#nascom2 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #nascom2, aggregated by home.social.
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Because I have an odd sense of humor, I implemented Chacha20 in BLS Pascal on the Nascom2, running in my browser (https://tommythorn.github.io/virtual-nascom/virtual-nascom.html)
Turns out adding 2 32-bit values is really painful this way. Achieved ~ 10s for a 64 byte block, but written in assembler it would be a lot faster.
#Z80 #Nascom2 #retrocomputing -
Because I have an odd sense of humor, I implemented Chacha20 in BLS Pascal on the Nascom2, running in my browser (https://tommythorn.github.io/virtual-nascom/virtual-nascom.html)
Turns out adding 2 32-bit values is really painful this way. Achieved ~ 10s for a 64 byte block, but written in assembler it would be a lot faster.
#Z80 #Nascom2 #retrocomputing -
For CP/M, the #Nascom2 only had one major flaw: a 48x16 resolution. It's been another 40 yo project to find the cheapest/simplest way to modify the existing video interface for something closer to 80x24 (alas, loosing all SW compatability in the process).
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For CP/M, the #Nascom2 only had one major flaw: a 48x16 resolution. It's been another 40 yo project to find the cheapest/simplest way to modify the existing video interface for something closer to 80x24 (alas, loosing all SW compatability in the process).
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It's unphantomable how much more useful my #Nascom2 would have been with CP/M; the SW library would be orders of magnitude larger and obs. floppy is incomparably more convenient than tape. I have lost major projects to tape read errors and had no backups because saving to tape took so long.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the tools (like, no oscilloscope) back in the day, so troubleshooting non-trivial electronics was basically impossible.
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It's unphantomable how much more useful my #Nascom2 would have been with CP/M; the SW library would be orders of magnitude larger and obs. floppy is incomparably more convenient than tape. I have lost major projects to tape read errors and had no backups because saving to tape took so long.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the tools (like, no oscilloscope) back in the day, so troubleshooting non-trivial electronics was basically impossible.
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I occasionally ponder an old obsession: how to maximize the utility of my #Nascom2. One way would be to sacrifice some speed in exchange for code density by programming toward a byte code interpreter, at which point instruction dispatch becomes a bottleneck. Here's my current favorite scheme which depends on there being < 128 instruction types: keep all BC entry-points within a single aligned 256B block and use
LD L,(IX)
INC IX
JP (HL)at the end of each.
1/2
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I occasionally ponder an old obsession: how to maximize the utility of my #Nascom2. One way would be to sacrifice some speed in exchange for code density by programming toward a byte code interpreter, at which point instruction dispatch becomes a bottleneck. Here's my current favorite scheme which depends on there being < 128 instruction types: keep all BC entry-points within a single aligned 256B block and use
LD L,(IX)
INC IX
JP (HL)at the end of each.
1/2
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@Rp12Biker woa, what? z88dk even has explicit support for #Nascom2. Nice, thanks for sharing
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@Rp12Biker woa, what? z88dk even has explicit support for #Nascom2. Nice, thanks for sharing
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@paulrickards Interesting, it would work on some of my Macintoshes (certainly SE/30). I might be able to use it on my #Nascom2
However I went to read the manual but it 404'ed ("WiFi232 Internet Modem Manual (.PDF) Updated July 7, 2017" from https://shop.paulrickards.com/retro-computing-pop-up-shop/)
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@paulrickards Interesting, it would work on some of my Macintoshes (certainly SE/30). I might be able to use it on my #Nascom2
However I went to read the manual but it 404'ed ("WiFi232 Internet Modem Manual (.PDF) Updated July 7, 2017" from https://shop.paulrickards.com/retro-computing-pop-up-shop/)
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It only took 22 years, but I got my 1982 #Z80 based #Nascom2 back to working. It’s a great feeling. I credit https://youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement with inspiring me to get back to trouble shooting.
Now I just need to tie up loose ends and check everything out in depth. I already know of ROMs with bitrot (and you can see it if you look closely)
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It only took 22 years, but I got my 1982 #Z80 based #Nascom2 back to working. It’s a great feeling. I credit https://youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement with inspiring me to get back to trouble shooting.
Now I just need to tie up loose ends and check everything out in depth. I already know of ROMs with bitrot (and you can see it if you look closely)
