Emulators – Hein Pragt Software

CpmBox a CPM 2.2 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The second operating system I used (after TrsDos) was CPM on a Z80 development machine. Some time ago I build the Z80 MBC2 board and I played with CPM again. I included a fully working MBC2 emulation in my Z80 IDE program but after using DosBox I got the idea of creating CpmBox. CpmBox is a full CPM 2.2 implementation on a Z80 emulator for Windows, including a VT100 terminal and 8 CPM disks based on the MBC2 with the looks of a real terminal. It is a portable windows program (one single executable) and the zip file contains the emulator, a directory with a lot of disks and the bootdisk and a dos based directory to load CPM files from and to dos. It is also possible to save and load programs from dos and save or load them to a CPM disk. It is freeware and I hope you like it. . Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. Part of this program was inspired by the Z80 MBC2 project and the boot disk and bootloader are from this project. I kept them as they are. The CPM disks are filed with old CPM based software I had in my collection and I filled the first 6 disks with all kind of software. Legally some of this software maybe is still copyrighted BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that most company’s will not complain. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this emulator

This emulator is exactly like a Z80 MBC2 computer running CPM 2.2 (without the i/o chip) and connected to a VT100 terminal.

Emulates: Z80 and VT100 terminal;
OS: CPM 2.2;
Keyboard: full 53 keys emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: Zilog Z80 the speed is depending on the PC hardware;
RAM: 64 kb;
Textmode: 24 x 80 characters;
Graphics: None;
Color: White on green screen;
Sound: None;
I/O: 15 CMM disks and access to DOS disk;
Design: Like an old terminal screen.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this CpmBox emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, a directory with CMP disk images and a directory for DOS based CPM files. It is a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of CpmBox (2022)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

CPM disks

I made some disks for this program and I got a question about how to make and maintain the disk image files. I have searched for a solution myself for a while until I found a utility program called cpmtools. But it were command line tools and not so user friendly. Then I found a gui for this toolkit and although the visual views are sometimes a little strange because of misinterpreted characters, it works fine. I zipped the complete directory as it is on my disk, including the correct disk definitions. You can download it here. Just download it and unpack it somewhere at your harddisk. Just doubleclick: CpmtoolsGUI.exe.

First you select a disk image in the upper left corner (or create a new one) and then you select the disk format. I use the disk formats of the MBC board project, use d0 for bootdisk 0 and d1 for alle other disks. You can now select the directory on you own harddisk in the right corner and you can select a file in the cpm view of the dos view and use the buttons to mover them from dos to cpm, or from cpm tp dos. I can read other cpm disk formats as well. This way you can create your own cpm file repository on your hardisk and copy them to the cpm disk images. This tools is not that user friendly and not very beautiful in UX but ir works fine for me.

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Apple 1 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The original Apple Computer was designed by Steve Wozniak. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak’s friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The Apple 1 computer board was fist demonstrated in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. The rest is history and although only a few machines were sold and a lot of them were lost in time, only a few machine are left and they are VERY expensive nowadays. Wozniak’s first wanted to use the Motorola 6800 processor but this was very expensive ($175) at that time and so he choose the much cheaper MOS Technology 6502 processor ($25). I started with the ISN8060 and the Z80 processor and I really disliked the 6502 processor, it was a simple and very limited processor in my view. A few years ago I build all kinds of replica machines in hardware and I also build and Apple 1 replica. It was then that I read the book IWoz and learned about the history of the machine. In modern design the Apple 1 was quite simple, Wozniak had build a terminal with a lot of logic chips in the past, he just added a cheap cpu, a small rom and ram and a PIA chip to create the Apple 1 computer. And yes, the Wozmon was a complete monitor program in just 256 bytes, that is something I respect. The basic version that Wozniak wrote was really bad, did not meet any standards and used integer arithmetic only. They hired Bill Gates and Paul Allen to write a decent basic for their new machines. I had written a decent Z80 emulator and a Intel 8052 emulator, this time I wrote a 6502 emulator. The first idea I had was building the Apple 1 computer emulator as I knew the design. The result is a portable Apple 1 emulator program for Windows 10 and 11. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the Apple 1 roms, and the zip file includes some old programs that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old basic interpreter on their own Windows 10 machines. As for the software, I feel the same, I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this Apple 1 emulator

This Apple 1 emulator is exactly like the original Apple 1 computer with the Wozmon, but with a build in basic rom.

