[sebhc] Emulator future? + request for tools

[Dave Dunfield]

>I think I'll hold off on that for another day or two - I'm having a
>little trouble telling "slowing down" from "full speed ahead" !  ;>)

Arg - yeah - grumble - grumble - I am trying...


>> - Ability to redirect H8 serial ports to PC serial ports.
>> 
>
>Hooking up a printer or a real H19 would be cool

Vote recorded.


>To me, the next big step would be finding a "transparent" way to
>read/write to a PC, whether block, file or disk-image oriented. Seems to
>me that the most natural way would be to "mount" it as a drive, though
>not constrained by the "classic" media sizes. BTW, HDOS 3.02 claims to
>support 38,400 baud serial connections, though I'm not sure if that
>could be done on an H8. I've lost my 0-org system for the moment so I'm
>not quite ready to see if my disks will boot. I may have to fall back to
>an H89 to find out.

I can easily provide an I/O port to allow direct access to PC files, it
would have to have some sort of protocol allowing you to open a file,
close a file and read/write the file ... But how would HDOS know about
this. Does HDOS support a non-native filesystem (aka: network redirector
functionality)?

I think an easier way to import/export individual files would be to write
a utility which can read/write the .H8D disk images. If someone can provide
me with details on the disk structure, directory, allocation tables etc. I
can probably do this in fairly short order. This would give you a command
which you can run on the PC, to list directories, extract and inject files
in a .H17 image file. For an example, look at the ADI (Altair Disk Image)
command that I include with my Altair emulator.


>SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC, BUT CLEARLY RELATED - 
>
>The other thing I would find most helpful seems to already exist, though
>perhaps not collected in one place. This would be a toolkit that allows
>conversion among the various image formats that we have - many of you
>seem to be able to move between binary, hex and .h17 formats, but I'm
>not clear on the processes or tools used to do so. I can create an .h17
>file using diskdump on the H8 or dump a hex or binary ROM file to the PC
>from my PROM burner, but I don't have conversion tools to interchange
>the formats (or I have the tools and don't know how to use them!). I'd
>greatly appreciate it if you all could reduce this to a cookbook level.

I don't have anything for .H17 (.H8D?) images yet, but take a look at my
H8T.COM (H8 Transfer/Translate) utility, which I have been bundling with
recent versions of the simulator.

H8T can copy and translate between three file formats:

   .H8T / .PID   = H8 Tape image file
   .HEX          = Intel or Motorola HEX download files
   .BIN / .ROM   = Raw binary image

It also recognizes COM(1-4) as a serial port operating in H8 tape image
format, so it allows you to load any of the above filetypes directly
into the (real) H8 without having to translate it first.

For example, lets suppose you have MYPROG.HEX (Intel or Motorola format) and
you want to turn it into a MYPROG.H8T tape image file. all you need to do is:

    H8T MYPROG.HEX MYPROG.H8T

Btw, what exactly is a .H17 file - I assume this ia a disk image?

Regards,
Dave
-- 
dave04a (at)    Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot)  Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com             Vintage computing equipment collector.
                http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

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