On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 01:33:50PM -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi people!
Hi!
> Yesterday I've got a Sam Coupe computer. I am not "collector",
That's good to hear! It's sad to see people with lots of machines,
which they photograph and never use.... There's so much that could be
emulated, with a little time and effort.
> I am going to use it and I'd like to ask you for a "newbie" help.
I wouldn't worry about asking questions. This is the friendliest list
I've known. :-)
> I have Sam Coupe 512K with Atom HDD interface. Unfortunatelly, the HDD
> itself is not working anymore and I have no booting disk. I was
> looking over internet and downloaded the B-Dos disk, but the problem
> is, that I don't have Windows on computer to use and I found nothing
> that is working under Linux and can be used for Sam's disk images.
>
> So, please, can anyone support me by usefull links or some tips how to
> use Sam images under linux?
I think you're asking about floppy disk images... Well, to write from
an image to a real floppy, you can run:
dd if=input-image-name.dsk of=/dev/fd0
and to write to an image from a floppy disk:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=output-image-name.dsk
(Although I've no idea how the drive determines the format...)
To format a floppy, you can use:
fdformat /dev/fd0u800
The "u800" part of that specifies the disk format.
To create an empty disk image, you can run:
dd if=/dev/zero of=output-image-name.dsk bs=512 count=1600
There's also a SAD disk image format, which complicates matters. I've
written a tool for UN*X to convert between the two formats... I'll try
to get it cleaned up and released, soon.
If you want, you can run gzip to compress an image. SimCoupe will work
with compressed images, but some tools for manipulating images won't.
In particular, you'll have to gunzip the image before you can write it
back to a disk. You can also use zip files -- presumably, the first
disk image that's found in the file is the one that is used...
It's best if you use a real DSDD disk ("720K" -- but formatted as 800K
by the Coupe), but I imagine that these are hard to buy, now. You may
be able to get away with covering the DSHD's extra hole, but that's
likely to cause corruption, in my experience.
> Also, I have a question about the Sam Community. Lot of internet pages
> is out of date, Sam's webring contain very few of pages. I am thinking
> about running my own pages, but need to start somewhere (booting the
> Sam can be good as first step:), but I'd like to know if there are
> still people interested in this computer.
As a hobbiest machine, I think the Coupe's doing reasonably well...
It's not as popular as a lot of other machines, but it's not dead yet!
The Mayhem Accelerator looks really cool. I just hope that I can afford
one. I'm not mean -- I just don't have a salary yet. :-) (Sadly, I'm
not expecting it to have some of the features [1] that I'd really like
to see.)
For serious use, you could still use a Coupe, but I wouldn't really
recommend it. :-)
The web situation isn't great. IMO, what we really need is a Wiki.
There are several web sites that attempt to be a "home page" for the
SAM Coupe, all plagued by lack of time. A wiki wouldn't rely on a
single individual, except for administration.
It's sometimes hard to improve web pages. I find that I'm unlikely to
suggest improvements to web sites, because I don't feel entitled to do
so, and I suspect that others feel the same way. With a Wiki, I feel
that my changes are much more likely to be accepted (or improved, rather
than rejected), and that I'm actually entitled to make changes.
The web is great for pages that don't need to be updated, and for those
that need tight control. I don't think that either of those applies in
this case. Vandalism may be a problem... it may be possible to avoid it
by providing accounts to anyone wishing to modify pages, upon request.
> Also, I'd like to make a Sam Coupe presentation on the FOReVER 8 bit
> demoscene party (http://forever.zeroteam.sk) next year, If anyone will
> be interested, we can also open regular competitions for Sam Coupe
> there.
Sounds great! Unfortunately, the Coupe is under-powered... but Colin's
Mayhem Accelerator should change that, and you should be able to do some
impressive effects.
> I hope it's not too late and that I am not the last person out there
> interested in Sam!
Things seem to be a bit quiet here, lately. The main problem is
probably limited time... Maybe if we get some good ideas, we can
produce some decent games and demos.
For me, the main problem is that writing code is assembly language is
too hard. I'd much prefer to write in C, and rewrite parts of it in
assembly language after I've got something that works. I've still got
to get to grips with z88dk and/or SDCC.
> All your help is highly apreciated, have a nice time!
And you! Hope you have fun hacking on the Coupe!
--
Stuart Brady
[1] I think it'd be really great if the Mayhem had a protected mode.
You could then emulate other Z80-based machines (although something
similar to the SAM's mode 1 contention would be needed). A port UZI
could also use this. You'd need obtain the Z80's context... it looks
possible, but perhaps a little difficult. A tick counter and a way to
generate line interrupts on each line would be really useful... I
expect that these features would raise the price substantially, though.
