The new, forth version of Caslink has been released. The creation of the new version was pushed by the very important event - Caslink was for the first time since 1999 integrated into a physical device: SVI-CAS. That is a great and universal digital tape recorder that can load software into various vintage computers - Commodore, Atari, Sinclair and of course - into MSX. Romsey, the author of the project has added support for uploading ROM, BIN and BAS files to our beloved computers with the help of Caslink's source code.
A few bugfixes have been done for this project; the ROM/BIN loaders, as well as the preloader have been significantly improved. Besides, as I figured out, Caslink had a problem with certain computers with non-standard RAM layout, as well as with computers with less than 64kb. Plus, Caslink didn't work on Korean Daewoo MSXs. Therefore, the option to use any RAM expansion in any usable slots has been added to support loading the software into those MSX computers.
Here's the list of features in v4.0:
- Massive rework of 8-49kb ROM loaders and BIN/ROM preloader:
- It's now possible to load 8-49kb ROMs into MSX1 computers with RAM in slot 0 as long as there's a RAM expansion is in slot 1, 2 or 3
- It's now possible to load 8-49kb ROMs into MSX1 computers with less than 64kb of RAM as long as there's a RAM expansion is in slot 1, 2 or 3
- It's now possible to load 8-49kb ROMs into Daewoo CPC computers as long as there's a RAM expansion is in slot 1, 2 or 3
- In case there's too little RAM or a RAM expansion is missing, there will be an error message: "NO RAM!"
- The maximum supported BIN file size has been increased to 24712 bytes
- The BIN loader has been relocated to address 0x8100 (from 0x8200) to load larger files
- The preloader has been reworked and relocated to address 0xC100 (from 0x9000) to better detect RAM anomalies
- Integration into the SVI-CAS device by Romsey - it's possible to load games with or without reset
- All MAC sources have been removed, use the AS80 assembler by Frank Kingswood to compile .ASM files
The landing page of Caslink 4.0 project with links to project's files, source code, utilities and sample files (MP3 and WAV) can be found here:
http://www.podrezov.com/caslink4.htm
The page with the SVI-CAS project's description and ordering information can be found here:
https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/hardware/svi-cas-image-pl...
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this project!
