Steve Hall wrote:Hi Davide,
I used to connect to my AEA PK88 packet controller using a standard QL running QTPI.
A standard RS232 connection and a terminal (emulator) is all that is required; data rate requirements are rather low.Is 9.6Kbps still the top speed for packet radio? I am thinking of using radio modems, these are in the 57.6K-160K maximum speed range (and license free) to connect ACCUS meetings up to the internet. They act like a serial port extensions.
Arnie would prefer not have to boot his Aurora system twice, once for QDOS, second time for SMSQ/E. The Aurora manual says the ROM slot can take a maximum of 512KB and even mentions the possibility of a future SMSQ/E ROM being produced. Where can Arnie buy SMSQ/E ROM for this slot. A simple (dual?) boot ROM socket ROM might be need.
That cannot work unless you modify a Super Gold Card ROM.
The way that the SGC works, the ROM must be first recognised by the SGC and then it can boot. Therefore and because the SGC has no clue about SMSQ/e it won't work.
There are three ways to get over it, two of which involve double booting (of sorts)
a. Get a RomDisq and put SMSQ/E there
b. Modify a Minerva (or other rom) so that the Minerva or JS/JM etc. ROM "lives" at the bottom 48K and SMSQ/e at the upper pages of a large EPROM. Then boot into the Minerva and enable the upper ROM pages to boot SMSQ/e
c. Modify the SGC rom to recognise an SMSQ/e rom
On the subject of Dave P's "One last try" a port, aller Amiga, Mac etc seems better, with a 68K emulator built in for old software. A fast Coldfire CPU seems the best option with it's assembler compatibility, if only Motorola had kept it's promise and instead developed more 68K processors.
Motorola has kept its "promise" the ColdFire CPUs are 68K CPUs and they become even better with every subsequent version of their core. Sure you need a library for some commands not supported (yet) but the v.5 core will support everything the 68060 did and be a lot faster as well
On a related note is the format of intermediate code
use by Q-Liberator publicly known. I feel that it probably to late to move to a new architecture (we do not have the development resources or sources to update all the needed software), and will just have to make the best of the 68060 (SDRAM etc) and any new 68K CPUs (FPGA etc) made in the future.
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