Dev board updates from Kevin Williams

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:33 am

On 10/31/2022 at 2:02 PM, Main Administrator said:

Another message from @Kevin Williams on Facebook:

The big take-aways from this one:

Target 512KB of RAM. Future systems will be limited to this, with 2MB for "power user" systems, such as developers

Rough estimate of retail sales is: "Christmas of next year."

https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommanderX16/permalink/1285577575526667/

Note: Kevin will not see your responses to this post unless you tag him directly.

I was happy to see that the VIA#2 appears to be an empty socket on the board rather than left using up an expansion slot. I would of course be interested if @Kevin Williams has any spare time to say what pins are where on what appears to be the associated pin header.

neutrino · Post by **neutrino** » Tue Nov 01, 2022 5:08 pm

On 11/1/2022 at 1:33 AM, BruceMcF said:

I was happy to see that the VIA#2 appears to be an empty socket on the board

Burst mode 1571 here we come.. ?

Fabio · Post by **Fabio** » Mon Nov 07, 2022 11:47 am

regarding the fast transfer of the macptr protocol : I can't find it anywhere in the rom source code.

Which file contains it?

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:50 pm

On 11/7/2022 at 5:47 AM, Fabio said:

regarding the fast transfer of the macptr protocol : I can't find it anywhere in the rom source code.

Which file contains it?

https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-docs/blob/master/X16 Reference - 04 - KERNAL.md#function-name-macptr

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Thu Nov 10, 2022 6:23 pm

On 11/7/2022 at 5:47 AM, Fabio said:

regarding the fast transfer of the macptr protocol : I can't find it anywhere in the rom source code.

Which file contains it?

MACPTR is essentially a frontend for the DOS module's fat32.s functions. It does a lot under the hood, but the meat and potatoes occurs in the routine fat32_read: in fat32.s

MACPTR calls file_read, which calls fat32_read

fat32_read in turn calls other, even lower level functions to do the actual reading from SD, tracking block numbers, etc, but I've never been any further down the rabbit hole to tell you what those do - but they're all in fat32.s I would imagine.

neutrino · Post by **neutrino** » Fri Nov 11, 2022 7:57 am

@ZeroByte How fast are SD-card reads on a physical X16 computer as is ?

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Fri Nov 11, 2022 7:35 pm

They seem pretty comparable to the emulator using SD card.

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Wed Dec 28, 2022 10:11 pm

Anyone who is a member of the Facebook group can see David's recent preview of the developer boards now.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommanderX16/posts/1328735581210866/

I assume he will make it viewable to others soon enough.

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:19 am

On 12/28/2022 at 2:11 PM, kelli217 said:

Anyone who is a member of the Facebook group can see David's recent preview of the developer boards now.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommanderX16/posts/1328735581210866/

I assume he will make it viewable to others soon enough.

I just watched David's video. I'm excited to see the complete board. It's amazing how much it looks like... a PC motherboard. ?

Jeff Pare · Post by **Jeff Pare** » Thu Dec 29, 2022 4:12 am

On 12/28/2022 at 5:11 PM, kelli217 said:

Anyone who is a member of the Facebook group can see David's recent preview of the developer boards now.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommanderX16/posts/1328735581210866/

I assume he will make it viewable to others soon enough.

Thank you! I hadn't gone to the group in months and wouldn't have seen it otherwise.