• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Powertran Cortex

Wow, this is some really great stuff.

I would be very interested in trying to resurrect as much of the software as possible. Particularly, NOS would be very an interesting project and a superb contribution to the 'suite' that's been put together so far. Be time consuming though...

I would love the M9900 due to it's significance in my life (well that's just my opinion of course!) and I suspect I would need to use it as a foundation for some of the software restoration. Getting it going would be quite the task, but some of the equipment I work with is older than this system(!), so massive linear power supplies and 8" drives along their associated spares are within easy reach.

I suppose when the time comes that I've rescued as much as possible, my ultimate goal would be upgrade my emulator (or create another) with the features/functionality of the M9900. Then, if he's up for it, I would like to pass the hardware on to Jim F as he's obviously been after one of these for as long as I've had a Cortex in my life. At least it would be the right side of the Pond if/when the time comes!

Dave.
 
An update to the hardware list, and comments on things so far.

----------

Found a few more bits of hardware in with some documentation. I've added it to the original hardware list above, and is:

-- 1 off populated MPE FD/WD Iss. A board (with some components and hard wiring on the back).

-- 1 off MPE 9950 CPU-E TMS9995 Iss. 3 processor board. All chips fitted. Forth EPROM. Two flying leads for RS-232 connections. 8K RAM, 8K ROM.

-- 1 off bare MPE 9950 CPU-E TMS9995 Iss. 3 processor board.

Photo: http://stuartconnerdownloads.me.uk/~stuartc2/mpe_stuff/DSCF0283.JPG

I'll give Jim F first refusal on the TMS9995 board, since he showed interest in the earlier one. Looks like we have full documentation, plus the PAL programming terms.

----------

The MPE FD/WD boards - if they are just buffers and decoding, they might be a useful basis for an IDE interface, which is little more than a memory mapped port. I've got one on my TM990 system along with a disk operating system which is patched into Cortex BASIC and lets you save/load programs. Should port across to the Cortex easily.

----------

Jim H - your sheet fed scanner - is it labour intensive to use, or can you just start it going and wander off? Lots of the documentation is individual sheets of fan fold paper which might scan easily. [I can also scan through the MFD printer at work - I'll have to investigate it properly.]

----------

Floppy drives for the Mk 1 Cortex. Thanks for the offers of drive for this. I've actually got a pair of drives that I got for my 4A that should work with this. Both a double-sided, but on one, one head is faulty and it will only work single-sided (fortunately the working head is that fitted to normal single-sided drives). I've just got a pair of cased 1/2 height ex-BBC Micro drives to use with my Cortex board and 4A.

----------

The board with the dual 9901s is in one of the ETI articles says Jim F. I thought I recognised it! Jim, there are front and back photos below. If you need them under different lighting conditions to be able to see the traces, let me know.

http://stuartconnerdownloads.me.uk/~stuartc2/mpe_stuff/DSCF0285.JPG
http://stuartconnerdownloads.me.uk/~stuartc2/mpe_stuff/DSCF0286.JPG

Stuart.
 
"Jim H - your sheet fed scanner - is it labour intensive to use, or can you just start it going and wander off? Lots of the documentation is individual sheets of fan fold paper which might scan easily. [I can also scan through the MFD printer at work - I'll have to investigate it properly."

You can load up about 100 pages A4 and then leave it.
It will scan double sided but it's actually quicker to scan all of one side, then all of the other side and use a program to merge the pages, I use a program that handles all that and saves as a PDF.

Jim
 
I've got a GAL programmer and various GAL's as well.
It's quite a while since I played with them, can you read from them to copy one ?

Jim
 
Jim Hearne said:
I've got a GAL programmer and various GAL's as well.
It's quite a while since I played with them, can you read from them to copy one ?

Jim
Click to expand...

It's been my experience that the small scale devices can be copied. The larger scale CPLD's usually include a Security Bit where the device reads as blank but functions as designed. With these, the only course of action is to erase them to use them again. However, given the vintage and size of these devices, they should be OK.

Dave.
 
Having just re-read all that's been happening today (again, wow!), I'm curious if there are any disks for the PP95. As it stands, I doubt it was used with just Cortex Basic/CDOS. MDEX also looks doubtful because I don't recall ever seeing any Memory Management or Hard Disk drivers in the Sysgen disks, so I'm thinking it must have been rocking NOS...

Yummy!

D.
 
tms9995 said:
Having just re-read all that's been happening today (again, wow!), I'm curious if there are any disks for the PP95. As it stands, I doubt it was used with just Cortex Basic/CDOS. MDEX also looks doubtful because I don't recall ever seeing any Memory Management or Hard Disk drivers in the Sysgen disks, so I'm thinking it must have been rocking NOS...

Yummy!

D.
Click to expand...

Spoiler: three of the (many) disks are "TX NOS Pascal disks 1/2/3". ;-) I need to scan the TMX9909 manual then the next task is to catalogue the disk labels.

