Wanted: ASM-48 for Intellec MDS-2

[Rob Doyle]

On 4/2/2015 6:09 AM, F.Ulivi wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm looking for a dump (or the real floppy!) of the ASM-48 assembler
> that ran on Intel MDS-2 systems. It seems that it is very rare (maybe it
> didn't sell too well back in its days). After a few days of googling I
> still have no idea of the Intel part-number for it. Other assemblers
> (e.g. ASM80) are much more common.
> The reason I'm looking for it is to re-implement the firmware in the PIO
> processor (a 8041A) of the MDS-2 emulator I'm writing for MESS. I
> thought it would be a nice idea to write the firmware by using the
> system itself: it is a development system after all!
> I think I've no hope of finding an image of the original firmware. The
> original PIO is a masked ROM version that Intel produced for itself. The
> only way to dump it, I guess, is by decapping and photographing the die.
> By the way, if you are interested, check my preliminary version of the
> emulator (imds2 in 0.160 release of MESS): it's not complete (PIO it's
> not there, for example) but it can run all ISIS-II sw I could find.
> I hope I'm not "offending" anyone in this forum by mentioning an
> emulator, it looks like you are mostly focused on real (vintage) hardware..
>
> Just out of curiosity: is there anyone among you who owns a MDS-2 system?
>
> Thanks!
> -- F.Ulivi

I'm virtually certain that I have ASM48 on an 8 inch ISIS-II formatted
floppy disk. I did several products using the 8748/8749 and 8741
(EPROM'd version) during that time frame. I think I know where the
diskettes are.

I have no way to image the floppy disks, though.

Rob.