| ★ CODING ★ "Arnold V" Specification ★ |
| CPCplus : "Arnold V" Specification |
"Arnold V" Specification © Copyright Amstrad plc CONTENTS1 PRODUCT RANGE OVERVIEW 1.1 Common Features 2 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION 2.1 Hardware Sprites 3 SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION 3.1 6128 4 MECHANICAL SPECIFICATION5 DISPLAY DEVICES 5.1 Monitors 6 NATIONAL VARIANTS 7 PACKING LIST APPENDIX I - New Register Map 1 PRODUCT RANGE OVERVIEW This project provides a more sophisticated and stylish replacement for the existing CPC464 and CPC6128 computers. This has been achieved by:
1.1 Common Features The casework consists of a new two piece set of plastic mouldings. This contains a horizontally mounted, double-sided PCB assembly on which are mounted most of the electronics for the computer. A small, vertically mounted, daughter PCB provides the connector for a ROM cartridge. Any size ROM cartridge from 16k x 8 up to 512k x 8 can be installed. The firmware, fitted to the main PCB on earlier CPC computers, is supplied instead in a ROM cartridge. All expansion and peripheral device connectors are mounted on the main PCB. In addition to the connectors used on the existing CPC range, there are:
The computer provides stereo sound via additional pins on the monitor connector, as well as from the stereo sound socket. All existing CPC electrical features are provided, plus some new features. There is complete backward compatibility except that:
The following new features become available once a software "lock" has been opened, thus preventing existing CPC software from accidentally invoking them:
The functions of display monitor and power supply are provided by either:
The old CPC6128 keyboard is used, except that the colour scheme has been changed and the connecting cable exits in a different location.1.2 Amstrad 464 PlusThis variant has an integral cassette tape drive, and 64k bytes of dynamic RAM. It is supplied with a ROM cartridge containing the system firmware plus the BASIC language, disk firmware and a game, although it is not possible to select the disk firmware.1.3 Amstrad 6128 PlusThis variant has an integral 3" floppy disk drive (5V) plus a 36-way Delta (Centronics style) expansion socket allowing a second 3" drive to be added. The 6128 Plus is to be supplied with a ROM cartridge containing the system firmware plus the BASIC language, disk firmware and a game. 128k bytes of dynamic RAM are fitted to the main PCB. 1.4 Further Variants Unlike the existing CPC range, the size of dynamic RAM and whether or not a disk drive is installed are separately configurable options. It is therefore possible to produce a "4128" (128k diskless) or "664" (64k with disk) variant. Also, it is possible to increase the number of analogue input channels to eight. 2 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION The technical specification is essentially similar to the earlier CPC 464/6128 range, with some enhancements. This specification should therefore be read in conjunction the "Amstrad CPC 6128 Software Interface Spec" Issue 2, 17th February 1985. New features have been added by changes to the ASIC and main PCB circuitry. The overriding concern in the specification of this new product range has been the need for total backward compatibility with the existing CPC range. Many of the new features within the ASIC employ new registers, which can be mapped to replace the page of RAM from 4000 to 7FFFh in the CPU memory map, by setting a bit pattern in an I/O port. Before this port is allowed to "exist", a deliberately obscure I/O sequence is needed. This mechanism protects existing CPC range software from accidents such as killing its own RAM page. The following new features are provided by changes to the ASIC and the main PCB electronics: 2.1 Hardware Sprites Sixteen hardware sprites are to be provided by the ASIC. Each consists of an array of 16x16 pixels of four bits per pixel. A sprite pixel will be "transparent" when it has a value of zero, thus allowing 15 sprite colours. The sprite pixel data exists in memory mapped registers within the ASIC, from address 4000h. The lower four bits of each byte will contain the data for a single pixel. The first 16 bytes contain the data for the upper scan line, starting at the top left hand corner of the sprite. 15 more similar scan lines of 16 pixels each follow, thus each 256 (0100h) byte block of register space contains one sprite. When the data for a sprite is read or written, that sprite is removed from the display for the duration of the access. Thus sprite data should only be accessed during retraced time or while the raster is scanning somewhere else, otherwise there is a risk of disruption of the display. The position on screen of the upper left corner of each sprite, and the X and Y magnification, are defined by five registers for each sprite:
