Dave Mabry wrote:
Tony Duell wrote:
I am certainly interested, even though I
don't have one of these
machines.
-tony
snip...
Stay tuned...I have some more disassembling to do.
Dave
As "promised" I have been disassembling 8080 code from the IOC board on
an Intel MDS. This is not really difficult to do, but it is VERY time
consuming.
Turns out that I have been working on two different versions of the
firmware...VERY DIFFERENT.
The earliest version of IOC firmware that I know of is called V1.3, or
at least that's the signon version number for the diagnostic code within it.
Intel released a major enhancement for that firmware in about 1982 or
1983. They sold a package called the iMDX-511 that included the newer
firmware and new code for the 8741 cpu in the keyboard. All MDS Series
II's sold after that date had this code right out of the factory. The
enhancements included cursor addressibility, some character attributes
(like underline, bold, reverse video), soft keys that included some of
the common ISIS-II commands, and other things like that. Interesting
how this was a major enhancement at the time and is, of course, taken
for granted by computer users today.
So, I'm still working on disassembling, understanding, and commenting
the V1.5 code for the IOC. If anyone is interested (Tony, you said you
were! :)) I have put it online for anyone to snatch. It is the ".LST"
file output from Intel's ASM80 Macro Assembler. That is the file that
you would send to a printer, so it has lots of info.
If anyone is interested enough to help me a bit, I would like to
understand where the RAM diagnostic is in 1.5. I have identified it in
1.3, but V1.5 looks to be completely rewritten.
The two versions are here:
http://www.mich.com/~dmabry/intel/ioc
When I have enough information on V1.5 I'll break out the ICE-80 again
and dim the lights in my neighborhood! :)
Dave Mabry