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zenharris / SymBiosys

Symbiosys, a 6502 operating system for SYM 1 to access IDE disks using VIA interface. Written in RAE resident Assembler.
http://b5.net/sym1
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Update Not an issue #1

Open okwatts opened 3 years ago

okwatts commented 3 years ago

Hi, sending this in hopes on making contact as the mail address at b5.net bounced.

I came across your posts on the 6502.org forums as well as your github repository. I was using Grant Searles Multicomp project to build a 6502 replacement for experimenting. I ordered some of the boards to make it easier to set this all up as shown in the notes below*. I then decided to try and resurrect my SYM-1 which I have had since about 1980. After some hiccups I got it and my old KTM-3/80 hooked up to an old composite monitor and home built power supply from the 80's and it came to life. I hooked up my old 64k dram board for another 24 K ( I had 8K on board the SYM - Blalocks board). Now my old SYM basic and RAE in ROM are working. Finally I dragged out the FDC-1 Floppy controller and 2 drives and now I'm stymied. Drives spin and try and load, format etc but no joy. I'm not sure if its the FDC1 which seems to work and who knows if 40 year old floppies still contain valid data. I don't want to even attempt using cassette tape so I'm looking with interest at your project. I will try and build the interface for the SYM and use an IDE to Compact Flash adapter for the storage medium. Eventually I would like to have the SYM and the FPGA emulator running your symbiossys particularly in case the SYM packs it up. I have also had a KIM and the other links below show some neat things as well. (I have a working KIMUNO with the leds and keys from the kits that Oscar V. provides as well as some of the updates to newer microcontrollers like the STM32.)

I cut my teeth on the 6502 so it remains my first love in spite of all the other micros I have played with over the years. It's good to keep the memories and history alive! I'm particularly interested in the SYM-Forth at the moment and while I have dabbled and had interest for years I have never programmed anything in anger.

Just glad to know the internet keeps the few still connected even after all the years and hardware have gone by.

Larry

Some items of interest below:

Old-MIcros (https://sites.google.com/site/gogleoops/sym-1-maxi) by Michael Cvetanovski in Newcastle, Australia has a SYM-1 maxi Board that looks interesting.

Kim UNO: https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/kim-uno-summary-c1uuh

*Multicomp boards: I have bare boards left over for the Cyclone II-c version plus a few ps2 and vga connectors and have made 3 of these with 6809, Z80 and 6502 variations with the SD card and 512K SRAM. https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:sbc:multicomp:start

Also Stephen Edwards KIM on FPGA, Vintage computing with FPGAs, its from 2018 I had to go to the original arlet ottens site to get the KIM to actually execute programs. Not sure why but the G command ends with an RTI which may have been the reason. I didn't build the keyboard LED interface just ran it on serial. http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sedwards/presentations.html

okwatts commented 3 years ago

Okay I built the interface board and got it working with an ide to compact flash interface. I had to disable the led indicator on the interface for the Sym as it conflicted with the one on the ide-cf board. Loaded the bdos code (relocated with some challenge to $C000). Had issues with hex not accepting values, sometimes worked, mostly not working. NOPed all the references to disabling access. This allowed hex etc. to work (fudged the clock locations as I haven't one on the system). Next challenge after doing the mkdir 0 0 0 and mkdir 1 0 0 was to actually store and list the contents. Took awhile for me to realize the syntax had changed from 2011 to 2012 versions(using the thread on 6502.org forum) so when I used "cd 0" things began to work. Still have occasional challenges for changing to user area 1 and getting a working "ls" but overall seems to work as advertised. Could stand some updating of the user instructions. I have loaded via paper tape format all the software in the repository at b5.net: got ehbasic and symforth to work. At this stage I am looking at adapting the software to replace the ide-cf part (and the Sym monitor calls) to run on the Multicomp board I have built for the 6502 using the SD card for the storage. Remains to be seen how long this will take. I still haven't resolved my issue with the FDC-1 and the Sym at this point so all my old software is still on floppy waiting to see new life.

zenharris commented 3 years ago

This is quite amazing you realy have got it working so soon. You are the second person other than myself to get it running and after your first email I was worried that your attempt would be as troublesome as the first and I barely remembered how it all worked as it was so long ago, more than 8 years.

I'm not sure if this reply will work I haven't used this facility of github before. I must have shut down the symbiosys@b5.net address because of spam but symbiosys1@b5.net address should work ok, that would have been in the bounce error email but easy to miss.

try emailing me again and I'll have your reply address, if this works.

On 27/11/20 06:47, okwatts wrote:

Okay I built the interface board and got it working with an ide to compact flash interface. I had to disable the led indicator on the interface for the Sym as it conflicted with the one on the ide-cf board. Loaded the bdos code (relocated with some challenge to $C000). Had issues with hex not accepting values, sometimes worked, mostly not working. NOPed all the references to disabling access. This allowed hex etc. to work (fudged the clock locations as I haven't one on the system). Next challenge after doing the mkdir 0 0 0 and mkdir 1 0 0 was to actually store and list the contents. Took awhile for me to realize the syntax had changed from 2011 to 2012 versions(using the thread on 6502.org forum) so when I used "cd 0" things began to work. Still have occasional challenges for changing to user area 1 and getting a working "ls" but overall seems to work as advertised. Could stand some updating of the user instructions. I have loaded via paper tape format all the software in the repository at b5.net: got ehbasic and symforth to work. At this stage I am looking at adapting the software to replace the ide-cf part (and the Sym monitor calls) to run on the Multicomp board I have built for the 6502 using the SD card for the storage. Remains to be seen how long this will take. I still haven't resolved my issue with the FDC-1 and the Sym at this point so all my old software is still on floppy waiting to see new life.

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