Altair Emulator enhancements - progress report - questions

Hello, all: Just a quick update on my progress with enhancing the Altair Emulator. I also have an activity log on my Web site which all can view. Most of what will go on over the next few weeks is code testing as a complete recompiled "altair.exe". A few notes: - The emulated paper tape punch code works on a standalone basis and has been integrated into the overall emulator. This is the code I need to bang on. - I wrote a bus I/O emulation Windows DLL to handle actual I/O through the PeeCee's parallel port. I still have to build a little test jig to connect to the port (an inverter, a latch, and a bus transceiver). This gives the emulator 8-bits of external address space and 8-bits of I/O with *ALE (latch control) and *R/*W signals. The way this is setup, the parallel port is still shared with other Win32 processes. If this doesn't work for the emulator, I'll have to write a dynamic virtual device driver to gain exclusive access to the port so long as the Altair is "on." - In a few weeks, I'm going to tinker with console emulation either through capturing a physical communications port that has no underlying hardware (like COM5:) so that a Windows terminal program can "connect" to the Altair Emulator. Alternately, I may try just building a virtual-VDT into the emulator. - Other enhancements will hopefully include a virtual floppy drive and the ability to "install" ROM. One I have the base code stable (it now compiles/links with no errors), I plan to make the binary available for testing and the source available for review. Some of the punch code could benefit from optimization, no doubt. I also have some questions of actual users of the Altair. I wanted to use a copy of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC on the emulator (because that's the BASIC that I have), but TB relies on CP/M for console I/O. Regarding the original Altair BASIC, did the BASIC code provide its own I/O services or did it use CP/M also? What port locations were generally used to service serial ports used for console I/O? Does anyone have a working set of CP/M binaries that I can load into the emulator? Again, any help is greatly appreciated. Rich http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/