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prlink v0.8.0 -- a data transfer system for Commodore 8-bit computers and a 386 clone running Linux Release date: 10th May, 1995 Copyright © 1994, 1995 Marko Mäkelä and Olaf Seibert Original Linux and Commodore 64/128/Vic-20 version by Marko Mäkelä Ported to the PET and the Amiga series by Olaf Seibert This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. PREFACE This document describes the first public release of our prlink utility, a program package that lets you to copy memory blocks to and from the memory of a Commodore 8-bit computer. The document is very clumsy right now, so feel free to write a better version and send it to us if you like this program. :-) Currently daemons are available for the Commodore PET series, the Vic-20, C64 and C128 computers, and there are compilation options that support the Commodore REU, even simultaneously with an Action Replay cartridge installed, and some internal memory expansions on the C64 and the C128. The client programs are written so that they should compile on MS-DOS fairly easily. The programs are written for Linux, and there are machine language versions of the transfer routines for i386 compatible processors. The software also compiles on the Amiga, and the Amiga transfer routines are written in 68000 machine language. The idea of the transfer utility package is that a daemon runs on the Commodore side in an interrupt routine, without blocking the computer. It checks if the PC wants to send any command, and executes possible commands. There are commands for loading and saving memory blocks, for jumping to a machine language program and for starting a BASIC program. The latter two commands deinstall the daemon for maximum compatibility. With the current protocol, it is be possible to make useful applications that run on the PC, like a disk copier (with ZipCode compression and decompression if desired), and a machine language monitor. It is already possible to develop Commodore programs on the PC, and to transfer them over to be tested out. Actually, this is exactly how the prserver.asm and prsample.asm programs have been developed. I use my the dasm assembler, ported to ANSI C by Olaf Seibert, which supports conditional assembling and multiple source modules. It can be retrieved from ftp.funet.fi, as /pub/cbm/programming/dasm.tar.gz. PROGRAMS Following client programs are available: basic loader: This is a BASIC listing that you can type in on your C= computer in order to bootstrap the prlink utilities. You will only need this one if you don't have any other possibility to transfer the prserver program to your C= computer. prload: Loads a Commodore-style program file to the remote computer. prsave: Echoes the contents of a C= memory area to standard output. prcart: Loads and starts Vic-20 cartridges. Takes its input either from the standard input, or from files that contain the 8kB ROM images for $A000-$BFFF and $6000-$7FFF. Patches the Autostart code so that RESET will work, and start the transfer daemon again. prsample: Plays a 8-bit sample file on the remote computer, cutting the four least significant bits off. Does not try to handle the sampling frequency, so it's useful only for testing the link. prrfile: Reads a file from C= disk to local disk. prwfile: Writes a file from local disk to C= disk. prdisk: Reads or writes whole C= disks to/from local files. All sizes of drives are supported. The only requirement is that the first track is 1 and the first sector on each track is 0. Tracks and sectors increment up to 999. You can find the command usage out by using the -h switch in each program. The prload and prsave commands have a -b switch that specifies the memory bank. Bank numbers 0 to f are for internal memory. The two lowmost bits are for specifying the MMU mapped memory bank on a C128. In other words, MMU mapped memory banks on the C128 are numbered from 0 to 3. On unexpanded C128s, the banks 2 and 3 are the same than banks 0 and 1. The bits 2 and 3 of the bank number specify the PIA mapped expanded memory bank on a