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Initial version: what I know so far.

Thomas Harte 2021-06-15 11:34:57 -04:00
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The Enterprise is a late-generation Z80-based computer with custom audio and video chips.
## Nick
Nick is the Enterprise's video chip, offering text and pixel modes at up to 8 bits per pixel output; it uses a line parameter table potentially to obtain a unique mode and palette for every line of the display. Unusually for a computer of the period, it runs asynchronously from the processor.
### Line Timings
Nick provides 57 slots per line, each slot being 16 cycles wide, for a total of 912 cycles/line. In its highest resolution mode it can output one pixel per cycle.
It is stated to be 'phaselocked' with the PAL colour subcarrier on PAL machines; taking that to mean that 912 cycles equates to a slightly-overlong line of exactly 284 colour cycles:
1. each line should last 284*64/283.7516 µs = 45440000/709379 µs ≈ 64.06µs;
2. therefore there are 1000000 / (45440000/709379) = 709379000000/45440000 = 17734475/1136 ≈ 15611.33 lines/second;
3. which implies an ideal clock rate of 912*17734475/1136 = 1010865075/71 Hz ≈ 14,237,536.27 Hz.
That gives (1010865075/71) / 4000000 = 1010865075/284000000 = 40434603/11360000 ≈ 3.56 Nick cycles for every Z80 cycle.
### Z80 Access
Nick marshals 64kb of memory; if the Z80 wants to access that 64kb or to access one of Nick's registers then it must wait for an access window.
Each 16-cycle Nick slot is divided as:
* five cycles for a first VRAM read;
* five cycles for a second VRAM read; and
* six cycles for a Z80 access.
The Z80's clock will be paused in order to align its access with the available window; the clock can be held only in multiples of a half cycle.
Since six Nick cycles are around 1.69 Z80 cycles, meaning that in the first case just less than 1.19 Z80 cycles will be available after waiting for a half-cycle to begin, I assume this means that the final cycle of any affected Z80 bus cycle is held until the first half-cycle that is wholly inside an access window.
## Dave
Dave is the Enterprise's audio and IO chip, providing three tone channels and one noise, along with high-pass filtering and ring modulation. It is also responsible for interrupt status, and manipulations of the memory map.
### Memory Map
Dave uses a four-entry table to map the top 2 bits of the Z80's 16-bit address bus to 8 bits, producing a total address space of 22 bits, i.e. 4 megabytes, pageable in 16kb chunks.
Specifically it provides four read/write registers at ports B0B3, representing the 16kb region to map in the Z80's [0000, 3FFF], [4000, 7FFF], [8000, BFFF] and [C000, FFFF] regions.
The unexpanded 64kb machine divides this up as:
* Banks 0 and 1: the built-in EXOS ROM; and
* Banks FCFF: the 64kb of RAM shared with Nick.
The 128kb machine adds a further four banks of RAM at F8FB; further expansion RAM usually populates the 4mb address space downward from there.
At reset all four paging registers are cleared to 0, making the first 16kb of the EXOS ROM visible in all four segments of the Z80's addressing space.