HP Forums

I've just released my "completed" (hah! like it ever is) HP-85A Emulator that runs on Microsoft Windows 32-bit systems. It includes support for most of the hardware in an HP-85A, as well as an "external disk drive", and an external printer.



ALSO: recovered from oblivion... I found a guy in Australia who still had copies of the Games Pac II files on his old HP-85 hard disk, and from those I've re-assembled an HP-85 Games Pac II. A "disk" is included with the emulator, plus the individual LIFUTIL files are available as a separate download, for those that want to get them onto a REAL HP-85.



The emulator and the Games Pac II files are available from:

http://www.kaser.com/hp85.html

Thanks for reviving the Hp-85 Everett!

I'm going to try your emulator on the PC emulator of my Mac!

However, I'm not sure that the 2 links to the Games Pac work at present :-(

Cheers from France!

Etienne

Etienne,

try the following links:

GamesPac II

Games Pac Misc

Best Regards,

Juergen

Juergen,

It works, thanks a lot!

I'm going to try them right now!

MfG from France.

Etienne

Hi, Everett:

Thanks for making your HP-85 emulator available, I'll try it
this weekend for sure.

I have very, very fond memories of this machine, as I was lent one for a long time, shortly after it was released (come to think of it, even *before* it was released here in Spain). I spent countless nights using and programming it, and wrote a lot of software for it, first in its built-in BASIC language, then creating assorted binary files implementing various utility keywords.

I had the Mass Storage, Matrix, Plotter, and Advanced Programming ROMs, but no Assembler ROM for the machine so I had a tape version of the Assembler, which, if I recall correctly, included an assembler written in BASIC, plus the STORb binary, which included the STOREBIN keyword to write the assembled binary to tape in its proper format. I also remember that all binaries I wrote at the time did include the SCRATCHBIN keyword, so that they could be erased from memory by a running BASIC program in order to load another binary using the LOADBIN keyword, as the HP-85 didn't allow more than one binary program loaded at a time (unlike the HP-86/87, which allowed up to 5) and further, it had no means of erasing from memory the one loaded. SCRATCHBIN would do just this.

I still have some HP-85 materials scattered here and there: several tapes containing assorted programs and binaries (the assembler, many of my binaries, BASIC games, binary games, etc), assembler listings (thermal paper, still not faded !), an original of the Matrix ROM User's Manual, listings of long commercial programs (structures, archicture, engineering), and even a Tutorial Course about the HP-85 I created to be imparted at a local Engineering Association, very nice and with very good examples. In its very last chapter, I did include a short section on binary programs, which featured a short assembler listing which implemented the FACT (factorial) keyword, just to show how you could extend the existing instruction set with ad-hoc, custom keywords. That FACT implementation was pretty simple, but it did run much faster that any BASIC implementation.

One of the most amazing binary programs I saw at the time for the HP-85 was VC, VisiCalc (an early Excel-like program) and as
for games, a friend of mine wrote (and demonstrated) a Chess program, its game engine being totally written in Capricorn's Assembler, plus a small BASIC program for the graphics and the interface. It didn't play very well but was *wonderful* to look at (we're talking late 70s-early 80s here).

Ah, those were the days ! ... 8-)

Wonderful job!!!! Thanks for the emulator. Looks very nice and brings nostalgic memories of my very first microcomputer!!!

Namir

Sorry about the broken links for the two separate downloads (although those files are NOT needed by the emulator, they're there for folks with REAL HP-85s. Those files are INCLUDED in the emulator download). I've fixed the links now. (Thanks, Juergen, for posting the fixed ones before I got to this!)

Everett

Quote:

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I had the Mass Storage, Matrix, Plotter, and Advanced Programming ROMs, but no Assembler ROM for the machine so I had a tape version of the Assembler, which, if I recall correctly, included an assembler written in BASIC, plus the STORb binary, which included the STOREBIN keyword to write the assembled binary to tape in its proper format.

---

Everett

Wow!

Thanks for your excellent contributions. The emulator, of course,
is extremely important, but the Games Pack 2 and ROM listings, are
also very exciting and useful material.

I also found your recollections of the history of the Series 80
highly relevant and actually something that is missing from these
forums. For a history of the "competition" you may want to check
http://www.hp9825.com.

I would like your permission to include some of the material
you have placed on your site to the http://www.series80.org site
that I administer (or at least links to your site, if you prefer).
In either case these will be correctly attributed to you.

Best Regards

**vp

PS I have a different version of Asteroids which uses the 9111A
graphical tablet for input. However, the binary programs do not
work on my HP-85 (program gets stuck even though the correct
data is supplied). A RESET always clears the problem. Do you know
anything about the binary programs that were supplied with the
9111A tablet?

http://www.series80.org/hp9111a.html

Everett,

I didn't have the time to test the emulator, but tonight, I copied the Games Pac II files to my HP-85. IT'S A LOT OF FUN! Currently, my favorites are FATCAT and BATS. Even my wife sat down to shoot the aliens, and she pushed the buttons so hard that I was afraid she might destroy the keyboard of my beloved HP-85 ;-)

Thank you much for your valued contribution!

Best Regards from Switzerland,

Juergen

Hi Everett,

I tried your HP85 emulator, it works great, and is a wonderful tool to study HP85 internal operations.

I read your past experience in HP with great interest, and I have a question: as you are the author of the HP85 Assembler ROM, could it be possible to retrieve the assembler source file? I'm afraid you don't have it any more, because there is almost no disassembly comment for that ROM, but I can ask...

