Does anyone knows if the vhdl source code would be available for download somewhere ?
I believe it will be included in the CD that comes with OCM , but would it also be available for free?

dunno, I think it's opensource...

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Quote: as the amount of OCM available on pre-order almost completely sold out Does that mean there maybe some OCM's left ??

Unfortunately it does not. We have some potentially double orders (and a few that have not been confirmed yet), but that might only free up a few. The 'waiting line' currently is longer than the amount of OCMs potentially available.

To bad i didn't have funds to buy one... and now on Bazix site the news that there are no plans for a second batch

Hope for an OCM2 ??

I wanted an MSX1 with ADVRAM,and improved scrolls - horizontal specially -.And TWO PSG´s at the same time with SCC

Is the OCM a Straight-2 or a 2+? Either way, I would use it as the base of a kickass SymbOS "workstation". With it's powerful 10 MHz mode (and it's in-code, but commented-out support for 20 MHz), MSX2 video and music chip support and more, the OCM is the most powerful 8-bit computer ever built and in combination with SymbOS could easily provide a low-cost/high-performance computer system for the third world. At the various least, I suspect that it will replace the CPC-TREX as the leading-edge platform for SymbOS development.

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the OCM is the most powerful 8-bit computer ever built

Well its _emulating_ an 8-bit computer. My PC can do the same and even faster I'm pretty sure SymbOS will kick ass on 10MHz though. It already rock on 3MHz

Yes , It has been told this code would be open source, but it is unclear if the CD will
contain the msx source code in VHDL or VHDL examples .
And i was announced that the code could be freely modified and re-distributed , like with a GPL licence.
Then I wonder why it is not downloadable from the ascii or bazix site ?

The OCM is currently an MSX2, I haven’t seen any MSX2+ features.

The CD contains the MSX source code in VHDL. I don’t know the actual license of the code yet (my Japanese isn’t so good), but I’m sure that’ll be cleared up in the future. I didn’t see any ROM files among the source code, so I don’t know where they are stored.

One thing I found is that it does have an RTC implementation, but it does not remember the settings after turning it off (it does when only resetting). Functionality to store the RTC settings to the SD card would be useful, or I might try to modify the defaults.

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One thing I found is that it does have an RTC implementation, but it does not remember the settings after turning it off (it does when only resetting). Functionality to store the RTC settings to the SD card would be useful, or I might try to modify the defaults.

That's a bummer... We'd definately need a fix for that. I'm not SCREEN0|WIDTH80|COLOR15,0,0|SETSCREENing every time I want to b00t my OCM... Does it at least have an internal clock tho?

If I understand it right, Grauw is the lucky person who already got his OCM ?
Let's start some other topic where OCM owners can post about their findings and answer the questions from those who want to ask !

I posted about it on my blog:

http://www.grauw.nl/blog/entry/385

If you want, you can ask me questions there .


~Grauw

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I would use it as the base of a kickass SymbOS "workstation". With it's powerful 10 MHz mode (and it's in-code, but commented-out support for 20 MHz), MSX2 video and music chip support and more, the OCM is the most powerful 8-bit computer ever built and in combination with SymbOS could easily provide a low-cost/high-performance computer system for the third world. At the various least, I suspect that it will replace the CPC-TREX as the leading-edge platform for SymbOS development.

The TurboR already replaced the CPC-TREX as the most powerful SymbOS platform
What I would like to know is, if in the 10MHz/20MHz modes the speed of the VDP is also been increased??
Very interesting, as only in this case the OCM would be faster than the TurboR.

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The TurboR already replaced the CPC-TREX as the most powerful SymbOS platform What I would like to know is, if in the 10MHz/20MHz modes the speed of the VDP is also been increased?? Very interesting, as only in this case the OCM would be faster than the TurboR.

In 10MHz Z80 mode, the VDP command speed is the same as in the Z80 3.57 MHz mode. The VDP command speed is independent from the Z80 speed.

However, the VDP command speed is currently approximately twice as fast in the OCM as in a real MSX. So it is still a nice improvement for SymbOS.

In an earlier version of the VHDL code, the VDP command engine was between 3 and 8 times as fast, depending on the command and the screen mode. However, this speed has been reduced for compatibility and stability reasons.

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However, the VDP command speed is currently approximately twice as fast in the OCM as in a real MSX.

I don't want to sound critical, but why doesn't the speed match the old MSX2. If the timing is off by this much, the OCM will be quite useless for MSX development (unless the developed SW is targeted towards OCM only). To make sw that works well on older MSXes, it sounds like the OCM is as bad or even worse than PC emus.

And I'm sure there will be compability issues with existing MSX sw as well because of this (although most sw doesn't rely too much on the command engine timing).