{"id":86,"date":"2015-05-12T16:17:44","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T15:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nothinguntoward.eu\/?p=86"},"modified":"2015-05-12T16:28:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T15:28:37","slug":"reading-bbc-roms-with-an-mbed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nothinguntoward.eu\/?p=86","title":{"rendered":"Reading BBC ROMs with an mbed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quick post this time. I’ve had an mbed (LPC1768) lying around for ages which I’d never gotten around to doing anything more than blinking an LED with, and I also — for reasons too boring to go in to here — have some BBC computer ROMs which I don’t know much about. I was interested to know what was on them though, so I’m just going to say a little bit about how I used the mbed to read them.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9003\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The ACORNOS and ACORNBASIC ROMs look legit, but as for the others… they appear to be EPROMs<\/a>. These are chips which could be electrically written, and erased using UV light. To prevent accidental erasure you had to put a sticker over the window on the chip! I wonder if this could be an early case of pirated software<\/a>? Or maybe it was common for software to be distributed on EPROMs? Since this is from over a decade before I was even born, I’m not really sure!<\/p>\n

The ROMs were all of different part numbers but the first one I picked out was a 27C128<\/a> so I put together a reader on breadboard built around this. I figured the other chips must be all pin compatible anyway and a quick google for datasheets confirmed this. The circuit is super-simple: just connecting the chip to the 5v supply rails, pulling WE high (it’s an active low line), and connecting the data, address, CE and OE lines to the mbed’s GPIOs. I used all but one of the GPIOs. Cutting and stripping all of the wires was very tedious! The ROM chips need a 5v supply but have an input logic high level according to the datasheet of 2v. The mbed uses 3.3v logic but its inputs are 5v tolerant so it looks like we’re on to a winner.<\/p>\n

I don’t use breadboard much so I only had one reel of solid core wire to hand. I hope you like green!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9005\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next step was writing software. The way to read the chip is summarised by the read waveforms from the datasheet:
\n\"readwaveforms\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Essentially, you set the data address on the address bus, clock OE and CE low (they’re active-low lines), wait at least some minimum delay then read the data off the output bus. Afterwards, you clock OE and CE back high (in fact, I think you can leave one low all the time but I didn’t bother) and wait for the output to go back to tristate mode before repeating for the next word. The datasheet allowed ~250ns delays but just to be safe I used 1\u00b5s. Probably a good idea to allow for chips with different minimum timings anyway. Plus it would turn out later that the serial transfer is the bottleneck, rather than reading the chip.<\/p>\n

Aside from that, the only thing to say about the code<\/a> is that transferring the data to the computer over serial behaved a bit strangely. If I used Serial.putc() or Serial.printf(“%c”) on the data, I’d end up short of the expected 16KiB at the PC end. But if I used Serial.printf(“%d\\n”), I got exactly the 16384 lines I expected. So instead of spending ages trying to debug this, I opted to use the decimal ASCII transfer and convert at the PC end.<\/p>\n

