Replace smartwriter on adam

[soviet]

Hi i like to replace the smartwrite roms and install in its place coleco smart basic burned into eproms.

Someone have experience doing this, also theres any rom images for colecovision ? so i can burn it into eproms and do the replacemente, i dont have a printer and having to load smartbasic from tape is a hassle.

 

Thanks

[NIAD]

In the past, people have replaced the SmartWRITER roms on the ADAM Logic Board so as to boot direcly to SmartBASIC or CP/M, but I don't recall seeing any technical details on how to go about setting up these programs to burn to rom chips and if it can be done with one 32K rom or has to be split up onto 3 or 4 8K roms. The SmartWRITER program was initially contained on 4 8K roms and placed in the U## sockets on the ADAM Logib Board and then eventually Coleco reduced this to 3 8K roms which meant there was an open socket available that could be used for other items such as a Clock Chip.

 

Another option is to create a SmartBASIC Cartridge (some people have these, but probably won't sell) that can be left plugged into the ADAM's cartridge slot permanently. Once you turn on the ADAM and SmartWRITER is displayed, you can press the Cartridge Reset to instantly bring up SmartBASIC.

 

One way or another, some programming skills are required to convert the program from loading off a DDP/Disk into RAM versus reading a ROM into memory. I would have to think that AtariAge member ADAMcon would have a SmartBASIC Cart and therefor, the conversion has already been done for you. All that would be needed is the cart to be dumped so that you can burn it to a ROM chip.

 

Hmm, I wouldn't mind having a rom image dump of a SmartBASIC Cart as well.

[soviet]

Yes indeed it could by nice i don't have the skills to generate the rom dumps, but if somebody else have them it could by easy for anyone to build a smart basic cartridge. Also i don't know if theres a monitor/debuger/ase cart like MAC/65 for the adam available.

[sjgray]

Hi, over on the Lemon64 forum http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=650235#650235 (Commodore 64 forum), in January of this year a user named Seagull found an unknown cartridge labeled "SBASIC" in a stack of Commodore stuff. After some discussion we guessed that it might be a Coleco cart. Yesterday Seagull dropped the cartridge off to me and I was able to read the 27256 EPROM and indeed, I could see the string "SmartBASIC V1.1" plus various BASIC keywords. So, I inserted it into my Adam and it does boot into SmartBASIC.

 

On the cartridge is a 74LS08 chip. I don't know enough about Adam cartridges to know if it's a standard cartridge PCB or something custom. It says "Walters ©1989" and "E100".

 

So , I saved the EPROM image and if anyone is interested or can post it somewhere let me know.

 

Steve

Edited December 8, 2014 by sjgray

[NIAD]

I just love how things just pop up out of the blue after all these years especially when it is something that others are looking for and would love to acquire. Everything adds up with your description as Jim Walters was one of the most prolific developers of software back in the 80's and early 90's and did pretty well with the custom cartridges that he made. I'm assuming he just reused Coleco cart PCBs to minimize costs especially since he sold these custom carts on demand for around $30, but I could be wrong and maybe ADAMcon or his son could chime in.

 

Please do post the rom image here for all to benefit from and if Soviet doesn't check in and/or still want a SmartBASIC cart, I may be interested if you consider selling.

[sjgray]

Ok, I have attached the eprom image (I didn't see the attachment option before).

 

I will ask Seagull what he wants to do with the cartridge. He may want it back as he was hoping to pick up an Adam system in the future.

 

Steve

SmartBASIC_V1.1 (27256 eprom).bin

[NIAD]

Thanks for the rom dump and I'll test it out with Virtual ADAM and then on a real ADAM with the AtariMax Ultimate SD Cart. I guess I should have followed the link you provided to see the pics of the PCB before my previous post and as can be seen from the provided pics, Jim Walters did design a new Cart PCB and not reuse Coleco's.

 

This has got me thinking that I haven't talked to Jim Walters in a couple years and need to send him an email... at least to say Happy Holidays.

[NIAD]

Just tested the SB rom dump and it is good. As I mentioned previously, Walters Software Co. made these on demand and based on the purchasers system. In the case of the cartridge you have and dumped, it was configured to default to the first Digital Data Drive (#1 or D1 in SmartBasic) so this is why the Data Drive is accessed upon SB loading from ROM as it's trying to load the HELLO turnkey program. If the original purchaser had requested that Disk Drive #1 be the default drive, then it would have been accessed to try and load a HELLO program. Here's the scoop...

 

- Copied the rom image to the AtariMax Ultimate SD Cart and loaded it from the menu. All works fine and if you have Data Pack in drive #1, it will try to load a program file called HELLO and if not found, error out to the SB prompt.

 

- Not compatible with Virtual ADAM as it will freeze the emulator at a black screen. This is not the fault of ADAMem or the rom dump, but a known conflict with DOSbox.

 

- Did not test with ADAMem DOS or SDL, but it should work fine as you can mount the rom dump as a cartridge andnmount a Data Pack image file and then boot the cartridge rom image... unlike Virtual ADAM.

 

Once again thank you for sharing.

[sjgray]

Glad I could help! Enjoy.

 

Steve

[soviet]

Great , thanks very much sjgray i will give it a try when my new eprom burner arrive.

[sjgray]

The SmartBASIC cart I have has a custom made board. Can anyone tell me if there are other, more standard, cartridge boards that accept a 32K eprom?

 

Steve

[NIAD]

I'm sure some people have made their own Eprom boards, but the only ones that I have ever come across were made by Coleco. Some of the earlier Coleco carts sold in stores used Eprom boards and you can tell by weighing them instead of opening them up and therefore ruining the label to get to the two screws.

[Mike Harris]

Old post but this is something I am studying about now for future hardware development.
 

The Smartbasic Rom is the regular Smartbasic from the DDP with a custom cart loader that starts out with AA55, sets up some pointers and then goes on to run SB.

I suspect with a small change you can run Logo, ADAM Calc or what not.  Maybe CP/M or TDos.
All from a rom.

I have the Smartbasic 1 Assembly listing.
It would be great to have the other OS listings such as Logo and CP/M in order to modify them easier.
CP/M is actually a lot easier seeing that the only ADAM part should be the BIOS.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Mike Harris