On 2011 Jun 15, at 3:17 AM, Terry Stewart wrote:
Ok, progress on checking out this Sorcerer BASIC
ROM-PAC..
I diescovered there was no way you could exit to the monitor program
if you had a hung ROM-PAC plugged in BUT....I figured out a way to
check the content of the ROM-PAC ROMS.
In the Sorcerer the ROM-PAC occupies space from C000-DFFF using 4
chips. Reading the docs I saw that the boot up sequence jumps to DFFD
or DFFA depending on if it's a warm or cold start. However, if it
finds nothing there, it assumes there is no ROM PAC attached and boots
up the monitor. YES! This means all I needed to do is remove the
number 4 IC (D800-DFFF) and I should be able to boot to the monitor
and then examine the contents of the three lower ICs. I could then
substitute the number 4 IC for one of the lower ones and examine its
contents too.
I removed the number 4 chip, plugged in the ROM-PAC and booted.
Success, I was in the monitor. I then dumped the memory locations
corresponding to the ROMS. The two lower ICs (C000-CFFF) showed all
different hex numbers. In other words it looked like it contained
good code. However, the third IC (D000-D777) contained all zeros!!
I then swapped over the D800-DFFF chip I'd removed into the socket
which originally contained the D000-D777 and checked that number 4
chip. The code looked good and I could even see the bootstrap code at
the end at DFFD and DFFA (of course it was at location D7FD and D7FA
as I had this number 4 chip in socket 3).
Conclusion. It's the number 3 IC which is faulty.
Next task. Unpack the EPROM burner and try to figure out how to use
it.
Great work!
Just a suggestion, one more thing you might check, as confirmation, is
to place the suspect ROM chip in another location and look at the
contents from there, to confirm that it is the ROM chip and not the
ROM-selection circuitry or something particular to that chip position
causing the problem (although it probably would show all-FFs if it was
the selection circuitry).