I dumped my language card

[Captain Cozmos]

First please don't scold me if I do not release the dump.  The card costs me $500 and I had to remove the two chips and there is miner...miner pad damage.

I will never be able to recover what I paid for the thing so I may keep this close to my chest.  At least for now.

Analysis.....

The first chip is nothing more than R80 Smart Writer.  Simple as that, byte for byte.  It takes over the same as Smart Writer just it's in the expansion rom slot.  It's all English and again Revision 80

 

The second chip is 100% different than the second half of the stock SW Rom set.  The logical conclusion would be it contains the font patterns for the French characters or whatever language this is being the only known ones to me are all French.  As well as all the necessary code to implement it.
 

Both are 16k chips however the binary itself before it pads out with FF is 29,015 bytes whereas the WRITER.ROM from COLEM is 29,016 before padded with the added EOS at the end, in my copy.

So, mystery solved.  Nothing to see here.

Gonna disassemble it but it's all going to be the same boot scenario with the addition of what happens within the second chip.

I was hoping for some new mystery to be solved but this seems to be more of adding to the history.
 

COLEM will not run it even if I rename it WRITER.ROM so whatever preventing it from running on my ADAM is also blocking it from running in COLEM or it could just be COLEM.

After I analyze the disassembly I will post updates in this thread.

 

CC

 

 

 

 

 

The things I do for you guys......

Edited January 12, 2023 by Captain Cozmos

[Captain Cozmos]

After first disassembly and binary viewer I have not been able to find any foreign fonts or patterns of any kind.
 

I can only assume logically that the French Units work without the language card and display English.
If so then this would not be like a US Language card for European users.

Any thoughts to fill in the gaps?

I disassembled the code but have not gone over it yet but I am all ears if anyone wants to chime in.

 

CC

 

 

 

Edit.......

 

BTW, the main reason why I dumped the card was to see the interaction of how the external rom takes over the system.

I was expecting to find a header of 9966h but it is the standard Smart Writer that is F3C3h

From what I understood, and I may have to look at my past work, is that if Smart Writer (stock) does not find header 9966h then it moves on to check Cartridge Rom.
If I remember it is in this order External Ram-> External Rom -> Cartridge-> Then Boot stock.  This includes drives connected.

So hows did this card interact unless there is something wildly different with Foreign ADAM's in their startup?
Someone chime in because it may be possible that ADAM sold outside the US was missing the internal Smart Writer and this was necessary to run the ADAM?
I don't have one so I can not say.  I really would like to know for the record.
 

 

CC

Edited January 12, 2023 by Captain Cozmos

[NIAD]

From memory so forgive me if I mix anything up that I’ll have to correct later…

 

- There are 2 different Coleco made Slot #2 Boot Prom interface cards. I refrain from calling them Language Cards as will be explained later. There is a 2 (SmartWriter only) and a 4 chip version (SmartWriter and EOS) and pics are included in my “Coleco ADAM Hardware List with Pictures” list that is available on www.adamarchive.org. I have the 2 chip version as well.

 

- The code contained in ROM could be English, French or German. The English language version was used to quickly upgrade an earlier revision SmartWriter (R57-R79) to R80 instead of taking the ADAM apart and replacing the ROMs on the ADAM Logic Board. Since interest in the ADAM has increased in the last decade, a lot more people in Europe have shared info and pics with most being the French language version of SmartWriter and Rich DiRocco has shared screenshots from the one he acquired. I don’t recall anyone stating they have the German language version.

 

- Phil Kosowsky (former Coleco employee) shared a hand drawn mod that needs to be made to the ADAM Logic Board for these interface cards to work… probably to all systems that were sold in North America. The mod info is available in the Technical folder of the ADAM Archive.

 

- The only ADAM emulators that support using Slot #2 Boot ROMS are ADAMem DOS v1.81, ADAMem SDL v1.81 or later and recently heard that MAME supports it.

 

- Merge the 2 Prom dumps into 1 file, rename to EXP.ROM and place in the ADAMem directory. There is already an EXP.ROM file in the directory that is the IDE HD driver so just rename that first.

 

- It may or may not work in emulation seeing as the ADAM Logic Board is modded for it to work in a real ADAM.

 

Good Luck

 

[Captain Cozmos]

ADAM SDL loads it in but nothing changes as a result.

I bought it from someone who I think has bad blood with the people around here being as he sold a super secret game club game on ebay.

He sold as a language card and if it just SmartWriter then I am extremely disappointed.
However, as in my notes.

 

The Upper Rom is Smart Writer where the lower does not match at all.  The Upper is Rev 80, lower, nope.

[NIAD]

3 hours ago, Captain Cozmos said:

ADAM SDL loads it in but nothing changes as a result.

Just to verify, I would:

 

- rename the SmartWriter R80 rom image (I forget… is it SW.ROM) in the ADAMem SDL directory to something else… SWrev80.rom

 

- copy one of the other SW revision 32K rom images (rev. 57 will be a good one to use) that are on the ADAM Archive to your ADAMem SDL directory and rename appropriately… SW.ROM

 

http://adamarchive.org/archive/Adam/Chipsets/

 

- load ADAMem SDL and immediately press CONTROL-R. A new SmartKey will display with the SmartWriter revision… it should show R57. This verified all is working as it should.

 

- Then copy your newly dumped and merged to a 32K rom image SmartWriter from the Slot #2 Card to the ADAMem SDL directory and rename to EXP.ROM.

 

- Boot ADAMem SDL and immediately press CONTROL-R. If the new SmartKey shows R57, then your dump is bad and ADAMem reverted to the SW.ROM. If it shows R80, then your dump is good but may only be the English version OR the that mod to the ADAM Logic Board that I previously mentioned  would have to somehow be emulated in ADAMem.

