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A project log for z80ctrl

AVR-based bootloader and IO card for RC2014 retrocomputer

jb-langstonJ.B. Langston 06/28/2018 at 05:140 Comments

I previously added manual paging support using the 512KB RAM/ROM card (either the official or Scott Baker versions), which allowed you to manually specify a set of 4 pages and work with the memory at those pages.  

I've now added support for 20-bit addresses to z80ctrl with automatic paging of up to 1MB memory (addresses from 0x00000-0xFFFFF). The z80ctrl monitor gives the illusion of one flat address space, paging memory in and out as needed.  The manual "page" command has been replaced by a new command called "base", which allows you to specify any address which falls on a page boundary, from 0x00000 to 0xFC000. Because of the page boundary restriction, the base address must be a multiple of 0x4000. Once set, the base address will be added to any address you specify in a monitor command. This makes it convenient to work within a 64KB block memory without having to specify a long address every time.  The base command also controls the memory that is paged in when the Z80 boots.  Initially, the pages will be set to the contiguous 64KB block of memory starting at the base address. The software running on the Z80 is free to page in different pages using the page registers after it starts.

Here's an example to help make things clearer.  If you set "base 80000", which is the start of RAM, running dump 0 will actually dump from 80000, and dump 100 will actually dump from 80100 (dump will show this address as well). The four pages starting at base address 80000 will also be loaded when the Z80 is booted. If you set the base address to 80000 and then load a program at address 100, it will actually load the program to 80100, and when you type run 100, the pages starting at address 80000 will be paged in, so the Z80 will see the program at address 100 and run as expected. 

The flash, fill, loadbin, savebin, disasm, poke, dump, run and debug commands now support 20-bit addresses as parameters, and where appropriate, will display 20-bit addresses when listing memory contents. loadhex and savehex currently do not support 20-bit addresses, but I am working on it.  Until then, you can still use 16-bit addresses with these commands, and setting the base address will transparently adjust their starting address so that they work within the 64KB block starting at the base address.

Support for 20-bit addresses in the flash command means that z80ctrl is now a fully functional flash programmer, and I have successfully used it to program the flash on the 512KB RAM/ROM board with RomWBW.  Actually running RomWBW with the z80ctrl is currently unsupported.  You will have to remove the z80ctrl module and replace it with the clock module and SIO/2 module in order to use RomWBW for now.  I have, however, confirmed that the image flashes properly and RomWBW boots when using these boards.

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