Emulates: Apple 1 computer with keyboard and TV monitor attached;
Basic: The original basic is loaded at startup at location E000;
Keyboard: Emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: MOS 6502 emulator the speed does not match the old hardware;
RAM: 64 kb with Wonzmon at FF00 and basic at E000;
VRAM: none;
Textmode: 40 chars x 24 lines;
Graphics: None;
Color: Black and white on green with screen;
Sound: None;
I/O: Emulation of the 6821 chip is done;
OS: No disk and no DOS.

Keyboard mapping

The keyboard is mapped to the original Apple 1 keyboard mapping, f.i. the backspace key is converted to the Apple 1 mapping. Alle characters are converted to uppercase, just like the original Apple 1 keyboard would do.

Wozmon

At startup of this program it will load the Wozmon and the Basic in memory and then start the Wozmon. You can play with the Wozmon, and go to basic using the E000R command. But you can also go the basic using the menu on top, or reset the machine back to the Wozmon monitor program. In Wozmon mode, you can download .woz (hex files) to load machine code programs from your Windows filesystem. But you can also save of load binary files into memory and execute them with the xxxxR command.

Apple 1 basic

I also load the original Aplle1 basic on startup of the program, you can start basic with the E000R command from Wozmon of with the top menu bar. You can type in your own programs or load them from your Windows filesystem. This is done by keyboard redirection. I have found some Aplle1 basic programs and games to demonstrate the old Aplle1 basic, they are included in the download zip file.

Apple 1 figFORTH 1.1

You can start a port of figFORTH 1.1 for the Apple I from the top menu, resulting in a powerful programming environment for experimentation or computer control applications. The binary file is in the root directory together with the exe files and can be exchanged. It will be loaded at 0x0300 and after loading it will be executed at 0x0300.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this Apple 1 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with programs in .BAS and .WOZ format. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.03 of Apple 1 emulator (2023)

Version 1.03
- Added support for Forth, you now can also select in the top menu to load and run Forth on the Apple 1 emulator, the binary file is external.
Version 1.02
- Rom is now external so you can experiment with different roms or build your own rom for the Apple1 hardware.
Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Download old versions

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of Apple 1 emulator (2022)

Apple1 replica hardware kit

There is also a nice DIY project to make a working Appl1 1 replica, with the correct 6502 / 6821 / ram / rom hardware and a Arduino Nano to emulate the keyboard and video circuit hardware. It is a nice compact kit and this emulator is based on this kit. I sell the PCB and a partial Kit in my webshop.

The PCB together with alls the chips and sockets.

The PCB of this board only.

Retro computing webshop

Heinpragt.nl is a daughter site of this website and a webshop focused on retro computer parts, retro electronics components and chips and other articles that have a connection with old retro computers. It is a small webshop that I run myself and I also try to get some more information about retro computers and electronics. Shipments are only made to countries within the European Union.
Retro computing parts webshop

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MK14 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

This page is about my MK14 emulator for Microsoft Windows. The the INS8060, also called the SC/MP processor was the first real processor I studied when I was 13 years old, but at that time I did not have much money,so I could not afford to buy a real computer board. I read all I could about the SC/MP processor and I would draw the internal of the processor on a big piece of paper, with the RAM / ROM / keyboard and display as registers and I would have a lot of small zero and one papers to simulate the flow of the bits and bytes in the (paper) circuit. Looking back this was ridiculous, but this is the way I learned computer design and binary logic. The SC/MP is my first processor and nowadays you cannot get the processor anymore (at least not at a reasonable price), but there are emulators in software and hardware that are still available. After building two PIC14 boards I decided to also write a MK14 emulator for Microsoft Windows. I dedicate this program to Karen Orton (R.I.P.) who left us the amazing PIC14 hardware emulator. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the MK14 rom, and the zip file includes some old programs and documents that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old file on their own Windows 10 machines. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. If anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this MK14 emulator

This emulator of the MK14 has full memory expansion on 200H, 800H and B00H and the first 0x200 bytes contain the second version of the MK14 rom. The on screen keys work as they should do, you can also us the keys on your keyboard, the mapping of the command keys is on top of the key.