The position registers are read/write, and accept numbers in two's complement form. They should only be changed during retrace or when a sprite is off. Data written to these registers should be between +767 and -256 for X, and between +255 and -256 for Y, otherwise the sprites will appear in strange positions. With standard 6845 timing (64us scan lines, 200 visible lines), "on screen" positions at maximum sprite magnification are -64 to +639 in x and -63 to +199 in y. A sprite will not be displayed if either the vertical or the horizontal positions outside the on screen range. The magnification registers are cleared to zero at reset, and are write only. They are coded as:
The sprite control registers exist on 8-byte boundaries from addresses 6000 to 607Fh for sprites 0 to 15 respectively. All sprite characteristics are independent of the main screen mode, the unmagnified pixel size being as for screen mode 2 (640x200). Sprite colours are defined by fifteen entries in the colour palette (see section 2.2 below). Thus sprites can be in different colours and resolutions from the rest of the screen. Sprites may overlay with each other or the border, and are prioritized so that the border has the highest priority, followed by sprites 0 to 15 in sequence, then the main screen data. Thus sprites always appear "in front of" the main screen and "behind" the border. 2.2 Colour palette The earlier colour palette within the ASIC, which selects 17 of 27 possible colours, has been replaced by a new palette which selects 32 of 4096 colours. This can be accessed through two ports. The primary port provides full access via 32 registers of 12 bits, i.e. 4 bits each for red, green and blue. For compatibility with existing models a secondary port provides access to the first 17 registers only (i.e. main screen colours and border), via the existing 5 bit interface. A block of logic maps the five bit colour written to the palette at the address selected by the "palette pointer register". The primary palette port is between addresses 6400 and 643Fh, each pair of bytes representing one entry in the palette. The most significant byte will contain the GREEN information in the lower nibble (D3-D0), and the other byte contains RED (D7-D4) and BLUE (D3-D0). This ordering of colours has been selected to give the most consistent grey scale possible on a monochrome display (green is brighter than red, which is brighter than blue). However, because of the need to retain compatibility with the existing 27 level grey scale, the colours are summed with a 9:3:1 weighting rather than the 256:16:1 weighting which would be required to make the 12 bit word fully monotonic. The primary palette registers appear in RAM low byte first, so that they can be loaded via a single 16-bit LD instruction, e.g. LD (6400h),0F00h would set the main colour zero to bright green. The palette is dual ported so that there are no restrictions on when it can be accessed. The primary port palette registers are:
The secondary port registers are:
2.3 Split Screen facility Three new memory mapped registers have been added within the ASIC, to provided a horizontally split screen facility. One at address 6801h defines the scan line after which the screen split occurs. A value of zero (as at power on reset) will turn this feature off. The other register pair at 6802h and 6803h define the start address in memory (similar to R12 and R13 respectively in the 6845, and therefore high byte first) which represents the location in memory from which to start displaying data for the lower screen. This allows the lower part of the picture to come from a separate memory area, and be separately scrolled. However, note that soft scrolling (Section 2.5 below) will act on the whole screen. Note that care should be taken with programming this facility such that the screen split does not alter the function of address bits A1-A8 and the dynamic memory refresh is not upset. This can be accomplished by setting the start of the second screen to lie on a 16k boundary. The value in register pair 6802h/6803h is the first displayed line, and not the start address of the 16k block. Also, during vertical retrace, the value in register 6801h should not be set to 257 less the total number of scan lines on the screen. With a normal screen of 312 scan lines, the value 312 - 257 = 55, or 37h should not be programmed unless (1) the vertical total adjust register is set to 1 while 6801h contains 37h, or (2) the raster interrupt (see 2.4 below) should be used such that 6801h contains 0 during vertical retrace. 