[Coco] Could MESS CD-i emulation be hacked to MM/1?

[Aaron Wolfe]

wow, I don't know if I can be of much help but this would be really
cool to see!  Always dreamed of playing with the MM/1.
-Aaron


On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net> wrote:
> Apparently the latest version of MESS has "reasonable CD-i emulation":
>  http://cdii.blogspot.com/2009/11/latest-mess-includes-reasonable-cd-i.html
>
> It appears that there is now enough CD-i hardware emulation to run Lemmings
> and some other games.  This means that the Video / System Controller
> hardware is present in at least some rudimentary form, which, along with the
> CPU and OS-9 operating system, is what the MM/1 shared with CD-i.
>
> Though it appears to be in an early stage, this is certainly an interesting
> development.  It would be very nice to be able to run MM/1 / TC-70 software
> in emulation.  In fact, an OS-9/68K emulation machine based on the CD-i
> would have much better graphical capability than the real computers did.
>
> It looks like MESS may already have support for:
> 68901 MFP (from the Atari ST)
> 68681 DUART
> WD33C93 SCSI Controller (From Amiga 3000)
> NEC765 FDC (Is this register compatible with the WD37C65 used in the MM/1?)
>
> The only major chips I see that the MM/1 has that don't appear already to be
> emulated in MESS are the 68230 (which is essentially a glorified PIA with
> timer) and the AD7569 ADC/DAC chips.  The 7569 certainly isn't required to
> boot OS-9, and I think the 68230 is just used for parallel ports, though I'd
> have to look at schematics again to be sure.
>
> It looks as if it would almost be a matter of gluing together some blocks
> that are already present in the MESS codebase to get something that would
> boot OS-9 from an MM/1 disk image.  I haven't really looked at the MESS
> code, and my C is fairly well oxidized K&R, but I do have a working MM/1 and
> plenty of MM/1 technical information.  I know Tim Lindner has been involved
> with the MESS CoCo port.  Surely there are enough capable and motivated
> people on this list to make a go of it...
>
> JCE
>
>
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