your hips.
What we take with us in the big bags?
I’ve build a logic probe a while ago. (Mentioned here)
Today I got the EIStar LP-1. Its just a cheap easy probe, but does the job.
My version is only TTL and this one is TTL/CMOS (cmos is better when measuring arduino’s outputs)
TTL – Logic 1 = 4.75 -> 5V
CMOS – Logic 1 = more around the 3.3/3.7V
Only thing my version has which i’m missing is a pulse detector.
One millisecond puls gets clocked into a latch and keeps a led on.
Schematic I found (some similarities can be seen with my version)
Let watch some opera .. The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) by Mozart.
Written in 1791, 225 pages!
This is more fun with the “Partitura”
UPDATE 20230721 Bootdemo
I found some parts of our (Edk and Me) bootloader demo.
It was compiled using masm or tasm.
Encountering a problem converting the code into a raw bin, to put on a floppy I diverted to another setup to try to get things working.
Using old code (below) and a example from YT, I made the following setup.
Visual studio code, with the x64 assembly plugin.
xxd as hexviewer.
fasm as assembler (This makes things easier, because it is a native Linux x86 compiler. So no need for dosbox anymore.)
I’ve created a Makefile to automate things.
clean:
rm -f *obj
rm -f *.bin
exec:
fasm demo.asm
fasm boot.asm
cat boot.bin loadpart.bin > demo.bin
qemu-system-x86_64 -boot a -fda demo.bin
Some of our old demo code:
;-------- snip
Start:
JMP SHORT BootHere
NOP
DB "FASH-EDK"
DW 512
DB 2
DW 1
DB 2
DW 0070h
DW 02d0h ;max. aantal sectoren van volume A
DB 0Fdh ;media descriptor
DW 0002h ;aantal sectoren per FAT
DW 0009h ;aantal sectoren per spoor
DW 2
DW 0
BootHere:
mov bp,5
tryboot:
push bp
mov bx,4000h
mov es,bx
mov bx,0
mov cx,2 ;vanaf sector 2
mov dx,0 ;drive A, kant 0
mov ah,02h
MOV AL,8
int 13h ;sector(en) lezen
pop bp
jnc bootok
dec bp
jnz tryboot
bootok:
mov bp,5
;---------- snap
New setup using fasm (bootloader) boot.asm
org 0x7c00 ; still not sure about this, have not found this in our demo
mov bx, 0x1000 ; load sector address
mov es, bx
mov bx, 0x0
; Sector read function
mov dh, 0x0 ; head 0
mov dl, 0x0 ; drive 0
mov ch, 0x0 ; cylinder 0
mov cl, 0x02 ; start sector
readdisk:
mov ah, 0x02 ; read sec
mov al, 0x02 ; demo is > 512 so 2 sectors
int 0x13 ; call bios
mov ax, 0x1000
mov ds, ax
mov es, ax
jmpcode:
jmp 0x1000:0x0 ; far jmp demo
; Expand bin to 512 byte sector
times 510-($-$$) db 0
dw 0xaa55 ; Sector header (ROM as this at the start)
Graphics demo i wrote a long time ago, converted into fasm loadpart.asm
mov ah,0
mov ax, 4f02h ; Set VESA video mode
mov bx, 10dh ; Your video mode number
int 10h
mov al,0
drawall:
mov dx,0
mov cx,0
drawloop:
mov ah,0ch
mov bh,0
push ax
int 10h
pop ax
inc al
inc cx
cmp cx,319
jc drawloop
mov cx,0
inc dx
cmp dx,199
jmp drawloop
jmp drawall
; complete sector with zeros
times 512-($-$$) db 0
Booting the demo in milli seconds using qemu.
Next to do: Write this to floppy and test on real hardware.
A reset starts the virtual machine and boots from a virtual floppy.
The drawing of the pixels is slow, because I used a int 10h function for every pixel, instead of writing to screen memory directly.
ndisasm – disassemble binary
ndisasm loadpart.bin 00000000 B400 mov ah,0x0 00000002 B8024F mov ax,0x4f02 00000005 BB0D01 mov bx,0x10d 00000008 CD10 int 0x10 0000000A B000 mov al,0x0 0000000C BA0000 mov dx,0x0 0000000F B90000 mov cx,0x0 00000012 B40C mov ah,0xc 00000014 B700 mov bh,0x0 00000016 50 push ax 00000017 CD10 int 0x10 00000019 58 pop ax 0000001A FEC0 inc al 0000001C 41 inc cx 0000001D 81F93F01 cmp cx,0x13f 00000021 72EF jc 0x12 00000023 B90000 mov cx,0x0 00000026 42 inc dx 00000027 81FAC700 cmp dx,0xc7 0000002B EBE5 jmp short 0x12 0000002D EBDD jmp short 0xc 0000002F 0000 add [bx+si],al 00000031 0000 add [bx+si],al 00000033 0000 add [bx+si],al 00000035 0000 add [bx+si],al
UPDATE 20230721 Bootdemo update
Got a part working again in PCem.
This is from our bootdemo.
A scroller and sector loader in a bootsector.
Needed some include files
masm, link, exe2com creates a 12- sector sized floppy.
And we’ve got a (little distorted but working) Scroller in boot sector with custom font!
font: db 64 dup (0) ;space
db 0,0,2,2,0,0,0,0 ;!
db 0,2,2,2,2,0,0,0
db 0,2,2,2,2,0,0,0
db 0,2,2,2,2,0,0,0
db 0,0,2,2,0,0,0,0
db 0,0,2,2,0,0,0,0
db 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
db 0,0,2,2,0,0,0,0
Followup on
Today two boot projects.
