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Graphics card has non dual port RAM for the framebuffer memory, which is interleaved with the pixel clock so its one of the caveats of the hardware making drawing slow. 1 on the CPU card, one on the Graphics card. So I scrapped the ROMs, and completely started over writing my own little simple bootloader and BIOS, I wrote those in Assembler, and then the main program that runs on the machine was written in C.
![weatherstar 4000 emulator for mac weatherstar 4000 emulator for mac](https://cdn.macrumors.com/images-new/push-graphic.jpg)
Even so, I dont know the API or anything to this ROM. the CPU card's ROM actually stes up TRAP 0 with similar code.
#Weatherstar 4000 emulator for mac code
Also, the graphics card contains its very own 68K, and its ROM was setup to be a bootloader only, with a TRAP toolbox routine in the ROM which is orphaned, assuming the downloaded program code sets up the vector table with this information.
#Weatherstar 4000 emulator for mac software
Since I am no expert at the 68K from a software standpoint, I ended up scrapping the idea of reverse engineering the existing TWC proprietary version of the old Ready Systems VRTX-32 ROMs. I had to fully reverse engineer the system back into a netlist, and eventually into my own version of the schematics in order to get a grasp on how the hardware works
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Not sure if reddit does blogs, or if anyone would be interested in this kind of thing as its in a highly niche part of the computing sector.Īnyways, on to the brief nerdy stuff: (Again, will blog in full detail later) My software is still very much in development and will only get better with time, hopefully achieving how it displayed before it was taken out of service.Įventually I will end up doing a full blog on this machine in time, probably on hackaday.io or some site like that. Happy to report that I have gotten the machine working in a primitive state, just so happens to be the same state as the machine ran originally when it debuted between 1988-1990 or so, Just before they implemented graphics mode.
#Weatherstar 4000 emulator for mac how to
So, I set myself out on a mission to figure out how to get one of these running again. I always loved the STAR 4000 growing up as kid, long before I knew what it actually was, that was producing the local forecasts and warnings on cable. There are various other threads here on reddit, such as this one: Not a traditional computer, but it does rock TWO MC68010 CPUs, which was a powerhouse for its time.Īnyone who knows this particular equipment, also knows the software to run this machine was transmitted over satellite which went End of Service in the summer of 2014, Therefore ending its ~24 year run. Anyone who knows or watched TWC in the 90s, likely remembers this thing. Here is my Battlestation: A WeatherSTAR 4000. If you know more old software resources not listed, please share!