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Info for super80 |
Currently, MESS emulates the following machines:
* super80 [Super-80 (V1.2)]: This driver uses all the original Dick Smith roms and hardware, with the optional BASIC in ROM.
* super80d [Super-80 (V2.2)]: This driver emulates an original upgrade by Dick Smith consisting of an upgraded ROM (to allow lower-case entries), and the replacement of the original character generator chip with a plugin board containing a new character generator and a few TTL chips; this substantial hardware modification added lower-case characters, some graphic symbols, and inverse mode.
* super80e [Super-80 (El Graphix 4)]: This driver emulates a Super-80 v1.2 upgraded with a "El Graphix 4" homebrew ROM (created by Andrew Harding from Melbourne, see below) which included a new character generator, containing upper/lower case characters and a variety of graphical symbols.
* super80m [Super-80 (8R0)]: This driver emulates an homebrew upgrade which adds most of the features other upgrades offered, i.e. many new commands, a debugged and enhanced BASIC, both character generators, both color schemes (or monochrome), both cassette systems, and an extra 4k of RAM.
* super80v [Super-80 (with VDUEB)]: This driver emulates a Super-80 with modified VDUEB upgrade (mc6845 video controller on an extra card) which adds color and allows the software to read the character generator rom; compared to an original VDUEB upgrade, these modified ROMs feature better control of the hardware, an enhanced monitor and BASIC, and supports both cassette systems.
For each driver, MESS supports both cassette tapes (in .wav format), using the "cassette" (cass) device, and cart dumps (in .rom format), using the "cartridge" (cart) device.
Also notice that a "quickload" (quik) feature is available for .bin files.
Other upgrades **not supported** at the moment include:
* super80f: a modified version of v2.2, created by Andrew Morton from Sydney, featuring the MDS 3000 baud cassette tape system.
* super80g: newer ROM revision of the above.
* super80h: a hardware-only modification, created by Mark Hurry (Chipspeed) from Sydney, which used extra memory to map each tile to a color (4-bit foreground and 4-bit background); the colors were generated by a TEA2018, driving a PAL generator; the composite output is suitable for the yellow input on a modern color TV.
* super80j: similar to super80h, but instead of converting the signal to composite, the rgb and intensity signals were passed directly to a suitable color monitor (no longer available).
* super80r: original VDUEB release by Robin Ward, with a modified and rather buggy ROM to support the new hardware; it is monochrome.
== Keyboard ==
These systems require 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).
===== Known Issues =====
* super80v: “Interlace and Video” options is currently not implemented
* all: Natively-supported Quickload Save facility has to be added
* all: Natural keyboard has to be fixed
Currently, there are no plans to add support for the following features:
* different amounts of RAM (only 48k of main ram is supported)
* disk drives
* CP/M
* S-100 interface and board
* Parallel and Serial ports
===== History and Trivia =====
The original Super-80 computer was sold by Dick Smith Electronics in 1981 as a kit. Dick Smith later released a S-100 interface, a Parallel/Serial card for it and the Dick Smith lower-case generator kit (the original had upper-case only and no graphics).
Several homebrew upgrades were made available, such as graphics cards, faster cassette systems, speech/sound/color cards and more.
The most popular graphics addition was the El Graphics 4 ROM which provided lower-case letters, the 64 TRS-80 Lores symbols and 64 other graphic symbols.
Another one was an add-on board containing a 6845 crtc chip and programmable character generator. This opened the way for the use of a disk controller and CP/M.
Dick Smith quickly lost interest as newer computers became available, and by 1985 the Super-80 was practically forgotten. They claimed that “several thousand” kits were sold, but only few are known to work these days.
//(info from Raphael Nabet and Robbbert)//
== List of Upgrades ==
* Dick Smith S-100 interface
* Dick Smith Basic
* Dick Smith Printer (parallel / serial) card
* Dick Smith Compu-voice (Votrax speech synthesis project)
* Andrew Harding's El Graphics character generators
* MCE's VDUEB card, the one with the 6845 chip
* Matrix Software's Sound Card
* Chipspeed's color board (16 foreground and 16 background colors)
* Computer Clinic's programmable character generator
* Micro data Storage made a fast (3000 baud) cassette system, and a graphics board
===== Links =====
* [[wp>Dick_Smith_Super-80_Computer]]