You can load programs in hex format using the top menu, the last digits of the filename is the starting address. Press reset or abort then enter the address and push the go button. You can also save the memory to a hex file, the first option only saves the original memory 0xf00 to 0xfff, the second option saves the entire ram from 0200 to 0fff. The instructions are cycle precise and the MK14 emulator runs on the same speed as an original MK14 would, so it can be slow sometimes, but its real.

This is a so called portable program, you do not need to install it. Just download the zip file and unpack it on an logical location on your disk. I have all my portable application in a top directory “portapps”. There is a win62 and a win32 version of the MK14 emulator, both are digitally signed for your safety. There is also a directory containing a lot of example programs I collected, with sourcecode and hex files. The is also a documentation directory that contains the original MK14 manual and some SC/MP programming manuals and datasheet.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this MK14 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with example programs. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of MK14 emulator (2023)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Retro computing webshop

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MPF-1 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The Micro-Professor MPF-1 was introduced by Multitech in 1981 and it was Multitech’s first computer product and probably one of the world’s longest selling single board computers. Multitech changed its name to Acer in 1987. The MPF-1 was based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor and designed specifically to teach the fundamentals of machine code and assembly language. The MPF-1 doesn’t look like a standard microcomputer board, it comes in a plastic book that folds out into two parts, along with two audio cassettes and a training manual. When closed, the MPF-1 can be placed on a bookshelf for easy storage which made it more attractive as it was easy to store. There are still quite a few MPF-1 boards for sale and you see them regularly on auction and marketplace websites. I haven’t owned an MPF-1 myself, but I’ve read a lot about it and secretly hoped I could get one someday. In the end I wrote a full implementation of an MPF-1 emulator including the old keyboard and seven segment displays. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the MPF-1 rom, and the zip file includes some old programs and documents that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that no one would not care if someone was using a 40 year old file on their own Windows 10 machines. I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. If anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this MPF-1 emulator

This MPF-1 emulator emulates a standard MPF-1b, but the rom is in the subdirectory and you could replace it if you like. It uses the old display that is also emulated and the on screen keyboard acts like the original keyboard of the MPF-1. In this version there is no sound support, I will add this in the future. Its has full memory expansion and emulates all the hardware components.

You can load and save programs in hex or binary format using the top menu. Press the go button to execute the program. When loading and saving the program will prompt for start and end adressed, this will require some knowledge of the memory map of the MPF-1 board.

This is a so called portable program, you do not need to install it. Just download the zip file and unpack it on an logical location on your disk. I have all my portable application in a top directory “portapps”. There is a win64 and a win32 version of the emulator, both are digitally signed for your safety. There is also a directory containing the rom and example programs I collected, with sourcecode and hex files.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this MPF-1 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, and a directory with example programs. It use a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.01 of MPF-1 emulator (2023)

Version 1.01
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Retro computing webshop

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TRS80 emulator

By admin on Friday, November 24, 2023

The Trs80 model 1 level II was my first computer in 1978 and I have worked on it for many years. I upgraded it to 64 Kb ram by piggybacking the ram chips and I did the lowercase modification. My TRS80 had some extra buttons on the backside for the modifications I did, but I never owned a expansion unit and I never had disks. It was a 64 kb TRS80, with lowercase mod and a joystick interface and a cassette player / recorder for loading and saving programs. I wrote a lot of programs in these days, in Basic and assembler. My TRS80 machine broke and was stored in the basement and on one of my moves to another house it got lost. I still write programs for the Z80 and I have written a good emulator and programming IDE with CP/M emulation and so the idea for building a virtual TRS80 was born. There are several good emulators, but mostly not in a true Window (most of them are console applications) and most of them emulate an awful lot including the cassette and disks (even with the original sound) and the waiting for a program to load for more then 10 minutes. These are the true FULL emulators that emulate the old hardware including all the faults. These programs mostly do not include roms and they have a lot of settings, I used them but the lot of settings and the painful loading was annoying to me. I like simple and easy to use portable programs that can be used out of the box. And so this TRS80 emulator was born, it is a easy to use emulator that will give you the experience of using the old machine, but with modern loading speed and cassette tapes on the PC storage. On this page I will tell you what it is, what it can do and also what it cannot do. Regards, Hein Pragt.