2.4 Programmable raster interrupt A new 8 bit memory mapped register (PRI) has been added within the ASIC at address 6800h, which is cleared at power up. If zero, the normal raster interrupt mechanism functions as before. Otherwise, an interrupt occurs instead at the end of the scan line specified. The PRI can be reprogrammed as required to produce multiple interrupts per frame. See section 2.7 below for general information on interrupts. 2.5 Soft scroll facility A memory mapped 8 bit soft scroll control register (SSCR) has been added within the ASIC at 6804h, to allow scrolling of the screen by pixels rather than just by characters as at present. It is cleared at reset. This soft scrolling mechanism affects the whole of the main screen, regardless of the split screen facility, but it does not affect sprites. The lower four bits (D3-D0) of the SSCR define a horizontal delay of between 0 and 15 bits i.e. high resolution (mode 2) pixels. This shifts the screen image to the right by the value programmed, "losing" pixels behind the right border and instead displaying random data on the left. It is left to the programmer to ensure that the delay value is always a multiple of the number of bits per pixel. The next three bits (D6-D4) will be added to the least significant three bits of the scan line address, thus determining which of the eight 2k blocks contains the data for the first scan line on the screen. The effect of this is to shift the display up by the number of scan lines programmed, "losing" what would otherwise be the first lines to be displayed, and instead appending extra lines to the bottom of the screen. The most significant bit (D7), when set, causes the border to extend over the first two bytes (16 high resolution pixels) of each scan line, masking out the bad data caused by the horizontal soft scroll. Software which intends to use horizontal soft scroll should have this bit always set, so that the screen width does not keep changing. Setting the SSCR to zero, as at reset, (i.e. no offsets, normal border), will of course effectively disable the soft scroll. 2.6 Automatic feeding of sound generator An automated process has been added to feed data to the sound generator from three instruction streams in main RAM without CPU intervention. Three separate channels each fetch one 16-bit instruction during horizontal retrace time. These instructions must be in usual Z-80 format, i.e. least significant bit first, and must be aligned to word boundaries (i.e. address of first byte must be even). Once the three instructions have been captured, they are then executed sequentially. The maximum achievable update rate to the PSG is thus equal to the horizontal scan rate of 15.625 kHz per channel. The available commands are:
Note that:
A DMA control and status register (DCSR) controls which channels are currently enabled, and also tell the CPU which channel is interrupting. The channel enable bits in this register enable each "DMA" channel separately, and can be set by the CPU, and cleared by either the CPU, a STOP instruction, or power on reset. The interrupt bits are set when a channel is requesting an interrupt, and cleared when the CPU writes a "1" to the appropriate bit. The control and status register bits are:
Each channel has a 16 bit source address register (SAR) and an 8 bit pause prescaler register (PPR). These are memory mapped, from address 6C00h, as follows:
The SAR must be loaded by the CPU with a physical RAM address between 0000h and FFFEh. This means that the most significant two bits select which pages 0 to 3 of the DRAM is used, and the remaining bits are the address relative to the page start. The DMA process is not affected by the RAM or ROM mapping registers, and will always fetch data from RAM and not ROM. Note that the least significant bit of the address is ignored, and the instructions are always fetched from word boundaries. The pause prescaler counts N+1 scan lines (where N is the value written by the CPU), giving a minimum tick of 64us, and a maximum of 16.384ms. When set nonzero by a PAUSE instruction, the pause counter for a particular channel is decremented every tick until it reaches zero. Therefore, if