Z80-MBC2

[kelli217]

The Lear-Seigler ADM-3A was a common terminal for CP/M systems, and had its own set of terminal codes that weren't compatible with any of the VT series. Maybe that's what's going on?

[Edmond D]

The front plate came out looking very professional! Congrats.

As for the coding and VT emulation, I'm unable to help. 

 

[TomXP411]

On 12/6/2022 at 8:31 AM, kelli217 said:

The Lear-Seigler ADM-3A was a common terminal for CP/M systems, and had its own set of terminal codes that weren't compatible with any of the VT series. Maybe that's what's going on?

It looked to me like he set the program to use the VT-52 commands. These will not work on an ANSI terminal. 

The program needs to be configured to use the VT-100/ANSI commands, although it's possible that it may need to be hex-edited to work with modern ANSI terminals. The reason is that the VT-100 actually has terminal codes that are not in the ANSI specification. Some terminal codes that will do things like move the cursor can actually be one of two different commands, and the private, non-ANSI version may be what got used here. If I recall, the configuration program cannot actually create a command set that works on modern ANSI terminals.

My go-to place for CP/M stuff is deramp.com. Mike Douglas is an expert on CP/M, and he's got a ton of software on his site:

https://deramp.com/downloads/

 

[Strider]

Yeah, so the main issue was I wanted to edit the controls used, so instead of using the 8462 keys that were assigned for movement, I wanted to change it to WASD. The problem was you can't just change the input keys without wiping out the manual terminal config as well. At least, no matter how many times I tried it, I lost the "VT180" config that worked with the uTerm if I used the old included configuration editor to change the control keys. 

@TomXP411 Your advice made sense and I took it to heart. I loaded up the config dat files in a hex editor and was easily able to edit the control keys while not losing the working config for the uTerm. I made the changes, I also removed the old hi-score names and made them generic. Then I uploaded a 2nd "WASD" configured version to my archive.org page. Easy since it's all in simple ASCII.

I still want to see if I can view the codes it's using to control the terminal, so I can test and see if the old configuration tool can be manually configured or if, like you said, can't make the necessary changes to work on the uTerm on it's own. It's a tiny little file so I should be able to see it, assuming I will know what I'm looking at. Like I said, I don't have a lot of experience messing around in hex for anything outside the simple, or if I already know exactly what to look for. All I know is the built in VT100 profile does not work.

Either way, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I'm a but frustrated I didn't think to take a peek in a hex editor sooner. ?

[Strider]

I posted the "Final Assembly" to my blog is anyone cares to read it. ?

https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2022/12/z80-mbc2-build-part-3-final-assembly.html

I'm currently working on a follow-up article to focus more on using the computer rather than building it.

 

[Strider]

Follow-up post is up! ?

https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/2022/12/z80-mbc2-build-follow-up-what-can-it-do.html