Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyDuell
Quote:
Originally Posted by ortek_service
It would be interesting to see what's inside the P4000 Production Programmer and the later (E)P8000 & 9000-series ones, to see when they moved-away from the SC/MP CPU. From some of their adverts, they did also list quite a range of more obscure Motorola variant etc. EPROM's on these. They also advertised a BP4 TI Bipolar-PROM-Programmer
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There are pictures of the P4000 here :
http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/GP_In..._resources.htm
including the main PCB which contains an SC/MP (INS8060) and a couple of INS8154 chips.
In my opinion, the P4000 is still an interesting device, you can program it from the keypad, you can copy an EPROM to RAM, edit it, and burn the result back into another EPROM, etc. You have the SC/MP bus available on a header at the back too. But alas the EP4000 is more likely to end up raided for its 8154s. |
Thanks for that info on the P4000 - I'd somehow missed finding them on that site (well the 'Indexing' is a bit random, but I would have thought Google would have found info on previous searches I've done on these)
Not only are there pictures of the P4000, showing it's also using the SC/MP etc. there's even a copy of the firmware and scans of reverse-engineered schematics for it (that I presume may have come from you, as they looked a bit like your calculator ones I'd recently seen)
I presume you meant EP4000 in your last paragraph, as it seems the P4000 can only copy to the same single or 3-rail one as the master, so it doesn't have a RAM Buffer as no edit facility or Computer interfaces. And the EP4000 is also on that site, with ((c) GP 1980 text) PCB pictures & the firmware etc
http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/GP_In..._resources.htm
The EP4000 board isn't much different in complexity compared to the P4000 - mainly needing quite a few RAM IC's and extra firmware EPROM's, but only needed one INS8154.
I did notice that the BP4 Biploar PROM adaptor for these, as well as TI version (at £195!), there was a Signetics one at £TBD planned - from mid 1983 in the manual. So I wonder if they ever released one / if it ever supported programming NS ones.
I saw the EP4000 had a couple of DIN connectors on the PCB, and wondered if one might be power like the Softy-2
- but looking through the manual, they are just Video-Out & Cassette+RS232, as it seems the power supply is internal in these units.
That website also has many other GP models, like the
P9010, P9030 and XP640 (final one) - Which all use a
Z80 (and several more common-used than Z80 PIO, 8255 PIA's). And NivagSwerdna may be interested in these details for his
http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/GP_In..._resources.htm
- I notice Matthieu has requested a scan of the user manual for the P9010, so not sure if NivagSwerdna has one with his unit.
What did appear to be missing at first from that website was anything on the GP EP8000 and P8000 models. However, whilst the (E)P4000, P90x0 and XP640 have links to each other, I found the P8000 one was only listed in the main home-page index:
http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/GP_In..._resources.htm
- Where you can see it did
still use an INS8060 SC/MP CPU + just one INS8154 PIA (but now several 8255 PIA's)
Although the EP8000 (the last full-featured for development use unit, with the 9000-series and later XP640 confined to production copying only) isn't on there at all. But it did exist for a while:
https://www.seltec.co.uk/products/details/14639.html
- And I assume the 800-series ones were quite similar to their 4000-series models for the Production and full-featured EPx000 ones