21 Jan
2012
21 Jan
'12
10:33 a.m.
On 01/11/2012 11:47 AM, Tony Duell wrote:
I have the hardware techncial manual on paper (it was
given to me
along with another HX20 and a TF20 drive unit). There are similarl
manauls avaialble for download on the web..'
Speaking of technical
documentation for compact battery-powered
computers, I sure wish some technical documentation on the
Panasonic/Quasar/Friends Amis HHC would show up. The hardware is
6502-based, but with an ASIC that controls the memory map and LCD. I've
partially reverse-engineered some of the mainframe and plugin ROMs, but
parts remain mysterious.
Most of the software, other than Microsoft BASIC, was written in SNAP, a
token-threaded dialect of Forth. The MIcrosoft BASIC ROM only contains
the tiny amount of SNAP code necessary for to interface to the mainframe
code.
The widely-available image of the Microsoft BASIC ROM for the HHC
contains one byte with an obviously incorrect value, apparently due to a
glitch when the ROM was read.