One using a bios extension, so it chip based.
Second is a floppy disk boot program. (Creating a test situation to get our old Boot floppy demo working. ( That one without using an operatingsystem like ms-dos.
Creating a Secondary Bios ROM
NAME mycode
.model small
ORG 0h
.code
dw 0AA55h ; Magic header your bios is looking for
db 16 ; lenght of this rom in 512 bytes == 8k
jmp short clear ; jmp to program
ORG 20h ; start of program
clear: mov cx,10 ; clear, set keyboard led and print 10 # chars
mov ah,0ah
mov al,31h
int 10h
mov bh,0
mov cx,1
start: mov al, 11000000b
out 80h, al
print: mov cx,10
mov ah,0ah
mov al,"#"
int 10h
loop1: nop ; loop until doomsday
jmp loop1
db -68 ; This makes the checksum 0
; steps to take: edit source, make this byte entry 0
; compile using make.bat in dosbox
; check checksum using my python script
; output was 68 hex 0x44
; edit asm file place -68 to make the checksum 0x00 again
; compile and burn to ROM
ORG 2000h ; create end of rom 0000h-1fffh = 8K
END
make.bat in dosbox
@ECHO OFF MASM /DARCH_TYPE="T" /DCPU_TYPE="V" 1; LINK 1; EXE2COM 1.EXE
Python script here: https://www.henriaanstoot.nl/2023/06/20/bios-hacking/
Write EEprom
minipro -w 1.COM -p AT28C64
Part 2 – Bootsector program !
Allmost the same as above, but booting from a Floppy disk.
Video mode info : https://stanislavs.org/helppc/int_10-0.html
Assembly code
use16 ; 16 bits org 0x7c00 ; start address ( change? ) mov ah,0x0 ; ah 0h - video mode mov al,0x0 ; al 0h - mode 0 - 40x25 chars int 10h ; scree routines mov cx,11h ; 11 chars mov ah,0ah ; ah 0ah - print char mode mov al,'#' ; choose char as # int 10h ; execute times 510 - ($-$$) db 0 ; fill rest 512 bytes sector dw 0xaa55 ; magic bytes
My good friend Vincent wanted to have a stencil to mark property.
Open in inkscape and use trace bitmap.
Check the movie for settings. (Re-did the process using other text)
Saved as svg (vector), and used LightBurn to lasercut this into wood.
Below a cardboard preview.
Below board replaces 2364 (8k) with a 28c256 (32k 4 roms) socket.
My design in Kicad
The rom can be selected using the pressing restore while starting the C64. ( This button press to select is not my idea but I liked it, when I find the original idea I’ll post it.
After ordering and testing, I’ll attach the Gerber files.
If you are a old friend/colleage/whatever .. give me a ping to get you connected.
I’ve been using IRC a long time, we even had our own interconnected servers with our group ICE.
Lipperkerk, GMC and Pixnet.
Overkill I know, but we could so we did.
Last few years i’ve been using Mattermost. After testing many alternatives.
After installing this in my Lab, a few colleages from work used it. After that the whole department and more.
Running for more than a year, it was time got get this running on the servers at work.
I’ve reinstalled a server for my friends.
Last update gave me a nice insights desktop. Quiet days in june.
I love the webhooks and plugins.
In the past i’ve implemented a whatsapp to mattermost bridge, i will post about this .. sometime.
Below a implementation using a arduino and a 3D printed flag.
Followup on
UPDATE 20230702 20230703 20230714
While working on a Lidar project, my mouser components came in.
Now I have to find a IO address decoder schematic I made a while ago.
This ISA board is going to have a Wirewrapped setup. There is a 8255 IO chip, and uses 3x 74138 for IO address decoding, OR i will use a setup i’ve made for my 6502 using an atf22v10.
What to controll using this 8255? First some Leds, later a LCD display.
Below the 3 mentioned IC’s
The 8255 is a chip like the 6522 used in my DIY 6502 elsewhere on my site.
Overview of comparable IO chips. ( Not interchangeable due to bus timing!)
Most of them have 8 data lines and 2x 8 IO bi-directional lines.
| CHIP | NOTES |
| 6522 | 6502 based machines |
| 8255 | 8088/8068 based machines |
| Z84C2008 | Z80 (called PIO) |
| 8155 | 8085 / 8088 |
| 8520 | 68000 amiga |
| 6821 | 6800 |
UPDATE 20230702
Started wirewrapping, luckily i’ve got a big choice of colors. That makes finding the right signals a breeze.
UPDATE 20230703
Found my schematic
Above uses 3 74138 decoders, address can be “programmed” using jumpers (not used on my prototype board) . Address 0400h in above example.
A15 – 0
A14,13,12 – decodes to OUT-0
A11 – 0
A10,9,8 – decodes to OUT-4
A7 – 0
A6,5,4 – decodes to OUT-0
A3 and A2 are not used (see note)
A1 and A0 are register select on the 8255
Address 0000,0100,0000,xxrr
xx can be a 0 or 1
the 8255 can be controlled using
0400h 0401h 0402h
but also
0404h 0405h 0406h
0408h 0409h ….
040Ch ……
UPDATE 20230714 – Alternative address decode test with ATF22V10
UPDATE 20230803
UPDATE
Miswired second 74138.
Tested with below code
mov dx,503h # control register mov al,80h # output port a,b,c as standard IO/output out dx,al # 16 bit IO mapped IO out mov dx,500h # data register mov al,0 # 0/ff all on/all off out dx,al