the PPR is set to a value N and a PAUSE M instruction is executed, the total delay time between the instruction before the PAUSE and that following the PAUSE will be M * (N+1) * 64us. Pauses of between 64us and 67s may thus be generated. The ASIC arbitrates accesses to the parallel interface device between the "DMA" channels and the CPU, allowing only one to access it at a time. CPU accesses to the 8255 could be held off by means of wait states for up to a 8 microseconds if the "DMA" channel is currently executing a LOAD instruction. After a LOAD is executed, the ASIC must put the PSG address register back as it was before. To achieve this the 8255 parallel peripheral interface and the 74LS145 decoder have been integrated into the ASIC. The exact timing is based on 1us cycles as follows. After the leading edge of HSYNC from the 6845, there is one dead cycle followed by an instruction fetch cycle for each channel which is active (i.e. enabled and not paused). The execute cycles then follow for each active channel. All instructions execute in one cycle, except that LOAD requires at least 8 cycles. An extra cycle is added to a LOAD if the CPU is accessing the 8255, or two extra cycles if the CPU access was itself a PSG register write. 2.7 Interrupt Service The ASIC will produce interrupts from four sources: the raster interrupt and the three sound generator "DMA" channels. Bit D7 is set if the last interrupt acknowledge cycle was for a raster interrupt. Bits D6-D4 of the DCSR are set if interrupts from sound channels 0 to 2 respectively are active. For compatibility with earlier models, the raster interrupt is reset either by a CPU interrupt acknowledge cycle, or by writing a 1 to bit D4 of the mode and ROM enable register. The sound channel interrupts are cleared by writing a 1 to the relevant bit in the DCSR. Thus interrupt service software in an environment where DMA interrupts are used must inspect these bits, giving highest priority to the raster interrupt, because this interrupt is always cleared automatically. Failure to observe this requirement may result in raster interrupts being missed. DMA interrupts must be acknowledged by writing a "1" to the relevant DCSR bit. 2.8 Enhanced ROM cartridge support Previously, 32k of firmware ROM existed in two 16k blocks. The low block was at addresses 0000 to 3FFFh, and the high block at C000 to FFFFh. Expansion ROMs were mapped into C000 to FFFFh by writing a code to I/O address DFxxh. The disk ROM was code 0 or 7, depending on the state of an expansion signal. The new Arnold V range has no on board ROM, but instead has a cartridge slot which can support ROM cartridges of up to 4Mbits (512k bytes, or 32 pages of 16k bytes). This means that cartridge games cannot be copied, because there is no firmware available when the game is installed. However, any software house producing a game where the intermediate state of play or high score table can be saved must produce their own driver software. The upper 5 ROM cartridge address lines are controlled by the ASIC via the existing ROM mapping port (at DFxxh), and hence define which of the 32 pages are mapped to the upper ROM block (C000 to FFFFh). The machine is supplied with a ROM cartridge containing the firmware and BASIC, and, where applicable, the disk ROM. For values less than 128 written to the mapping port, the "BASIC" page of the cartridge is always selected at the high ROM block address, unless the value last written to the mapping port matches the current disk ROM code (i.e. either 0 or 7), in which case the "Disk" page is selected. For values greater than 127, the lower 5 bits set the cartridge ROM page number directly, so that the cartridge may be addressed at pages 128-159 (80-9Fh). The earlier expansion ROM mapping scheme uses port DFxxh and ROMDIS on the expansion bus, still functions. The only change is that ROMDIS can now disable the disk ROM, and selecting the disk ROM does not cause ROMDIS to be activated. An expansion card ROM mapped at any page takes priority over the same page number in the cartridge. In addition, new bits are defined in the mode and ROM enable (MRER) register at I/O address 7Fxxh. Previously, D7 = 1 and D6 = 0 to select this register, and D5 should be 0. This has been modified such that, if this register is written with D5 = 1, the bottom five bits are redefined. This new register is known as the secondary ROM mapping register (RMR2). D4 and D3 control the address of the low bank, and also whether the memory mapped register page is enabled at 4000 to 7FFFh.
