Home Page Forums MAME MAME Triumph-Adler alphatronic P3 (+ P1, P2 and P4)

I got another CP/M machine from a German company: The Triumph-Adler alphatronic P3.

MAME already supports its little homecomputer brother, the alphatronic PC and its distant cousin, the ITT3030



The P series machines and the ITT3030 were designed by SKS Steinmetz, Krischke Systemtechnik GmbH who sold P2 lookalikes under the "KISS" moniker.

The very suave SKS nano 2500 in its bordeaux red leather case shares some of that DNA as well, more about that later ...
SKS Nano 2500 which would make a nice addition to MAME as well

This brochure

ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/alphatronic/alphatronic-Micro.pdf

has the specs for the P series: They're all 6MHz 8085 machines.

P1: Integrated Keyboard, 6K PROM, 1K RAM internal, 32K RAM, 1x160KB Floppy SSDD
P2: Integrated Keyboard, 6K PROM, 1K RAM internal, 48K RAM, 2x160KB Floppy SSDD
P2 S: Integrated Keyboard, 6K PROM, 1K RAM internal, 48K RAM, 1x320KB Floppy DSDD
P2 U: Integrated Keyboard, 1K RAM internal, 64K RAM, 2x320KB Floppy DSDD
P3: Modular (external KB/Monitor), 4KB ROM, 64KB RAM, 2x800KB Floppy DSQD
P4: Modular (external KB/Monitor), 4KB ROM, 64KB RAM, 1x800KB Floppy DSQD
1x HD 12,5 MB

Alphatronic P30 and P40 were P3 and P4 which were extended by an 8088 coprocessor card and extra RAM.

They have a serial printer port via the 8085's SID/SOD pins and a universal serial interface via a 8251.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=485

This is the Video/keyboard interface, and you can see the similarity with the ITT3030's cards



The bus is called "MC-80" in the P2 documentation which also lists its pinout on PDF page 17.

Documentation for the P series as well as disk images for the P3 and P4 can be found here

ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/alphatronic/

and here

http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/ta/

The P3 ROM images presented here should be taken with a grain of salt, they're 3x8KB, where the documentation states clearly that the P3 only has 4KB, and this is what can be found in my machine.

The BIOS and Chargen ROMs of my P3 along with photos of the cards can be downloaded here:

https://mega.nz/#!iZABGbTQ!xh2cRVIpFsyu0NGkghk8P_wS1WMbvYTUS1PFwfb9KnA

Edith says: Don't forget to dump the 8041 keyboard controller! https://mega.nz/#!zEI3HAjY!mzJwXb4yXhJkT101j6LmoFXtUgNaF7HawbpwdoAuTMI

One of the hardware designers of the alphatronic P2 has a website with loads of information on that machine, his role in its genesis and the family tree of the SKS machines.



He also offers the P2's BIOS ROMs for download, unfortunately his Eprom programmer can't read the P2's TMS2716 chargen ROM.

In its place he suggested to use the ITT3030's 2KB chargen ROM and he sent me the NANO 2500's chargen ROM - which turned out to be identical.

If you drop the P3 chargen into the ITT3030 driver, the ITT suddenly remembers its German provenience and starts to show Umlauts and the shape of the characters is different, but doesn't complain otherwise.

MAME ITT3030 with original chargen ROM


MAME ITT3030 with alphatronic P3 chargen ROM


Maybe the P3's ROM could be used for an upcoming P2 driver as a "BAD DUMP" until the P2's gets dumped.

The P2 is interesting in that there are two flavours of CP/M, one that has its TPA at the common 0x0100 address, the other at 0x4300.

This guy published high quality pictures of his P2's cards:

http://petersieg.bplaced.net/?8085:Alphatronic_P1%2F2

I posted the above information on a German forum with several alphatronic owners, and one guy who has a P3 that has been expanded with the P30's coprocessor cards, posted his version of MS-DOS for the P30. It's running on an 8088 that has a 128 RAM extension card connected to it.

http://forum.classic-computing.de/index.php?page=Thread&postID=118435#post118435

This user dumped his P30's ROM

http://forum.classic-computing.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=10689

and a picture of a third "mystery" card that belongs in a P30.

Here are pictures of a P30 booting DOS:

http://forum.classic-computing.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=7785

plus a very handy guide about the correct order to plug in the P30's cards.

I/O

The IO ports appear to have been used very consistently across the alphatronic P* range:

00 SID/SOD control signal (printer port, 4800 Bd., 2 stop bits, 8 data bits)
01 - 03 * reserved
04 - 05 USART CPU (freely programmable serial port, 8251 based, 600 - 9600 Bd.)
06 - 07 * reserved
08 - 0F * reserved
10 - 17 Keyboard scan / combination interface (video)
18 - 1F * reserved
28 - 2F IEC interface cf. ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/alphatronic/TechnKurzinfo.pdf
30 - 4F - not used
50 - 57 Floppy
58 - 5F - not used
60 - 6F * reserved
70 - 77 - not used
78 - 79 paging for CP/M use
7A - 7F * reserved
80 - C7 - not used
C8 - CF * reserved
D0 - DF - not used
E0 - E7 * reserved
E8 - EF * reserved
F0 - FF * reserved

-------------------------

Paging

P2 U and P3 support regular CP/M use with a full 64K RAM complement.
Still, the video RAM is at 0x3000 and 0x3ffff even for these machines, and from what I've read they also use the routine present in the ROM monitor, the MOS.
That means, that in order to update the video RAM and probably other I/O the lower 16K (page 0) are constantly paged in and paged out.