C128 or a C64. So, the 64kB banks of a C128 with 1 megabyte of internal memory are numbered from 0 to f. On a 512kB-expanded C128, the unique bank numbers are 0-1, 4-5, 8-9 and c-d, as there are only two MMU banks. For instance, the banks b and 9 are the same. On a 256kB-expanded C64, the bank numbers 0-3, 4-7, 8-b and c-f are the same, so there are 4 different banks. Bank numbers from 10 to ff are for REU memory banks, i.e. the banks of a 512 kilobyte REU are numbered from 10 to 17. As you can see from the prserver.asm source code, the PIA and REU expansions are accessed through a 16kB window at $4000. There's a bug in the plain C128 version: any data read from $0-$400 will be fetched from bank 0. The version for the PIA expansion does not have this bug. COMPILING To compile, you need GNU C (tested with 2.5.8 and 2.6.2, any version should do) and the dasm port made by Olaf Seibert. It can be downloaded from ftp.funet.fi:/pub/cbm/programming/dasm.tar.gz. The software supports several different cables. The transfer routines for the different cables are in prtrans2.c, prtrans4.c, prtrans8.c and pramiga.c. You will have to edit the Makefile to specify which cable (CABLEOBJ) and default printer port to use. The latter one is not required in the Amiga version. The Amiga version also allows the -DPRLINK88 option, which uses a full 8-bit transfer. Also, before compiling the prserver.prg daemon for the remote computer, you have to edit the TARGET, RAMEXP and CABLE definitions in the Makefile. The definitions are as follows: definition options ---------- ------- TARGET target system, i.e. vic20, c64, c128 etc. RAMEXP none no memory expansion installed piaexp the PIA expansion for the C64 and the C128 (ftp.funet.fi:/pub/cbm/documents/{256kB,1028}) reuexp Commodore RAM Expansion Unit pet96 PET 8096/8296 expansion CABLE prlink the default 8-bit/4-bit cable pc64 the 4-bit/4-bit cable used by the PC64 emulator c64net the 4-bit/2-bit cable used by 64NET prlink88 fully 8-bit transfers with the pramiga cable Also, you may need to change the following definitions in prserver.asm, if using the PIA and/or REU expansions: pia the PIA base address, e.g. $dff0 reu the REU base address, e.g. $df00 actionreuplay If you are using Action Replay and the REU simultaneously, set this to 1. If you have several C= computers connected to different printer ports, probably even using different cables, you have to compile several versions of the programs for your configuration. By default, all prlink client programs are combined to one file, prmain, which will recognize the program name and act accordingly. If the program is called with prload, it will work as prload. Alternatively, you can use command line switches, like prmain --prload, to change the operation. I have compiled two different client program packages, prmain8 for the prlink cable, and prmain4 for the PC64 cable. In my .cshrc, I have defined aliases like alias prload4 'prmain4 --prload' alias prsave4 'prmain4 --prsave' alias prcart4 'prmain4 --prcart' alias prrfile4 'prmain4 --prrfile' alias prwfile4 'prmain4 --prwfile' alias prdisk4 'prmain4 --prdisk -l ~/bin/prdisk.prg' Actually, I should have several versions of these prdisk.prg, prrfile.prg and prwfile.prg programs, one for each computer type. Then I should have aliases like prdisk4c128, prdisk8vic and so on. If you have a better idea how the prdisk, prwfile and prrfile clients should be implemented, feel free to tell me. PERFORMANCE OVERVIEW The 64NET cable is supported only because of compatibility reasons, as it is very slow. Instead, you should use either the PC64 cable or my own cable. Here are some statistics: Client: 486DX2/66 with 128kB cache running Linux, no processes running on the background Server: Commodore 128D with 1 MB internal memory and 1 MB REU Data block: 64 kilobytes Cable: PC64 Server type send receive =========== ==== ======= Commodore 128 with PIA mapped memory 3,83s 4,09s Commodore 128 with REU, using REU 4,06s 4,34s Commodore 128 (stock) 4,98s 5,55s Commodore 64 with PIA mapped memory 7,25s 7,72s Commodore 64 with REU, using