D2 to D0 determine which of the lower 8 pages of the cartridge ROM appear at the low bank address. The default is page 0. The logical (as seen by the CPU) to physical (as appears on the upper five cartridge address lines) page translation scheme is thus:
This means that any of the first eight pages of cartridge ROM can be pages to either 0000, 4000, or 8000h, while any of the 32 cartridge pages can simultaneously appear at C000h. The two ROM disable bits in the existing mode and ROM enable register disable the ROM as before, wherever it is mapped, as will the ROMDIS signal from the expansion bus. The "write through" mechanism, whereby writes to an area which is currently mapped as ROM actually write to the underlying RAM, still functions, wherever the ROM is mapped. However, the write through mechanism cannot be used to access the register page. Write through also does not operate to the RAM from the register page. 2.9 Analogue paddle ports The ASIC includes the logic for an octal A/D converter, in conjunction with an external R-2R network, comparator and analogue multiplexer. Eight analogue input channels are thus available on the PCB, of which only four have connectors. This allows support for four paddles or two joysticks, with capacity for twice this many without redesigning the ASIC. The A/D is 6 bits wide, to give sufficient resolution after calibrating joysticks. It appears to the software as a bank of eight, 6 bit, read-only registers from 6808h to 680Fh, known as ADC0-7. They are updated approximately 200 times per second. The A/D inputs have an input range of 0V (data = 00) to 2.5V (data = 3Fh), and an input impedance of 180k to Vcc. 2.10 PAL subcarrier locking The main oscillator for the ASIC is 40MHz. A divide by 9 output at 4.444MHz is provided with a 5:4 mark/space ratio. It is possible to change the main crystal to 9 x 4.33619MHz = 39.902571 MHz, slowing the whole system by 0.25%. This may or may not upset the disk drives, but even if this is the case, a diskless unit could provide PAL subcarrier frequency locked to the master oscillator, thus improving the picture quality. 2.11 Locking of enhanced features The ASIC contains a locking mechanism, whereby the enhanced features are not available until the software has performed an obscure sequence of I/O instructions to the ASIC. This prevents any existing software from having nasty accidents on the new hardware. The lock is operated by writing a series of bytes to the 6845 address register at address BCxxh. The lock must first be synchronised by writing first a non zero byte value then a zero. The following sequence must then be written: FF,77,B3,51,A8,D4,62,39,9C,46,2B,15,8A,CD,EE The lock will then be picked. If it required to lock it again, the same sequence must be followed but without the terminating "EE". However, it should be noted that unauthorised use of this mechanism may infringe Amstrad's patent . When the lock is "locked", the secondary ROM mapping register does not exist (see Section 2.6). It is therefore impossible to select (or to deselect) the memory mapped register page. 2.12 Eight bit printer support The ASIC can provide support for eight bit printers. If a link on the PCB is made, the most significant printer port bit will be controlled by bit 3 in register 12 (decimal) of the 6845, i.e. bit 11 of the start address register. If the link is not made, the most significant printer port bit will always be low. 2.13 Floppy disc data separator Because of timescale pressures, the data separator design in the ASIC has been deleted rather than improved . Thus all models with a disk drive use an external SED9420 data separator. 2.14 Power requirements The Arnold V range is a 5V only design. Power requirements are:
3 SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONThe computers are shipped with a cartridge fitted in the cartridge slot. Disk based software is supplied with the 6128 Plus by Amstrad. There will be no welcome tape or disk.3.1 61281M ROM cartridge (i.e. 128k x 8) Combined firmware, BASIC and Disk ROM, incorporating free game:
