© 2003-2010 Igor A. Maznitsa. All Rights reserved.
News:
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09-MAY-2009 : Small bugfixing of assembler macroses to develop for ZX-Poly platform and use TAP as storage, they placed into current distributive of the emulator. New version 1.0.2 of the sprite corrector utility is available, now it supports import/export for TAP files and I had found and corrected small bugs in its work.
23-APR-2009 : Small bugfixing in the emulator was made and the 1.8.1 version has been produced and accessible. just because I had found that the emulator was shown under Windows Vista not correctly enough.
26-JAN-2009 : The english version of the platform description is placed in the network. I hope that there are not so many mistakes in it to make the document misunderstood by you but anyway if you have any questions or remarks, do not hesitate to write me about them :)
15-OCT-2008 : The emulator version 1.18 is placed in the network. The ZX-Poly sprite corrector 1.01 is placed in the net, the ZX 512x384 mode was supported by the utility.
14-SEP-2008 : The emulator version 1.17 was placed in the network. The speed of the ZX-Poly graphic mode simulation had been a bit increased. The small potential bug of the graphic 512x384 mode had been fixed.
21-FEB-2008 : The ZX-Poly sprite corrector v 1.00 was placed on the site.
17-FEB-2008 : The version 1.16 of the platform emulator was placed in the net.
12-JAN-2007 : The first version of the ZX-Poly emulator was placed in the net.
MAY-1994 : The birthmonth of the conception
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The
introduction
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In 1994 the idea "how to increase the color resolution of the ZX and save the compatibility in the same time" was arrived at my mind. In1999 I had written an article and posted it in the russian side of the FidoNet, the article was titled as "a Color extender for ZX-Spectrum", as well I was interviewed by a Portuguesse spectrum-amateur who placed the interview on his web page in the internet. Because the "color extender" sounds a bit sombre, I named the development as the "ZM-Polyhedron" platform. I wrote a small emulator to check the idea and then modified (I made very small modificationst) a well-known game (in the ZX community) "After The War", I had colored only a few sprites from the game but it gave me understanding that my idea was working very well and I was on the right way.
(The picture above was grabbed from the first emulator in 1999)
(The picture above was grabbed from the current ZX-Poly emulator in 2007)
Unfortunately in nineties the
ZX-Spectrum's time passed by, so I stopped any activity to
make a hardware implementation.
On the New Yeas's 2007 vacation I had got enough free time to write the new version of the emulator (with Java) and to make a detailed reference of the idea and the platform. Also I wrote the platform's test-ROM to make possible the testing.
ROM.........................32 kB (the
standard ZX-Spectrum 128 SOS)
RAM..........................512 kB
CPU...........................4xZ80 (3.5MHz)
The system contains four processor modules, every module has own Z80 CPU chip working in 3.5 MHz. That processors called CPU0, CPU1, CPU2,CPU3. A processor with a less index has the bigger system priority (as you understand the CPU0 has got the bigges priority). The CPU0 (remember please that mainly I mean a processor module not a chip because the cip is a composited part of the module) is the system manager and it can tune the work of other processor blocks. There are a few synchronizing mechanisms implemented in the platform. and you can read about them in the PDF reference.
I would like to explain that the platform
does not have any fantastic smart hardware controllers or a
transcendent CPU chips (with 64 bit registers as I saw in some
developments). All graphic work is organized as in the standard
ZX-Spectrum and there is not any sprite-accelerator inside. The
platform shows that we could get very powerful and cheap multiprocessor
home platform in the 80-th. (how much we lost)..
The mode works as the standard ZX-Spectrum video mode (yes, it uses attribute graphic and allows only 2 color for a pixel block 8x8 pixels) but a programmer can use 8 memory pages.
The mode allows 16 colors for every pixel (!). It is possible to colorize old games and play them in the mode because the mode is full compatible with the standard ZX-Spectrum mode. Moreover, the old colored games will be working without any speed decrease (!).
The mode is an attribute video mode (it seems as the video modes 0,1,2,3) but it allows to bring a high-resolution in old games and utilities.
To check the platform possibilities and its compatibility with old-software, I adapted the ZX-Word text editor to be working in the the video mode (512x384, I had corrected the font data inside only and the loader) and the result you can see below:| The standard ZX-Spectrum 256x192 screen | The ZX-Poly 512x384 mode (without any corrections in the executing code) |
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The platform allows a programmer to show an "aerobatics" in development for multiprocessor systems because all parts and modules of the platform are controllable bye a programmer and there are not any hardware uncontrollable "stones" to increase the system productivity. There is a mechanism that allows to emulate unexistent IO devices and I think it is possible to make a software emulator of the AY music chip through the mechanism.
The
ZX-Poly sprite corrector utility
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P.S.
Sorry for my English but I hope that
the common idea
will be understood by you if you find time to read the PDF file.. if
you have
any questions about the platform, do not hesitate contact me.. :).
© 1994-2010 Igor A. Maznitsa. All Rights reserved.