TS1510 CLONE

[BrunoFlorindo]

If anyone's interested, I have a zip file of aproximately 5MB with all the pictures, schematics and word document showing how this works. Please send me a pm or e-mail me directly at zxspectrum128 at g mai l dot com.

[siggi]

Now if the TS1510 can be used with a ZX81, then there should be a market out there for it - all we need is an easy means of having a cartridge with Flash EPROM, so that it can be used for saving and loading!!

Hi Rich,
I think that saving own programs on a cartridge using a ZX81/TS1000 would not be so easy:
1. you would need a program (located in another EEPROM?) to program the FLASH with new data.
2. The memory ic (27c64) of the cartridge can store only 8 KB of data, so you could only save small programs
3. It should be possible to hot-plug the cartrige (load a program from cartrige, modify it and save it to a new cartridge). That is (IMHO) not possible with the current design.



Siggi

[superfo]

I upload the combined ZX81 ROM file and State & Capital ROM file.
If you load this ROM file to Eighty One Emulator you can run State & capital program by type..

K>RAND USR 8192

[BrunoFlorindo]

That's great! And while we wait for Supermath to arrive from Canada and someone else to lend us the other two cartridges, here's the TS1510 manual if someone needs it:

edit: hmmm, I'll have to reduce it to under 256KB, otherwise it's not allowed. Will do so tomorrow.

[siggi]

As I understood the schema, the 1510 itself decodes only the address range 8-16K and feeds the signal to the CS input of the cartrige. That means, that larger cartriges (16 or 24K) need to have their own address decoder "onboard" to map their memory e. g. to range 32K-40K or 40K to 48K (the other memory ranges are occucpied by the 16K ram pack and it's high copy (mirror)).
The cartrige slot has some of the necessary signals for that (A13-A15 and /ROM-CS), but /MREQ is missing.
So how is it done?
Are 3x8K banks of a 24 KB cartrige paged into the fully decoded 8K block at 8-16K?
Or is memory (and i/o space!) above 32K used, but collisions with /IO cycles are accepted (because neither /IORQ nor /MREQ are used for decoding by the cartrige itself)?

Who knows?

Siggi

[BrunoFlorindo]

The .zip file now includes a PDF of the original TS1510 manual. Thank you for the kind PMs and e-mails. I've sent links and attachments to all those who requested them.

siggi: Let me see if I can find someone who would know how to answer those questions.

[superfo]

As I understood the schema, the 1510 itself decodes only the address range 8-16K and feeds the signal to the CS input of the cartrige. That means, that larger cartriges (16 or 24K) need to have their own address decoder "onboard" to map their memory e. g. to range 32K-40K or 40K to 48K (the other memory ranges are occucpied by the 16K ram pack and it's high copy (mirror)).
The cartrige slot has some of the necessary signals for that (A13-A15 and /ROM-CS), but /MREQ is missing.
So how is it done?
Are 3x8K banks of a 24 KB cartrige paged into the fully decoded 8K block at 8-16K?
Or is memory (and i/o space!) above 32K used, but collisions with /IO cycles are accepted (because neither /IORQ nor /MREQ are used for decoding by the cartrige itself)?

Who knows?

Siggi

Yes, the 1510 decode only address range 8-16K (this is an area that we can run assembly code). The cartridge slot has 2 no connect (N/C) pins so we can wire /IORQ or /MERQ signal form zx18/ts1000 edge connector to that pins. Then we can have new decoder to map to any range. The slot also have /ROMCS signal so we can disable internal ROM too.

[siggi]

The cartridge slot has 2 no connect (N/C) pins so we can wire /IORQ or /MERQ signal form zx18/ts1000 edge connector to that pins.

Of course we could add new features to the clone. But how was it (intended to be) done on the original 1510?

Siggi

[superfo]

Since you don't want to modify TS1510, we can use CS1 signal for control bank switch.
See attached picture for 8x8K bank switch (bank 0 to bank 15).
I modify the schematic from http://www.fruitcake.plus.com (ZXC2 schematic).
Each 8K bank will be map to address 2000-3FFF (8-16K)
The last 16 address (3FF0-3FFF) are used for select bank so we cannot use this area for programming.

example: LD A,(3FF0) select bank 0
LD A,(3FF1) select bank 1

[BrunoFlorindo]

Bringing back an old topic...

Can someone please help me refresh my memory? There are a couple things that I can't remember...

How many TS1510 cartridges were commercially released? 4? How many have we backed up so far? 3?
This project was done before WOS added a dedicated Timex archive and I want to make sure the information over there is correct. For now it's saying that Supermath for the Timex was never released, but I know it was because superfo did a backup of that cartridge in .hex format. I also have this information:

Supermath - 79001
States and Capitals - 79002
Chess - 79003
Flight simulator - 79004

I know that all Timex cassettes and cartridges have a reference number, and I remember having a spreadsheet that showed all those numbers, but I can't find it right now. Has anyone seen it?

Thanks.