The chip contents were just grabbed using a pipe:<\/p>\n

 $ pv -s 56000 > romcontents-decimal<\/pre>\n
This gave a fairly useless decimal output (example from the ACORNOS ROM):<\/p>\n
76\r\n31\r\n128\r\n76\r\n233\r\n188\r\n64\r\n14\r\n0\r\n66<\/pre>\n
…etc etc.<\/p>\n
So I threw together a quick bit of python to convert from the decimal ASCII to the raw binary:<\/p>\n
#!\/usr\/bin\/env python3\r\nimport fileinput,struct,sys\r\nfor line in fileinput.input():\r\n\tthisnum=int(line)\r\n\tthisbyte=struct.pack('B',thisnum)\r\n\tsys.stdout.buffer.write(thisbyte)<\/pre>\n
Piping the decimal through this gave the raw ROM contents – exactly 16KiB! This could be viewed with hexdump. Here’s a couple of examples:
\n<\/small><\/p>\n
alex@Apollo:~\/bbcroms$ hd graphics-bin |head\r\n00000000  00 00 00 4c 49 80 82 21  a0 47 52 41 50 48 49 43  |...LI..!.GRAPHIC|\r\n00000010  53 20 45 58 54 45 4e 53  49 4f 4e 20 00 31 2e 30  |S EXTENSION .1.0|\r\n00000020  32 00 28 43 29 31 39 38  33 20 43 4f 4d 50 55 54  |2.(C)1983 COMPUT|\r\n00000030  45 52 20 43 4f 4e 43 45  50 54 53 2d 50 61 75 6c  |ER CONCEPTS-Paul|\r\n00000040  20 48 69 73 63 6f 63 6b  a1 08 2c 80 02 30 13 c9  | Hiscock..,..0..|\r\n00000050  02 d0 11 2c cb 0c 10 08  98 9d f0 0d 8d f0 0c c8  |...,............|\r\n00000060  a9 02 28 60 48 8e df 0c  8a 48 98 48 ba bd 03 01  |..(`H....H.H....|<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
<\/small>
\nMost of the ROMs had some plaintext descriptor telling you the software and its version.<\/p>\n
This segment from AcornOS is quite interesting – a few familiar names here!
\n<\/small><\/p>\n
00003bf0  91 4c f4 ff 20 3a 53 45  54 53 44 46 20 4c 44 41  |.L.. :SETSDF LDA|\r\n00003c00  bb c0 28 43 29 20 31 39  38 31 20 41 63 6f 72 6e  |..(C) 1981 Acorn|\r\n00003c10  20 43 6f 6d 70 75 74 65  72 73 20 4c 69 6d 69 74  | Computers Limit|\r\n00003c20  65 64 2e 54 68 61 6e 6b  73 20 61 72 65 20 65 78  |ed.Thanks are ex|\r\n00003c30  74 65 6e 64 65 64 20 74  6f 20 74 68 65 20 66 6f  |tended to the fo|\r\n00003c40  6c 6c 6f 77 69 6e 67 20  70 65 6f 70 6c 65 2c 20  |llowing people, |\r\n00003c50  63 6f 6d 70 61 6e 69 65  73 20 61 6e 64 20 6c 6f  |companies and lo|\r\n00003c60  63 61 74 69 6f 6e 73 2c  20 63 6f 6e 74 72 69 62  |cations, contrib|\r\n00003c70  75 74 6f 72 73 20 28 61  6d 6f 6e 67 20 6f 74 68  |utors (among oth|\r\n00003c80  65 72 73 20 74 6f 6f 20  6e 75 6d 65 72 6f 75 73  |ers too numerous|\r\n00003c90  20 74 6f 20 6d 65 6e 74  69 6f 6e 29 20 74 6f 20  | to mention) to |\r\n00003ca0  74 68 65 20 64 65 76 65  6c 6f 70 6d 65 6e 74 20  |the development |\r\n00003cb0  6f 66 20 74 68 65 20 42  42 43 20 43 6f 6d 70 75  |of the BBC Compu|\r\n00003cc0  74 65 72 3a 44 61 76 69  64 20 41 6c 6c 65 6e 2c  |ter:David Allen,|\r\n00003cd0  42 6f 62 20 41 75 73 74  69 6e 2c 52 61 6d 20 42  |Bob Austin,Ram B|\r\n00003ce0  61 6e 6e 65 72 6a 65 65  