One 3" disk with CP/M Plus and utilities only.3.2 4641M ROM cartridge as for 6128.4 MECHANICAL SPECIFICATIONBoth models in the new Arnold V range will share a common plastic cabinet. This will be a two-piece design, i.e. upper and lower cabinet halves. The name Amstrad will be moulded in to the top cabinet. The different variants will be handled by breakout sections or tool inserts as necessary. The 464 version will have the model name "464 Plus" moulded into the cassette door, and the "6128" version will have the model name "6128 Plus" moulded into the upper casework above the disk drive, in the area of plastic which does not exist for the 464 version. The monitors will have international symbols for brightness, contrast, volume and vertical hold. Apart from these items, there will be no moulded lettering, and moving cores must be kept to a minimum. The casework will provide both aesthetic and structural functions. Other moulded parts will be needed for the ROM cartridge, cartridge slot, cassette door, and the power switch. These should be in the same material and the same colour as the main casework mouldings. The power switch will be connected to a "bolt" which engages in the side of the ROM cartridge when the power is on, so that the cartridge cannot be inserted or withdrawn while power is applied to the machine. The main PCB, disk drive (6128) and cassette mechanism (464) will be mounted to the lower cabinet. Ideally, the keyboard should be similarly mounted on the lower cabinet, to improve serviceability, as should as many minor components as possible. A slimmer cassette mechanism must be used, to keep the height of the computer low. The cassette mechanism electronics will be mounted below the cassette deck, as with the old version.5 DISPLAY DEVICESWith the CPC range, the display device, i.e. Monitor, Modulator/power supply, or peritel adaptor also supplies power to the computer. In view of the fact that RFI prevention will be important in Europe after 1992, all display devices should be to Class 1 construction, i.e. earthed, so that it is easier to prevent the computer radiating, and should themselves be designed to meet the RFI standard EN55022 (CISPR 22). The monitors should operate off both 220V and 240V supplies without modification. The relevant safety standard for this product is BS415 (IEC65). 5.1 Monitors The new Arnold V range will always be sold with a monitor. The existing GTM65 and CTM640 monitors have been restyled in the same colour as the main cabinet. The monitor rear cabinet material must be to BS415 Clause 20.2 The MM12 monochrome incorporates a 12" paper white tube, similar to that used on the PCW9512. The input will be the same as the earlier GTM65 versions, i.e. impedance 470 ohms to 0V, analogue voltage input which is linear between 0.8V (Black) and 1.75V (Peak white). The CM14 colour monitor needs to handle a sixteen level input on each of RGB. The new monitor must present an input impedance of 100 ohms to 0V, and accept an analogue input current of 0-10mA for each gun. The levels shall be defined such that 0mA is black and 10mA is full on. The response must be linear between these limits. The monitors also incorporate stereo speakers, amplifiers, and a volume control. There is no 12V D.C. output.5.2 Modulator/Power Supply unitsThe existing MP2 can be used with the new Arnold V range. However, it would be better to produce a new version following the RFI guidelines at the start of this section, and preferably including a sound modulator. The input circuit of the Peritel adaptor will probably need to be redesigned to handle the new analogue video signals. It should also have the sound channels added.6 NATIONAL VARIANTSThe existing national variants of the ROM (i.e. UK, France, Spain) will continue to be supported, but no others will be added. Steps should be taken to limit the amount of national variation to that which really is necessary. There should be no need to make any changes for approvals reasons, except to power supply input voltages and mains connectors. There will be different versions of the keyboard, instruction book, and disk, as well as the ROM cartridge. It is thus possible to change between, variants without dismantling the computer.7 PACKING LISTThe following items should be included in the computer carton:
The following should be included in the monitor carton:
New Register Map The new register page, from 4000h to 7FFFh appears as follows:
Registers in I/O space are generally identical to earlier CPC464/6128 versions, except as follows:
Note that RMR2 can only be accessed when the new feature lock (Section 2.11 above) has been "opened". Otherwise, MRER exists in its place. POR column indicates whether a register has power on reset. A "N" indicates that the contents of a register will be undefined at power on. Connector pinouts From front of left hand side rearwards, then along the rear panel towards the right, the connectors will be:
The internal connectors will be:
This document was originally transcribed by Rob Scott and Paul Fairman.
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