Reason is that it would be interesting to port it to the HP75 (same CPU, similar architecture), the HP85 assembler statements would be much more confortable than the HP75 Forth assembler (that uses reversed Polish notation, quite unusual for asm language). Actually I often thought about disassembling the HP85 Assembler ROM, but starting from a source file or a commented disassembly listing would be much easier.

Best regards.

J-F Garnier

Sorry for the delay in responding to this, I got side-tracked by other projects for a few days. :-)

Quote:

---

I would like your permission to include some of the material
you have placed on your site to the http://www.series80.org site
that I administer (or at least links to your site, if you prefer).
In either case these will be correctly attributed to you.

---

Please do. However, please include a link to my site, so that folks can find any updates or additions that might not migrate immediately to your site. You may also want to go to:

BasicExchange Vol 2 Num 3

and get the full issue that Clive Small scanned in. He left them on that page for a while at my request, so that others could download them. I was going to contact you earlier, but didn't know your email address. You're welcome to make copies of those scans available on your site also.

Quote:

---

PS I have a different version of Asteroids which uses the 9111A
graphical tablet for input. However, the binary programs do not
work on my HP-85 (program gets stuck even though the correct
data is supplied). A RESET always clears the problem. Do you know
anything about the binary programs that were supplied with the
9111A tablet?

---

I believe that I have the source code to the TRACKA binary program,
and I have the source code to the ORIGINAL version (non-tablet) of
the ASTB binary program, but I've not yet found source for the tablet-modified version of the CHASTB binary program, which the tablet-modified version of the ASTEROIDS game uses. However, with the source to TRACKA and ASTB, and the disassembly tools in my emulator, I should be able to reconstruct the source for the CHASTB (minus what few comments might have been in the original source).

I had completely forgotten about the tablet version of ASTEROIDS until you pointed this out. Since I don't have access to a 9111A tablet, I might not be able to figure out why this isn't working for you, but it may be something as simple as needing to have the tablet at a particular HP-IB address. I'll let you know if I come up with anything.

Everett

Hi, J-F.

No, I don't have listings for either the 85 or 87 Assembler ROMs. I have a few of the ROMs (and both the 85 and 87 System ROMs now), but not the Assembler ROMs (unfortunately). I haven't done much commenting of the Assembler ROM disassembly because it wasn't critical to figuring out and implementing the emulator. I also have NO documentation or knowledge of the HP-75 internals, so can't give you any advice on the feasibility of porting the 85's Assembler ROM to the 75.

Everett

Vassilis, I've taken a look at the 9111A tablet version of Asteroids, and I suspect it's MOST likely that you just have the wrong address for your graphics tablet. Using the source code to the "original" ASTBIN binary program, I disassembled enough of the CHASTB binary program (CH=chariot, the code name for the 9111A, ASTB=obvious) to see what the differences were. Basically, they (someone besides myself did this modification, I'm pretty sure) just added two keywords: TRACK and SCRATCHBIN.

SCRATCHBIN is used so that they can get rid of the CHASTB binary, load the TRACKA binary, and chain to the 9111A DEMO program, which isn't really pertinent to "your" problem. The TRACK keyword is used to "track" the pen movement on the tablet, to get it's location information. The HP-IB address of the graphics tablet is set at line 225 of the ASTER BASIC program (C9 = 706), and it's passed (C9) to the TRACK command on line 1146. The CHASTB binary uses whatever HP-IB address is passed to it, and makes calls to the Plotter/Printer ROM to talk to the tablet, using low-level entry points into the P/P ROM.

So... either your tablet is at the wrong HP-IB address for the program (most likely), or your P/P ROM is a different revision from what the program was written for and those low-level entry points moved (less likely). I don't recall that the P/P ROM was ever revised, but it's possible.

I hope that helps you to get it working, good luck! If you think the partial disassembly of the CHASTB binary will help, let me know and I'll email it to you (send me a private email).

Everett

Hi, J-F.

On further reflection, porting the 85 Assmebler ROM to the 75 might be more challenging than I first thought, and also might be easier than you might think. :-)))

More challenging, because of the way the ROM hooks into the system parser and just fakes the system into thinking that it's parsing BASIC statements as you enter them, when it's really hiding a line of assembly code instead. The 75 'system' code MAY be sufficiently different that porting the code might be a bit of a challenge.

Easier than you might think, because probably 1/2 of the ROM or more could probably just be thrown away. You wouldn't need any of the code for memory dumps, breakpoints, or many of the other "commands", so the actual code to be ported would probably only be 4-5 Kbytes of machine code. Maybe some day I'll be terribly bored, my wife won't have anything for me to do, I'll be in between 'work' projects, and then I'll work on the disassembly of the Assembler ROM.

But don't hold your breath... :-)))

Everett

Everett Kaser wrote:

> ... either your tablet is at the wrong HP-IB address for the program (most likely), 

> or your P/P ROM is a different revision from what the program was written for and those 

> low-level entry points moved (less likely). 

It works now. Thanks for your hints. Actually the problem was entirely different, I had changed the stylus ink refill and the one I put it was not right.

The sensor is surrounded by the earthed metal shield, so the only way for the signal to go through the shield is via the refill. The one I put in was plastic, and hence useless. Once I replaced the original refill the tablet worked.

Stupid stupid stupid. When I initially got my 9111A I did all the tests with the old refill and then (apparently) I installed the new refill and stored it. Then I found some spare time later on to try the asteroid game and by that time I had forgotten that I had changed the refill. So I got side tracked into thinking that the problem was with the BINUTIL.

**vp