The rumor I had heard way, way back in the day was that NEC had originally intended to release ROMware for those cartridges. Not sure it ever happened.
I'd like to believe they'd at least released the technical information on how those ROM sockets are mapped within memory. We just need to find technical reference manuals covering the PC-8401A, 8500, and/or 8508A. (Yeah, I know, I'm laughing out loud as well...) On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:33 PM John R. Hogerhuis <jho...@pobox.com> wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:20 PM Chris Fezzler <fezz...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Any NEC PC-8500/Starlet owners or folks familiar? >> To keep it short, in 64K Mode, all the 64K in the computer is assigned to >> the OS and all the RAM in the cartridge is for storage. Is that correct? >> >> > I've never got it into all-RAM mode. Admittedly though I haven't tried > that hard. I thought the point of that was to run CP/M, but the only way I > know you can do that is with the floppy disk attached, that no one has. > Theoretically you could probably do it with just the ROM/RAM cartridge. If > someone has docs or files that would help. > > I do believe I have the boot disk though. > > >> The NEC PC-8508A ROM/RAM Cartridge...is there a "ROM" socket in there? >> >> > I don't know. I will open it up. > > Here are pictures: > > https://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=NEC_8508A_RAM/ROM_Cartridge > > -- John. >