Dave - I've sent you a PM regarding shipping the M9900 box. No rush, but need to investigate the options.

Stuart.
 
Stuart said:
Spoiler: three of the (many) disks are "TX NOS Pascal disks 1/2/3". ;-) I need to scan the TMX9909 manual then the next task is to catalogue the disk labels.

Dave - I've sent you a PM regarding shipping the M9900 box. No rush, but need to investigate the options.

Stuart.
Click to expand...

I just replied via email. Hope you got it.

Dave.
 
I am definitely interested in the following items:

-- 1 off populated MPE FD/WD Iss. A board (with some components and hard wiring on the back).

-- 1 off MPE 9950 CPU-E TMS9995 Iss. 3 processor board. All chips fitted. Forth EPROM. Two flying leads for RS-232 connections. 8K RAM, 8K ROM.

A copy of the documentation would be good here too (electronic or paper, assuming you want to keep the originals)

On the Winchester controller, I seem to remember that board is a SASI controller. I'll have to compare it to the ones used in the SASI controller I have for my TI -99/4A to be sure though.

The pix are perfect. It is definitely the 9901 board from the ETI magazine article. I'll use these to update my layout and do a short run of five or six of them (more if anyone else is interested in one). Yours doesn't have the joystick connectors fitted, but they might come in handy if you plan on porting anymore game software!
 
The only scan I have for the TMX9909 was taken from the TMS9900 Data Design Book, Jim. That would have been an abbreviated version of the regular document.

@Dave, many thanks for being willing to pass on the Marinchip once you're done with it. I've waited for one of those forever, so knowing that an end is in sight to my quest is very refreshing! :)
 
Ksarul said:
The only scan I have for the TMX9909 was taken from the TMS9900 Data Design Book, Jim. That would have been an abbreviated version of the regular document.

@Dave, many thanks for being willing to pass on the Marinchip once you're done with it. I've waited for one of those forever, so knowing that an end is in sight to my quest is very refreshing! :)
Click to expand...

Maybe that's what I have, I just didn't want Stuart spending time scanning it if we already had it, I must remember to check tonight.

I would like to buy one of your Parallel port/joystick board pcb's if you have one spare.

Jim
 
As soon as I've made sure I didn't miss anything in the layout I did, I'll send off to get a few made--and I'll make sure one is reserved for you, Jim.

I had to go back and check my PDF files too, because I wasn't sure on the TMX9909 datasheet either--you just beat me into making the initial observation that we had something already. :)
 
Jim Hearne said:
Maybe that's what I have, I just didn't want Stuart spending time scanning it if we already had it, I must remember to check tonight.

I would like to buy one of your Parallel port/joystick board pcb's if you have one spare.

Jim
Click to expand...

B*gger - there's actually a copy on Dave H's Powertran Cortex.com site. Didn't realise we had this. I've scanned and PDF'd the copy I borrowed anyway, and it has some handwritten notes for the PP95 on one of the pages which might or might not be useful somewhen.

Stuart.
 
View attachment MPE Stuff - Disk Catalogue.zip

Next installment attached - catalogue of the 5.25" and 8" disks. It's in a zipped Word doc - hope people can open it OK. With the 5.25" disks, I've tried to group them into categories, then have sorted the list by category and disk label title. The 8" disks are already sorted into some sort of order so I've just done a straight list of them.

Dave H - with your knowledge of MDEX and such, do you know what, if any, of the stuff on 5.25" disk can be used with a plain Cortex with floppies? (There is a disk of Cortex games I notice!) Or does it look like pretty much of it is for the PP95 system with the extra RAM and the Winchester drive?

Stuart.
 
Stuart said:
View attachment 12953

Next installment attached - catalogue of the 5.25" and 8" disks. It's in a zipped Word doc - hope people can open it OK. With the 5.25" disks, I've tried to group them into categories, then have sorted the list by category and disk label title. The 8" disks are already sorted into some sort of order so I've just done a straight list of them.

Dave H - with your knowledge of MDEX and such, do you know what, if any, of the stuff on 5.25" disk can be used with a plain Cortex with floppies? (There is a disk of Cortex games I notice!) Or does it look like pretty much of it is for the PP95 system with the extra RAM and the Winchester drive?

Stuart.
Click to expand...

MDEX runs on a standard Cortex. No extended memory or mods required. The disk images on my website are the complete suite of everything that was given to the User Group when MPE no longer wanted to be involved. More than happy to provide guidance for anyone who wants to try it. There are several programming languages (compilers) and I did a "Hello World" in all of them.

The most challenging aspect was using the Cortex's 40 column display because MDEX was designed to run with a 80x24 terminal. That was my main drive to add the Maplin V9938 card, because the 80x24 mode alone made it a 'proper computer'. Even under Basic/CDOS the 80 col mode made things a lot more user-friendly.

That's a lot of disks...... Yikes!

Dave.
 
Last edited:
Ok, so what is NOS, all I can find on the net is that is "Network Operating System" but that seems rather later than the cortex.

Thanks,

Jim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top