Page 2 of 3

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:55 am
by akuyou
Very kind of you.. I'll have another go at reading the translated UKNC documents over the weekend.

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 9:32 pm
by aberrant_hacker
Here is link to the simple example with all the tools need to build ROM cartridge image.
Simply run a batch file and you'll get cartridge image.

It uses RT-11 emulator to run native MACRO-11 assembler and linker to build a Standard Save Image File (.SAV) which can be executed under the RT-11 operating system. And then converts it to the ROM cartridge image file.

I also attached a floppy disk image aku.dsk which includes my port of Chibi Akumas which only displays loading screen at the moment)) You can mount the floppy disk image, boot from the disk and "AKU.SAV" will be executed automatically.

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 9:43 pm
by aberrant_hacker
BTW, the example above uses indirect access to video ram which is rather slow but simple.
It is possible to use CPU ram as video ram but it more complicated since CPU has no access at all to the line parameters table(LPT).

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 10:05 pm
by akuyou
This is perfect! I can work with this just fine.

Thanks for your help!
UKNC test.jpg
UKNC test.jpg (13.24 KiB) Viewed 8065 times

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 4:09 pm
by aberrant_hacker
Glad I was able to help :)
CPU has another limitation - it has no access to bitplane 0 ("blue"). So I modified the example a bit to make the background black.
It sets the resolution to 320 dots per line instead of 640, as well. (without changing addresses of each line in the LPT, so there is a gap in 40 bytes between each line).

btw, I not receiving notifications from the forum. I turned on all the notification on User Control Panel -> Board Preferences -> Edit notification options.
But it didn't help :(

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 9:38 pm
by aberrant_hacker
Here is link to MACRO-11 Reference manual.
VT52 manual
And here is manual which describes how to work with external devices - terminal emulator, PPU, etc.

It's very late in Moscow :) I'll prepare code examples tomorrow.

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 11:06 pm
by akuyou
Thanks for all your help with this... I'm sure you're saving me weeks of work here - I'd be fumbling around for days figuring this stuff out!

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Sun Nov 10, 2019 3:15 am
by aberrant_hacker
It took me a while to contrive some examples. In the end, I modified the memory copy test I wrote a year ago. In the example, a code block is sent to PPU to create a new "lines parameters table" to modify colors and line scale.

BTW, new version of UKNCBTL was released. Now you can run the emulator with /bootN (N is boot menu number) and it will automatically start booting. For example UKNCBTL.exe/boot2 will start booting from ROM cartridge.
Also, I modified the last version executable to replace text in the boot menu from Russian to English.

P.S. I discovered that you can use udl command in the emulator's debugger to save the "line parameters table" to disk for study and debug.

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Sun Nov 10, 2019 1:56 pm
by aberrant_hacker
I'm sorry Keth. I found that it is difficult and time-consuming for me to translate the documentation (I tend to overthink and procrastinate too much in the process)))
It would be much easier if I leave detailed comments it the code I currently write. For example, I described "line parameters table" (but I named it scan-lines table SLTAB initially) in PPU module for ChibiAkumas port.

And of course, I'll be happy to answer any question or to participate in another live stream dedicated to PDP-11 ;)

Re: PDP-11

Posted: Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:00 am
by akuyou
Fantastic work! I'll be taking a look at this over the week, and trying to get an understanding of it!

I'm hoping to do some more PDP-11 on my friday livestream, so hopefully I can make some more progress thanks to your help here.