Tatung Einstein: Console support for the 80 column card (TK02)

[RobertK]

The Tatung Einstein had an optional 80 column display unit named "TK02" which gave a nice monochrome 80x24 picture using a 6845 chip. You can see it in action (with two screens side-by-side) when you start MAME like this:

mame einstein -pipe tk02 -flop1 SYSTEM80.DSK

For that, you will need the tk02.zip rom file, which was hard to find, but an Einstein owner has dumped it now from his machine.

A manual for this unit (and many other Einstein manuals) can be found here:
http://www.tatungeinstein.co.uk/front/mans.htm
("80 Column Card Manual")

You can switch to the 80 column screen by pressing Ctrl-P and Enter, or you can set the startup mode in the Dip Switches menu to "Automatic 80 Column", then this will be the default mode.

FEATURE REQUEST: It would be nice to have VT100 or Generic console support for the 80 column screen too, because currently all output of either console is always displayed on the 40 column screen. Currently only when compiling without any console parameter printf() output is displayed on the 80 column screen.

Low-res graphics should also be possible on the 80 column screen, because according to the TK02 manual, all standard characters should be available when the character set is dip-switched to "Normal".

[dom]

I've taken a quick glance at the manual and the Mame code, it looks like it should be pretty simple to add support for.

However, looking at the Einstein character set I can't see all the graphics needed - 8 blocks are missing so lores graphics won't be available - though I guess 80x25 would be possible using the completely filled block.

[RobertK]

My mistake about lo-res graphics - I also had a look at the characters table and was wondering about the missing characters, but I forgot that it is 256x192 on the 40 column screen and therefore not made of block graphics characters.
But 80x25 would be a nice resolution for my game...

[dom]

I've just checked in code to support the 80 column card using mode 10 in the console_ioctl() call.

I'm not going to add anything for plotting, given it's character based it's actually easier for you to just printf() the appropriate character at the right point on the screen.

[RobertK]

Great, I'll try it tomorrow, thanks!

Sorry for this dumb (?) question, but how do I check what character is at a specific screen location (to implement the point() function)?

[dom]

Not at all dumb, cvpeek() in conio.h is the function you're looking for.

[RobertK]

Now that dom has fixed all remaining problems, we now have perfectly working support for the TK02 80 column mode. Thanks, mission accomplished!

I have published a new release of my game H-Tron, the package now includes a separate Einstein 80 column version:



Other new supported systems are the Microbee and the CCE MC-1000.

[Fireflight]

Hi, where can I please find a copy of tk02.zip for the 80 column ROM?

Thanks
Mike

[dom]

Just search for "tk02 mame" and it'll pop up - allmyroms has it for example.