27-06-2025, 11:10 AM
Just a little update for now.
Not really anything to show at the moment, but that doesn't mean things have stopped.
There has been quite a bit of software development going on.
A couple of the things I've been working on include:
* DMA like disk interface for the floppy disk emulation. Normally the under the floppy disk emulation each byte that is read or written to/from the disk images
is handled byte by byte, exactly the way it happens when accessing a floppy disk. Under this new arrangement, whole sectors of 512 or 1024 bytes (depending
on the disk format) are read / written to the SDcard by the MC68SZ328 processor direct from Z80 memory space. This greatly improves the speed of disk access
while using emulated floppies (disk images). This means a new version of the boot disk / BIOS as well, to make use of the better performance.
* Operating system for M68K mode. Some of you that are familiar with the Premium Plus will recall that I released uClinux as an OS for the Premium Plus to
operate from in 'Coldfire / M68K ' mode, so rather than booting into normal Microbee Z80 mode, you could use the more powerful Coldfire processor on that model.
Similarly, with these new models, you'll be able to boot into M68K mode and run code on the M68K processor. To start with, I've been working on implementing
CP/M-68K (ver 1.3) . While it is a non-multitasking OS, it is relatively simple to implement & has a lot of tools with it, including an assembler, C compiler, linker etc.
all bundled in.
There are other options I'm looking at (for alternative OS's ) but CP/M-68K will be a good start.
Software dev is taking up a lot of time, but it is essential for a well rounded release.
Not really anything to show at the moment, but that doesn't mean things have stopped.
There has been quite a bit of software development going on.
A couple of the things I've been working on include:
* DMA like disk interface for the floppy disk emulation. Normally the under the floppy disk emulation each byte that is read or written to/from the disk images
is handled byte by byte, exactly the way it happens when accessing a floppy disk. Under this new arrangement, whole sectors of 512 or 1024 bytes (depending
on the disk format) are read / written to the SDcard by the MC68SZ328 processor direct from Z80 memory space. This greatly improves the speed of disk access
while using emulated floppies (disk images). This means a new version of the boot disk / BIOS as well, to make use of the better performance.
* Operating system for M68K mode. Some of you that are familiar with the Premium Plus will recall that I released uClinux as an OS for the Premium Plus to
operate from in 'Coldfire / M68K ' mode, so rather than booting into normal Microbee Z80 mode, you could use the more powerful Coldfire processor on that model.
Similarly, with these new models, you'll be able to boot into M68K mode and run code on the M68K processor. To start with, I've been working on implementing
CP/M-68K (ver 1.3) . While it is a non-multitasking OS, it is relatively simple to implement & has a lot of tools with it, including an assembler, C compiler, linker etc.
all bundled in.
There are other options I'm looking at (for alternative OS's ) but CP/M-68K will be a good start.
Software dev is taking up a lot of time, but it is essential for a well rounded release.