This is accomplished by writing 2FH to port 0x78 in order to switch in the ROM (and assorted, see below) area and by writing 63H to port 0x78 in order to swap the full 64K RAM back in.

http://www.waltroper-aufbruch.de/Archiv/pdf/Booten_Alphatronic_P2_cpm.pdf

According to the manual,

ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/alphatronic/P1_P2_Systemhandbuch_Apr1982.pdf

the values written are 20H and 60H (see page 130 of the PDF), so it's probably the 7th bit that does the switching.

-----------------------

Memory maps

P1, P2 and P2S: no paging
Lower 16K for P1, P2 and P2 S

0x0000 - 0x17ff ROM monitor (MOS)
0x1800 - 0x1bff 1K RAM
0x1c00 - 0x1fff reserved
0x2000 - 0x2fff reserved, belonging to the video card's memory space (video ROM?)
0x3000 - 0x3fff actual video memory

P1
Upper 32K
0x4000 - 0x400a reserved
0x4010 - 0xc000 32K RAM

P2, P2S
Upper 48K
0x4000 - 0x400a reserved
0x4010 - 0xfff 48K RAM

P2 U
An adapter with RAM at 0x0000 and 0x3fff and the banking logic (see above) is added to the the standard 48K memory card.
16K memory card

P3, P4
0x0000 - 0x0fff ROM monitor (MOS)
0x1000 - 0x17ff free
0x1800 - 0x1bff monitor stack (RAM)
0x1c00 - 0x2fff free
0x3000 - 0x3fff video memory
0x4000 - 0xfff RAM

-----------------------

CPU

The P3's manual lists the 8085A's operating frequency as 3MHz, the sales brochure lists the system frequency as 6MHz ... nice sales spin on the 8085's halving of the frequency

-----------------------

Floppy drives

P1: one 5,25" drive, single sided, double density, 160KB, 40 tracks, 16 sectors / track, 256 bytes/sector, "according to IBM 34" (sales brochure)
P2: two 5,25" drives, single sided, double density, 160K (see above)
P2 S: two 5,25" drives, double sided, double density, 320K, 40 tracks, 16 sectors / track, 256 bytes/sector, "according to IBM 34"
P2 U: two 5,25" drives, double sided, double density, 320K, 40 tracks, 16 sectors / track, 256 bytes/sector, "according to IBM 34"
P3: two 5,25" drives, double sided, quad density, (or double track, as the sales brochure puts it), 785K,77 tracks, 5 sectors / track, 1KB/sector, 3 system tracks
P4: one 5,25" drive, double sided, quad density, 785K (see above) and one 15MB (12,5MB formatted) hard disk

P3 and P4 support data transfer from the lower spec machines:
On the P3, drive B: and on the P4 the single drive A: can access single sided disks from a P2 and the first side of the double sided disks from a P2 S and P2 U as a pseudo drive "P".

For emulation purposes, adding a third single sided DD drive to those machines would probably be the way to go.

CP/M on P2 S (48K machine without bank switching)

There is a CP/M version with its TPA at 0x4300 in order to support the OS on the simpler machine.
CP/M programs have to be adapted in order to use that setup.

A set of USCD-Pascal disks for the Alphatronics P2L has been posted. Uploads to this German forum are hosted directly there and available even without registration. But I put them on the FTP too, along with the P2's and P3's files.

http://forum.classic-computing.de/index.php?page=Thread&postID=124154#post124154

I've committed an initial skeleton driver for the P3. Works as far enough to show this message:



If anyone wants to continue working on the driver, feel free to do so.

Thanks, Duke!
I might pester you about it again soon enough

Robert

Unfortunately the keyboard controller ROM dump turned out to be bad - TeamE to the rescue, he dumped the 8049 of the first machine and the 8278 of another that I've acquired in the mean time with consistent results. Thanks!

The ROM dumps are on the FTP and here:

TA Alphatronic P3 ROM dumps (new)

alphatpx.cpp

I thing @Duke you must change in line:

121: uint8_t code = m_vram[(y * 24) + x] & 0x7f; // 24 change to 128 for position a line in the Display-RAM

a new line in the Display RAM-memory start with a step for 128 or 80h.
And the layout must like this:

3000h: # line 1
3080h: # line 2 ..
...
3B80h: # line 24
——— so is 3kB Address -Range , butter a line in real used only from 0 .... to 4F for 80 char per line.

Please the Display card must connected in the Memory MAP range from 3FF0h to 3FFEh as normal mem read/write to the physikalisches CRT-CHIP Register as io read/write in real.

Please you can modify this - thanks.