[Captain Cozmos]

3 hours ago, NIAD said:

Just to verify, I would:

 

- rename the SmartWriter R80 rom image (I forget… is it SW.ROM) in the ADAMem SDL directory to something else… SWrev80.rom

 

- copy one of the other SW revision 32K rom images (rev. 57 will be a good one to use) that are on the ADAM Archive to your ADAMem SDL directory and rename appropriately… SW.ROM

 

http://adamarchive.org/archive/Adam/Chipsets/

 

- load ADAMem SDL and immediately press CONTROL-R. A new SmartKey will display with the SmartWriter revision… it should show R57. This verified all is working as it should.

 

- Then copy your newly dumped and merged to a 32K rom image SmartWriter from the Slot #2 Card to the ADAMem SDL directory and rename to EXP.ROM.

 

- Boot ADAMem SDL and immediately press CONTROL-R. If the new SmartKey shows R57, then your dump is bad and ADAMem reverted to the SW.ROM. If it shows R80, then your dump is good but may only be the English version OR the that mod to the ADAM Logic Board that I previously mentioned  would have to somehow be emulated in ADAMem.

That was one of the earlier tests I did, does not overwrite v57 so it's not loading it in running it.

Here is the issue which may go back to that modification.
SW looks for 9966h when it switches to the Expansion Rom.  'IF" it does not find it then it will jump to looking for other boot media, cartridge...disks...ddp...
 

Smart Writer does not start with that.  It's header is F3C3h so it is skipped over but still hangs the system because there is a non functioning card in the exp rom slot.
So, Euro models may be engineered to boot from that Exp Rom no matter what as a bypass for the internal.

 

I did a search match between EOS and the second half of the rom and there are 0 matches there as well.
Hey, maybe I came across some special chip that is part of a top secret spy plane like in Cloak & Dagger.  The the 1984 infomercial for Atari

Edited January 12, 2023 by Captain Cozmos

[NIAD]

30 minutes ago, Captain Cozmos said:

So, Euro models may be engineered to boot from that Exp Rom no matter what as a bypass for the internal.

Hey, maybe I came across some special chip that is part of a top secret spy plane like in Cloak & Dagger.  The the 1984 infomercial for Atari

For the Euro market where CBS Electronics handles distribution, I would venture a GUESS that in:

 

England - the Exp. Mod. #3 Memory Console ADAM PCB was identical to it’s North American counterpart. Very possibly the 4-chip Slot #2 Boot interface card was used to upgrade earlier revision systems to R80 without having to disassemble the system. The 4-chip card consists of 3 SmartWriter proms and 1 EOS prom.

 

France - the EM#3 Memory Console ADAM PCB was modified per what Phil Kosowsky provided. Wild guess is that the 2-chip Slot #2 Boot/Language interface card was used with only SmartWriter on it. I say this because French systems that I have seen pictured never had the 4-chip version.

 

Germany - if it exists, see France.

 

I highly doubt Coleco would have gone thru the expense to mod systems for the market in England seeing what penny pinchers they were.

[Captain Cozmos]

32 minutes ago, NIAD said:

For the Euro market where CBS Electronics handles distribution, I would venture a GUESS that in:

 

England - the Exp. Mod. #3 Memory Console ADAM PCB was identical to it’s North American counterpart. Very possibly the 4-chip Slot #2 Boot interface card was used to upgrade earlier revision systems to R80 without having to disassemble the system. The 4-chip card consists of 3 SmartWriter proms and 1 EOS prom.

 

France - the EM#3 Memory Console ADAM PCB was modified per what Phil Kosowsky provided. Wild guess is that the 2-chip Slot #2 Boot/Language interface card was used with only SmartWriter on it. I say this because French systems that I have seen pictured never had the 4-chip version.

 

Germany - if it exists, see France.

 

I highly doubt Coleco would have gone thru the expense to mod systems for the market in England seeing what penny pinchers they were.

Penny Pinchers or common sense.
 

In researching for this DOS Project I have been dealing with some serious inner workings and the ADAM is remarkable.  I can only guess as to how the motivation of why people preferred the C64 over the ADAM.  They put a lot of thought into the ADAM.  How the Z80 and the 6801's meet up in an agreed upon location in memory and talk to each other is cool on it's own.

 

I may have to stick with EOS7 or update it but unless I can replace the 6801's code then I am stuck with what Coleco Engineers set up as far as the communication structure.  ADAM is a multi-tasking computer where every other computer at the time could only do one thing.  It can be considered an earlier version of the Amiga.

Hope you watched the video I posted inside the Working Title CHAOS thread.  It demonstrates briefly changing drives.
Being that I can only use one drive in CoolCV I only displayed the header from drive C with the dir command but everything on that disk is in memory.
CD A=D1, B=D2, C=hard drive, and R=Ram.  I need to add D and E for DDP 1 and 2.  I could add support for more drives but what would be the point.

 

Now I could, and this is just thinking out loud, with a WIFI device connect to a home share directory.  That also depends on how well you can negotiate with a Windows SMB or whatever.  I'm not into building TCP stacks as far as internet access but I am getting way ahead of myself already.  No offense to fuji-net.

 

My next video update should be from a working ADAM with 4 drives connected.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Captain Cozmos

[NIAD]

Penny Pinchers or Common Sense = BOTH

 

The more I think about it, I’ve only seen 1 4-Chip version of the Coleco Slot #2 Boot card, so this version might have been the original In-House version that the person was lucky in acquiring from a Coleco employee.

 

It make sense since Coleco reduced by 1 PROM the SmartWriter program supplied in ADAM systems from 3 to 2, so to save money they did the same with the Slot #2 Boot card and developed a work around/mod to the ADAM Logic Board so that the EOS PROM did not have to be included on the card as well.