Fuzix on the Z80 Retro

[EtchedPixels]

So I wrote an emulator for the machine and then I ported Fuzix to it. Not tried it on a real board yet.

https://github.com/EtchedPixels/EmulatorKit as z80retro

At the moment it boots from ROM because the current ROM arrangement is incompatible with a PC style partition table as Fuzix wants. Might be worth thinking about shrinking the table of 32 byte boot entries and checksum so it fits in the 380 bytes allowed before the partition data ?

[peterw8102]

Thank you! Fuzix was something I really wanted to get running. I'm also quite interested in the emulated version of the system.

I can look into the the boot table size. It's only set to that size so that it uses a complete 512 SDCard sector, there's no practical reason it needs to be that big.

Would another option to be to have Fuzix boot from the second SDCard?

[EtchedPixels]

It might be. Fuzix basically wants to see PC style partitioning. It doesn't have to but it makes it much easier if as many systems as possible expect the same disk layout except for booting.

[peterw8102]

I've changed the boot menu structure a little and it now uses the first 370 bytes on the SDCard. That's in the new release (2.0.1), which is quite a restructure. I'm assuming Fuzix is standalone though and just needs to be loaded?

[EtchedPixels]

Will take a look see what tweaks I need to get it to boot on the 2.0 change

Yes Fuzix basically just needs to be loaded.

[EtchedPixels]

Not gotten around to this one yet but I took a slight detour and ROMWBW dev branch should now work on the Retro - need to sort my board back out to do a final check I got things like the uart baud rates correct

[peterw8102]

Not sure how to contact you @EtchedPixels - I've been playing around with your emulator (https://github.com/EtchedPixels/EmulatorKit), specifically the emulation of my system. It's great, really useful. I've found a couple of bugs in my own code using it. Are you open to pull requests for improvements? So far I've:

• Added RTS flow control to the SIO emulation (needed to paste Intel Hex into the terminal)
• Added an i2c bus emulation
• Added a DS1307+ RTC over i2c emulation
• Improved memory emulation of my system to detect access to uninstalled memory
  Other than the Makefile I've not touched any of the other files in the system. The i2c and RTC might be useful for other systems in future.

[EtchedPixels]

I'd e delighted to receive patches