Ira wrote:
Its not so much the MX-80 per, se. Its the GRAFTRAX ROM option for the MX-80 which allowed for the bit addressable graphics.
Actually, I was after *all* the ROMS. Primarily I was after whichever ROM contains the built-in font data, as I was loathe to type it in by hand from the rather poor diagrams in the MX80-II F/T manual - though I'm half-way through that now.
That aside, I had an interesting idea late the other night - why not attempt to *emulate* the actual printer itself by running the real program ROMs??? I'm not sure if there's enough information available to actually achieve that - but it would be interesting to at least explore the possibilities.
I can't imagine there'd be a terrible amount of I/O in the printer - just the parallel interface to the computer and a couple of motors and some digital I/O for the print head pins?!? That shouldn't be *too* difficult to reverse-engineer?!? Anyone know what processor is in the MX80 BTW???
Anyway, food for thought. And yes, the ultimate aim is to emulate the GRAFTRAX functionality of the printer. I expect to have the vanilla MX-80 emulation going in some fashion by the end of this w/e if I get enough time behind the keyboard. ;)
Regards, -- | Mark McDougall | "Electrical Engineers do it | <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug> | with less resistance!"