REU 7,55s 8,07s Commodore 64 (stock) 8,07s 8,01s Note that the Commodore 64 version of the server tries to use the 2 MHz mode of the Commodore 128. Thus, on a Commodore 128 running in C64 mode, the transfer times are about half of the rates listed above. HARDWARE The PC64 cable is the cable used by the Personal C64 emulator written and marketed in Germany by Wolfgang Lorenz <100112.220@compuserve.com>, and has 4 data bits to both directions. If you are using or are planning to use this emulator, then you are best off using this cable. The prlink cable supports 8 bit data transfers from the PC to the C= side, and 4 bits from the C= to the PC. It uses four bidirectional lines on the PC. And now for the cable pinouts. Note that I disclaim any warranties, so you are using these instructions at your own risk. Do not insert the plug to the user port the wrong way around, or you'll blow your printer port on the PC with the 9 volt signal as I did. The 64NET cable pinout won't be listed, as the 64NET documentation claims that it is copyrighted. Besides, including it would be a waste of space, as other cables allow much faster protocols. Here's the PC64 cable pinout: PC C64 Comment GND 25 ------ A GND Ground D7 9 ------> B FLAG Handshake signal ERR 15 <------ C PB0 Data from C= to PC SEL 13 <------ D PB1 " PE 12 <------ E PB2 " ACK 10 <------ F PB3 " D0 2 ------> H PB4 Data from PC to C= D1 3 ------> J PB5 " D2 4 ------> K PB6 " D3 5 ------> L PB7 " BUSY 11 <------ M PA2 Handshake signal My prlink cable is constructed as follows: PC C64 Comment GND 25 ------ A GND Ground D3 5 ------> B FLAG Handshake signal STROBE 1 <------> C PB0 Bidirectional data lines AUTO 14 <------> D PB1 " INIT 16 <------> E PB2 " SELECT 17 <------> F PB3 " D4 6 ------> H PB4 Data from PC to C= D5 7 ------> J PB5 " D6 8 ------> K PB6 " D7 9 ------> L PB7 " BUSY 11 <------ M PA2 Handshake signal Here is the pramiga cable, the only alternative for Amiga: Amiga PET Comment GND 22 ------ A GND Ground POUT 12 ------> B CA1 Handshake signal (strobe/flag) D0 2 <------> C PA0 Bidirectional data lines D1 3 <------> D PA1 " D2 4 <------> E PA2 " D3 5 <------> F PA3 " D4 6 ------> H PA4 Data from Amiga to PET D5 7 ------> J PA5 " D6 8 ------> K PA6 " D7 9 ------> L PA7 " BUSY 11 <------ M CB2 Handshake signal (ack) On the PET, I chose to use CB2 even though that pin is normally connected to a speaker. I did this because it makes the cable identical to the 64 and VIC cable, and allows you to use a single-sided connector. Make sure though that it does not connect the top and bottom fingers! Note that the lower user port connections are named ABCDEFHJKMMN, skipping G and I. On the Amiga 1000, pin 25 is not GND so I picked 22 instead which should be GND on all Amiga models. On the PC, all pins from 18 to 25 should be GND. The Amiga cable allows for two protocols: the prlink compatible 4-bit/8-bit transfer, and a full 8-bit transfer, the option prlink88. BOOTSTRAPPING Type in the supplied "basic-listing", with proper modifications for your hardware. Then run it, an on the Linux/Amiga side give the command "prload prserver.prg". Now you should see a list of addresses and byte values scroll by. If not, the connection does not work properly. These bytes are not put in memory yet; for that you must make one final change as indicated at the end of "basic-listing". Once prserver.prg has been transferred, save it. The addresses it occupies are printed by the basic program. USING Start the 6502 side by giving the command SYS [start address], where [start address] is of course the first byte of the program. The server will hook itself in the IRQ and you should get a READY prompt back immediately. Now you can use the prload, prsave, etc programs from the other side. These programs give their usage if you call them with incorrect arguments (or no arguments at all). CONTACTING THE AUTHORS If you have any questions, e-mail me, Marko Mäkelä <Marko.Makela@HUT.FI>. Questions related to the Amiga and PET versions should be directed to Olaf Seibert <rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl>.