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Info for cgenie


====== EACA Colour Genie / EG-2000 (1982) ======




===== Features =====

* CPU: Zilog Z80 2.2 MHz
* RAM: 16 KB, 32 KB with memory expansion
* ROM: 16 KB
* Text Modes: 40 columns x 25 lines
* Graphic Modes: 160 x 102 dots
* Colors: 8 (text mode), 4 (graphic mode)
* Sound: 3 channels (AY-8910)
* I/O Ports: RS232, Joystick (2), Light Pen, RGB, Audio
* Keyboard: Typewriter style, 63 keys with 4 function keys
* Peripherals: Light-pen, parallel printer, floppy disc drives
* Built In Language: Microsoft BASIC



===== Usage =====

Currently, MESS supports cart dumps, cassette tapes and floppy disks for the cgenie. Cart dumps have to be in .rom format and can be emulated using the "cartridge" (cart) device. Below you can find informations on tapes and disks.

== Cassettes ==

MESS supports cassette tapes in .cas format. You can use the "cassette" (cass) device to run them, e.g. using at command line

mess cgenie -cass "C:\pathtogame\gamename.cas"

From within the emulation you can use either
CLOAD
or
SYSTEM
commands to read images:

CLOAD loads a file named BASIC(N).CAS, where (N) is the character you supplied
(e.g., CLOAD"M" loads BASICM.CAS)

CLOAD is for BASIC type tapes only. It should work if you have a BASIC *.cas file.
File "names" in that case are _one_ character in length (inside the emulation). In your
roms/cgenie folder the names will be basicA.cas, basicB.cas and so on. If you CSAVE"A you'll
see a file basicA.cas later and you can CLOAD"A it again.

To load a binary image there was a different command: SYSTEM, which supports 6 character filenames.
When you enter the SYSTEM command, you will see a prompt looking like this:

*?
and there you can enter a name of up to six (wow!) characters. E.g.

*?chop16 [ENTER]

This will start loading a file named chop16.cas if it is in your rompath. If you don't have
it... well, wait and see (nothing ;) )

If you have it, you'll see two stars
(**)
in the upper right corner. The right one will twinkle
after every couple of bytes loaded, every 254 I think.

After several minutes you'll see the prompt again

*?

Now type
/
(slash) and press ENTER and the program will be started at its defined run address. If
a program does not have a run address, you could also specify
/[decimal value]
to run from a specific value...

== Floppy Disks ==

MESS supports up to four floppy drives for disks in .dsk format. Each drive corresponds to a device, "floppydisk1" (flop1) to "floppydisk4" (flop4). To run a .dsk image you can launch at command line

mess cgenie -flop1 "C:\pathtogame\gamename.dsk"

When the emulation starts, tap [ENTER] and also confirm the following
MEM SIZE?
with [ENTER].

After that you're in BASIC (DISK BASIC, to be exact, unless you disable cgdos.rom via the dip switches).

Now you can use the DISK BASIC extensions to issue commands. Most important
CMD"I[disk#]
display inventory, disk# is optional and can be from 0 to 3.
You can use CMD"I0" to "CMDI3" to get an inventory of drive 0 to 3.

Use
CMD"S FILENAME/CMD"
to start a binary executable (e.g. to start paint/cmd, type cmd"s paint/cmd) or use
LOAD"FILENAME/BAS"
to load a basic program.

Other examples:
CMD"Sname/cmd will start a binary file name/cmd from any disk
CMD"Limage/bin:3 will load image/bin from disk 3

As you see, you can omit the blank between cmd"s and the filename.

To ease things you could also enable my DOS lookalike frontend ;) It's contained in newe000.rom (2,772 bytes; CRC 953491a7) but not enabled by default. If you enable it you can type HELP (hehe ;) and DIR and simply give a name to execute a binary file.

The optional newe000.rom is loaded if the corresponding "dip switch" is set from within the driver itself. There is no need to specify this ROM on the command line.

== Controls ==

The Colour Genie had two Joystick, each one features a 12-keys keypad below the stick. The keypad layout is the following


* 0 #

7 8 9

4 5 6

1 2 3

== Keyboard ==

This system requires full keyboard emulation to work correctly. At startup, full keyboard emulation mode is enabled by default. Whilst in full keyboard emulation mode, some key associated functionality may be disabled (like the ESC key for EXIT). The keyboard emulation mode is toggled using the "Scroll Lock" key (by default).

== Miscellaneous ==

Under the "Options" menu, accessible by hitting TAB, there are three settings:

"Floppy Disc Drives" - enable or disable floppy disc controller.
"DOS ROM C000-DFFF" - enable 8K DOS ROM or make it RAM.
"EXT ROM E000-EFFF" - enable 4K Extension ROM or make it RAM.

=== RAM options ===

Different RAM configurations are possible for the cgenie in MESS. You can switch between them, changing the -ramsize parameter. At command line

mess cgenie -ramsize ram_value

where ram_value can assume one of the following values

16k (default)
32k



===== Known issues =====

Startup with CAS or CMD images does not always work. Use the BASIC SYSTEM or CLOAD commands to read cassette image files, or use the Colour Genie DOS ROM with floppy disc images to run programs. The driver does not yet emulate the printer port mode for AY-3-8910. Right now it always uses the AY-3-8910 ports for joystick emulation.

Requires full keyboard emulation. At startup, full keyboard emulation mode is enabled by default. Whilst in full keyboard emulation mode, some key associated functionality may be disabled (like the ESC key for EXIT). The keyboard emulation mode is toggled using the
scroll_lock key.

The Colour Genie driver should run most of the known programs out there. It supports the Motorola 6845 CRT controller with text and graphics modes (LGR and FGR), the AY-3-8910 sound chip with three audio channels and noise and the WD 179x floppy disc controller with up to four virtual floppy disc drives contained in image files.

The keyboard is relatively close to the original layout; see "Keys (This Machine)" in the TAB/Options menu.

Emulation of dual Colour Genie joysticks with keypads is also supported.



===== History and Trivia =====

The Colour Genie was the successor of the Genie 1, Genie 2 and Genie 3. It was intended to compete with the Tandy Color Computer although it was not at all compatible with its model (Z80 microprocessor instead of a Motorola 6809 in the CoCo)

The graphic resolution wasn't as good as the CoCo, furthermore it was not possible to mix characters and graphics.

However, the machine was reliable and solidly built. It featured a good mechanical keyboard and even a little level display located above the keyboard, which allowed to set the recording level of the tape recorder to improve reliability when writing onto a tape.

//(info from old-computers.com)//



===== Links =====

* Colour Genie at old-computers.com -- http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=128





===== Other Emulators =====

* Colour Emu -- http://people.a2000.nl/rwesseli/ColourGenie.html (dead link)
* EG 2000 -- http://pullmoll.de/cgenie/ (dead link)




Generated on Sun Jul 19 10:17:28 2009