Search results

Next try.. Rev D replica design in an IMSAI, now comes the fun part (debugging...). Don't know whether the Dazzler works together with an IMSAI CPU card anyway. Right now all I/O port access is being blocked :)

I will tell you about the hardware when I have successfully built my first replica :)

The sources are included in the disk image (.ASM files). I have attached another archive with the individual files. The Magenta Martini animation is expected on paper tape and also included. I guess Kaleidoscope and Life were not developed by Cromemco itself and are 8080 code. The...

Interesting. I also tried onlineocr, but got ambivalent results. Quite good recognition of ambiguous characters and good whitespace recognition on some pages, but also pages completely full of garbage :-)

Not an image of the original disk, I fear. We know about the content, but there are different versions of the COM files around, no idea which have been on the original disk. Hope the ones in the attached image work. Possibly someone else has an image of the original Cromemco disk. 4D Tic Tac...

@nullvalue which OCR did you use? I just did some trials with tesseract, which is not specfically designed for the recognition of source code text, but gives relatively good results with some training. One problem still is accurate whitespace reproduction (for indentation), the other problem is...

Backporting is always the harder part, but if you have the assembler sources you of course can convert Z80 code into 8080 code. But it is a manual process. Many Z80 instructions, however, are basically combinations of existing 8080 instructions. Those can be addressed e.g. by using DR's...

I see. I guess it is pefectly ok to simulate regular changes for general timing tasks. I am utilizing the odd/even flag for dynamically tweaking color register and graphics mode on the fly, which greatly extends the Dazzler's capabilities. Would be nice to check them with the simulation, too...

I tried to modify the Dazzler section in Udo Munk's z80pack emulation (see https://github.com/udo-munk/z80pack) to properly show even/odd scanlines with the right timing, alternately showing the interlaced fields. Which includes the proper setting of the flags in the 0E register. Udo's...

The MONKEY.MOV actually is from the intro scene of Monkey Island 2 - LeChuck's Revenge :-) (see )

Attached is a ZAXXON.MOV with 22 (hex 16) frames. Should nearly double the frame rate and work with a 48K CP/M with Dazzler DMA address 0800 hex (the Dazzler test utility requires ~1,500 + 256 bytes offset). CCP area probably will be overwritten, though (TPA is 41K only).

(y) MONKEY.MOV is an example for 512 bytes/frame and greyscale mode, ZAXXON.MOV for 2048 bytes/frame and color mode. I limited the clip size to ~24K so that they play on most systems. Quality will improve with the number of frames (smoother playback). Guess I'll also include larger samples, but...

Concerning my own Rev D production, I am struggling a bit with JLCPCB. I've sent them the Gerbers which look perfectly in their Gerber viewer, plus clear instructions on not removing the silkscreen on areas without solder mask (which they actually offer as an option in their instructions) to...

I forgot to mention, the sample clips contain 45 frames (hex 2d) for MONKEY.MOV and 12 frames (hex 0c) for ZAXXON.MOV. For the time being, there is no agreed Dazzler file format for including meta data, so every file needs some description with it.

New version 2.0 of the Dazzler test utility available. Please check https://github.com/akueckes/Cromemco-Dazzler-RevD. I've fixed some minor issues and also added the capability for the playback of video clips. Hope it is working with real hardware. The playback function is using the vertical...

Hugo, you wrote what I think. Despite of and actually because of its limitations, creating images and visual effects with early computers *was* an art of its own. And still is. It had been a great challenge to create artifacts and even worlds within the limits of its time, and it was highly...

The point is that the CGA actually also wasn't designed for this. I agree that the Dazzler lacks many of the features of a 6845, but it will be still a challenge to drive it to its limits.

What can be done with some tweaking with an IBM CGA is nicely shown by the famous 8088 MPH demo (see ). The Youtube link is to a version with composite monitor. Here also is a link to my own setup at home trying to demonstrate the difference between composite monitor and original CGA monitor...

Oh yes. As Hugo already wrote programming the Dazzler x4 mode is mind twisting. I would not say that it is impossible to create sophisticated and fast algorithms for it, but it goes towards the limits of what my brain can handle. I have a Vector Graphics video card which implements bilevel with...

Here are the steps for greyscale images: crop to quadratic shape reduce canvas size to 64x64 save as 24bit BMP image use bmpconvert with -greyscale option The GRAY.IMG example was created exactly that way with paint.net. If you like, you can also already convert to greyscale and reduce the...