Hello !

Do you Know approximately how long it takes to be running the newbrain emulation ?.

From the day I saw that it was part of the structure of MESS'm very happy, and I will be more when the MESS and I can emulate.

I also would like to know if the Adam Computer and Atari ST drivers will be fixed for further releases.

Thanks very much for the progress with Sinclair QL, Jupiter Ace

Thank You very much for all your work ! Here's a fan from many years.

Hi,

I'm responsible for most of those drivers.

Newbrain emulation isn't going anywhere until someone provides a dump of the COP420 keyboard controller MCU.

The same goes for Adam, we need a dump of the floppy controller MCU.

For Atari ST some proper documentation about the shifter chip is needed (how it really works on the inside rather than a register listing).

Did you talk to that guy who posted the other Adam MCU dumps?

As far as ST, I'd ask Olivier Galibert on the list - he knows a lot about that machine.

Hi guys, first thanks for your work, is impressive.

I have a NewBrain, if necessary to dismantle COP420 for dumping or whatever ?. But according to I have understood:

http://www.newbrain.info/specifications/newbrain/cop420-4-bit-processor.html

http://www.datasheetarchive.com/COP402N-datasheet.html

http://mamedev.org/source/src/emu/cpu/cop400/cop420ds.c

What's up with the NewBrain emulator ? , is it an interpreter and not an emulator ?

The standalone Newbrain emulator simulates the COP420 behavior.

The chip has to be removed from the computer and dumped using a programmer which can trick the COP420 into test mode:

http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/industry/appnotes/Natsemi/CN-7.pdf

I did, he doesn't have the FDC ROM. It should be much easier to acquire though since it is on an EPROM instead of inside the 6801.

Thank You very much !

Let's see what we can do in order to help to move forward NewBrain emulation.

Regards

it's a very complex thing.

And obviously is not to be done in just one day.

An external circuit must be done.

The process is curious, an error at cpu makes the ROM dump. The process i mean, is to make a call on the last address of the ROM, and set a register to high, so the cpu runs over all addresses dumping the contents.

A demo circuit is provided, in where the COP420 content is dumped in external RAM, and later the proccess is to dump again that RAM with the needed content.

Keep in mind, this chip has not address lines as such. only data, so, to read, you need to either make a copy in a ram / rom the outside and then read with A0-ram A15 on a recorder, or make a circuit lines connecting the data to a PC parallel port and read in sync with the CPU speed.

In other words, a whole real magic of engineering, to "try" to read.

Otherwise, "could" be, using the basic of Newbrain, sending data requiring the chip to dump the ROM, even byte by byte, but is only a guess, and maybe it's not possible.

Hi !

We have been talking to Chris Desp, author of NewBrain Emulator.

This is what Chris wrote:

I donot have the internal rom from Cop420 coprocessor what i did is emulate this chip to main z80 processor. I mean i give the processor what it needs, if it is a key from the keyboard then i just pass the pc key pressed to NB, if it is a file loading or saving i just give it the bytes from a binary file or save the bytes to a binary file.

Exactly what you said, I know your loyalty in terms of the criteria for emulation, but if not achieved COP420 ROM, it will be difficult for us to enjoy NewBrain emulation in MESS.

Is there any way to enable NewBrain preliminary emulation?

Yes, write a simulation for it. I'm not going to do that