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rickbutton / z100emu

Zenith Z-100 Emulator
MIT License
1 stars 0 forks source link

Are you still working on this? #1

Open nightson opened 5 years ago

nightson commented 5 years ago

Hi Rick,

I have three old games for the Zenith Z-100 computer that were made by AVES in the 1980s and published by Gernware Enterprises in 1990.

The manuals state they are designed to run in MS-DOS 2.0 or higher. I tried to run them in DOSBox but they simply won't start. I contacted the author of DOSBox and was told that these games require special hardware (graphics related) of Z-100 that isn't emulated in DOSBox. After some googling it turned out that you are the only one who has been working on a Z-100 emulator. However, it seems that your emulator hasn't seen update since for 2 years. What's its current status? Have you been working on it privately? If you're interested I can send you the images of the disks for testing. They are very rare games that need to preserved but without a working emulator they are just dead files :(

Thanks!

rickbutton commented 5 years ago

Hi @nightson !

I have not had time to work on this for a while due to finishing up classes I am taking, but fortunately I am completely finished at the end of March!

My plan has been to pick this back up after that, so this is good timing! :)

The part of the system I am currently stuck on is implementing the proper disk hardware, which is challenging because it is completely non-standard and complex.

It would be great if you could dump the disks. Do you have the hardware necessary to dump them? They are 5.25", right?

You will likely have a hard time dumping the disks with most software solutions, as these disks rarely use the more common DOS sector layouts, so a regular PC won't be able to read them (if you manage to find a working PC with a 5.25 floppy drive).

I'm imaging my disks with a KryoFlux, which samples the raw magnetic signals from the disk and interprets the physical structure of the disk in software (which is also better for error handling).

nightson commented 4 years ago

Oh sorry I didn't see your reply for some reason. Yeah I have dumped the disks with Kryoflux and scanned the paperworks. Do you need them? Just tell me where to send them :)

nightson commented 3 years ago

Hey Rick are you still working on this? I can send you the files anytime but it doesn't seem to be appropriate to post the link here. Could you give me your email?