Copyright

I respect copyright and I will not distribute illegal software. But this program includes the model I and III roms, and the zip file includes a lot of cassette tapes of old programs that still might be copyrighted. BUT in my opinion the copyright was from 40 to 45 years ago, these products have not been on the market for a lot of years and I think that for instance Microsoft would not care if someone was using a 40 year old basic interpreter on their own Windows 10 machines. As for the tape software, I feel the same, I do not ask any money for this package and the main goal is to keep the old spirit alive. I anyone can identify him or herself as a legal copyright owner and has problems with the distribution I will remove that content. But I seriously believe there is no one to object to distributing these old artifacts as freeware. My program itself is closed source but freeware.

What is inside this emulator

This emulator is exactly like my own old TRS80 computer with one added extension and that is the Model II roms.

Emulates: TRS 80 Model I level 1 and level 2 and the Model III computer;
Basic: Level 1 (4k ROM) / Level II (12k ROM) / Model III (14k ROM);
Keyboard: 53 keys emulated by the PC keyboard;
CPU: Zilog Z80 / 1.77 MHz, the speed is recalculated to match the old hardware;
RAM: 64 kb;
VRAM: 1 kb;
Textmode: 32 x 16 of 64 x 16;
Graphics: 128 x 48 pixels, screen is resizable;
Color: Black and white on green with screen;
Sound: Emulated on PC hardware from the cassette port;
I/O: Emulation of the Joystick on thge arrow keys of the PC and the spacebar;
OS: No disk and no DOS.

Keyboard mapping

The keyboard of the TRS80 had a different layout than modern keyboards, I chose to map all the keys and special characters of the PC keyboard to the corresponding key of the TRS80. There is one key that is not in a PC keyboard and that is the BREAK key, this key is mapped to the END key of the PC keyboard. The cursor keys are mapped to emulate several joystick extensions on the TRS80, on most games that used the joystick, the cursor keys and spacebar will work fine.

Casette I/O

One of the things that was annoying in the old days was the waiting for a program to load. This could easily take up 5 to 10 minutes and most of the emulators use the internal old rom routines to read cassette tape files. Even first loading a tape, then type cload and then press play on the virtual cassette recorder. It is like he original experience but I did not like that. So I patched the roms to reroute the CLOAD and CSAVE to my own Windows routines that can load and save in a few seconds and even can read (and write) several cassette formats. A basic CAS file will auto-run, I find that convenient, and Ascii based basic fille will not auto-run. You can also load and save with the menu on top of the window. But you could load a basic file in Ascii and save it to a CAS file. There are only a few settings, like selecting a machine and resetting a machine. Maybe in the future I will expand this a little, but never too much.

Download

Here you can download the latest version if this TRS80 emulator. This download is a zip file containing a portable x64 (and a x32 version) Windows exe programs, some directories with programs in .BAS and .CAS format. It us a portable program, just unpack it somewhere on the disk and start it by clicking it. This program is digitally signed with my own code certificate and it is trusted by Microsoft windows.

Download x64 (and x32) version 1.00 of hmp_trs80_emulator (2022)

Version 1.00
- First (beta release) version, the program has been testen by myself on my hardware.

Links to information, documentation and tips

A very extensive description with schematics of the TRS80 Model I level II computer.
Sams ComputerFacts – Model I (1985)(Howard Sams)(pdf)

The well-known technical reference manual that Tandy sold and which was very poorly available.
Radio Shack TRS-80 Micro Computer Technical Reference Handbook 2nd

This is the technical reference manual of the TRS80 expansion interface.
Expansion Interface Service Manual (19xx)(Radio Shack)(pdf)

Wikipedia’s page about the TRS80 model 1.
TRS80 wikipedia page

A very complete page with information about the TRS80 model 1.
www.trs-80.org/model-1.

Another very complete page with information about the TRS80 model 1
oldcomputers.net/trs80i

A nice page about bringing a TRS80 Model 1 computer back to life.
classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2015-03-13-trs-80-model1-L1-fix

A site with a lot of information about all TRS80 computers (Ira Goldklang).
Ira Goldklang’s TRS-80 Revived Site (Engels)