2c 50 61 75 6c 20 42 6f  |annerjee,Paul Bo|\r\n00003cf0  6e 64 2c 41 6c 6c 65 6e  20 42 6f 6f 74 68 72 6f  |nd,Allen Boothro|\r\n00003d00  79 64 2c 43 61 6d 62 72  69 64 67 65 2c 43 6c 65  |yd,Cambridge,Cle|\r\n00003d10  61 72 74 6f 6e 65 2c 4a  6f 68 6e 20 43 6f 6c 6c  |artone,John Coll|\r\n00003d20  2c 43 6f 6d 70 75 74 65  72 20 4c 61 62 6f 72 61  |,Computer Labora|\r\n00003d30  74 6f 72 79 2c 43 68 72  69 73 20 43 75 72 72 79  |tory,Chris Curry|\r\n00003d40  2c 44 65 73 69 67 6e 65  72 73 20 6f 66 20 74 68  |,Designers of th|\r\n00003d50  65 20 36 35 30 32 2c 4a  65 72 65 6d 79 20 44 69  |e 6502,Jeremy Di|\r\n00003d60  6f 6e 2c 54 69 6d 20 44  6f 62 73 6f 6e 2c 4a 6f  |on,Tim Dobson,Jo|\r\n00003d70  65 20 44 75 6e 6e 2c 50  61 75 6c 20 46 61 72 72  |e Dunn,Paul Farr|\r\n00003d80  65 6c 6c 2c 46 65 72 72  61 6e 74 69 2c 53 74 65  |ell,Ferranti,Ste|\r\n00003d90  76 65 20 46 75 72 62 65  72 2c 4a 6f 6e 20 47 69  |ve Furber,Jon Gi|\r\n00003da0  62 62 6f 6e 73 2c 4c 61  77 72 65 6e 63 65 20 48  |bbons,Lawrence H|\r\n00003db0  61 72 64 77 69 63 6b 2c  44 79 6c 61 6e 20 48 61  |ardwick,Dylan Ha|\r\n00003dc0  72 72 69 73 2c 48 65 72  6d 61 6e 6e 20 48 61 75  |rris,Hermann Hau|\r\n00003dd0  73 65 72 2c 48 69 74 61  63 68 69 2c 41 6e 64 79  |ser,Hitachi,Andy|\r\n00003de0  20 48 6f 70 70 65 72 2c  49 43 4c 2c 4d 61 72 74  | Hopper,ICL,Mart|\r\n00003df0  69 6e 20 4a 61 63 6b 73  6f 6e 2c 42 72 69 61 6e  |in Jackson,Brian|\r\n00003e00  20 4a 6f 6e 65 73 2c 43  68 72 69 73 20 4a 6f 72  | Jones,Chris Jor|\r\n00003e10  64 61 6e 2c 44 61 76 69  64 20 4b 69 6e 67 2c 44  |dan,David King,D|\r\n00003e20  61 76 69 64 20 4b 69 74  73 6f 6e 2c 50 61 75 6c  |avid Kitson,Paul|\r\n00003e30  20 4b 72 69 77 61 63 7a  65 6b 2c 50 65 74 65 72  | Kriwaczek,Peter|\r\n00003e40  20 4d 69 6c 6c 65 72 2c  41 72 74 68 75 72 20 4e  | Miller,Arthur N|\r\n00003e50  6f 72 6d 61 6e 2c 47 6c  79 6e 20 50 68 69 6c 6c  |orman,Glyn Phill|\r\n00003e60  69 70 73 2c 4d 69 6b 65  20 50 72 65 65 73 2c 4a  |ips,Mike Prees,J|\r\n00003e70  6f 68 6e 20 52 61 64 63  6c 69 66 66 65 2c 50 65  |ohn Radcliffe,Pe|\r\n00003e80  74 65 72 20 52 6f 62 69  6e 73 6f 6e 2c 52 69 63  |ter Robinson,Ric|\r\n00003e90  68 61 72 64 20 52 75 73  73 65 6c 6c 2c 4b 69 6d  |hard Russell,Kim|\r\n00003ea0  20 53 70 65 6e 63 65 2d  4a 6f 6e 65 73 2c 47 72  | Spence-Jones,Gr|\r\n00003eb0  61 68 61 6d 20 54 65 62  62 79 2c 43 68 72 69 73  |aham Tebby,Chris|\r\n00003ec0  20 54 75 72 6e 65 72 2c  41 64 72 69 61 6e 20 57  | Turner,Adrian W|\r\n00003ed0  61 72 6e 65 72 2c 57 69  6c 62 65 72 66 6f 72 63  |arner,Wilberforc|\r\n00003ee0  65 20 52 6f 61 64 2c 52  6f 67 65 72 20 57 69 6c  |e Road,Roger Wil|\r\n00003ef0  73 6f 6e 2c 41 6c 61 6e  20 57 72 69 67 68 74 2e  |son,Alan Wright.|<\/pre>\n
In case the contents of these ROMs are useful to anyone, here’s a tarball<\/a> of all of them. It contains:<\/p>\n