If you are regularly interested in new products from
company SCORPION, then you have probably heard about the board
GMX, expanding the capabilities of existing
Scorpions. Mass sale of these devices
will begin in the fall of this year, although specialists
you companies promise that people who paid for the order
boards until June, they will be able to evaluate it in the summer
capabilities by installing it on your “scorps”. Cost-
The maximum fee for the fall of '98 will be
44u.e. (1cu=6.5r.). Promises of Scorpio people
sound quite convincing, since we already
held GMX in their hands. Unfortunately, that can
ment board was not connected and we could not
see her at work. But judging by the pleasant
the impression she makes with her
appearance, it will work. What about GMX?
looks like?
Green board, about 8x11 cm in size. "On-
at the top" a couple of Simms are striking, pa-
Nelki for ROM and processor, two PLM "Alte-
ra". “Bottom” the contacts for connecting
connection to the Scorpio board.
The approximate procedure for installing GMX is as follows. Under-
solder the cable from the new device (R, G,
B, Sync, Magic, +5V, “ground”), remove from
your board ROM and processor, insert them into
sockets on the GMX board and insert the GMX itself into
your computer's processor socket. All.
Today the main characteristics
devices are as follows:
RAM - 2MBt
ROM - 512kBt (flash-ROM)
And now in more detail aboutsome technical
technical indicators.
(C) SCORPION, 1998.
G r a p h i c M e m o r y e X t e n s i o n
Memory expansion up to 2MB.
Among the various, both existing and possible
possible options for organizing memory, the choice fell
to the option that is implemented in a computer
Tere Profi. That is, it is made so that 25bkBt
are addressed the same way as before, through the usual
Scorpio standard, and everything higher is according to
to the Profi standard - ODFFDh port. Since
Profi maximum memory is 1MB, then you can work
work with memory from 0 to 1MB according to the standard
Profi. It’s just that physically these will be different countries
remembrance. For example, you can download the program
frame for megabyte Profi and at the same time
painlessly use shadow service-mo-
nitor.
Graphic screen 640x200(208) and hardware
scroller.
The number of colors is the same as in a regular ZX
Spectrum. For each byte of graphics - one byte
attributes. Addressing the graphic screen starting
available from 4000h, while it is completely linear
naya, that is, the first 80 bytes are the first line
screen, the next 80 bytes are the second line, and
etc. Screen attributes are stored in one of
extended memory pages. Their addressing is precise
the same. The main purpose of the extended graphics
fiki - standard text screen 80x25 sim-
oxen (the symbol has a size of 8x8 pixels), non-
required for working with text editors
and postalprograms. To speed up work
text mode uses hardware
scrolling up and down. To shift the image
vertically by any number of pixels
you only need to write two bytes to
"scroller" ports that set the initial
address in the video RAM area for image output
nia.
Why did you choose the graphics card?
ran, and not purely text? The reason is
that text mode (with hardware character generator)
torus) is much more difficult to implement, in
Ideally, the character generator should be downloadable,
and this complicates the design even more.
Professional ROM0 (512 kBt).
The ROM stores the GMX board schematic. Moreover,
plan so that from the shadow it will be possible to cardio-
can change the scheme by loading one of the non-
how many possible options. Also, there is no need to
it happens that a large ROM has
the most favorable price/volume ratio.
When developing software for current versions, we have already
faced a limitation on the amount of ROM and RAM
(25bkBt). Therefore, further development of the built-in
new software will go
only with GMX support.
Turbocharged.
The GMX board has a built-in turbo circuit with
increase in performance by 1.8-1.9 times with
execution of programs from RAM. When working with ROM
performance increases exactly 2 times.
Switching turbo/normal as now: and prog-
frame and hardware. Byuser order
versions with clock speeds will be supplied
14 MHz. But their cost will be higher due to the use
use of more expensive microcircuits and more
fast processor. Most likely it will be possible
the ability to replace the GMX board with a more powerful one. By
at least we will try to do just that
yes.
Increased compatibility with ZX Spectrum and Pen-
tagon.
To do this, enter in the shadow monitor menu
additional menu bar - Standard
Spectrum. This disables all additional
ports and at the same time the station is turned on
standard ROM ZX Spectrum 128 & TR-DOS. Except
this introduced the ability to set temporary
Pentagon-128 parameters. When moving to these
modes the computer turns into absolutely
standard ZX Spectrum or Pentagon (although
you can easily make Pentagon-512), while
completely “forgets” about additional possibilities
ties. The way out of this regime, of course, is
only by pressing the "reset" button.
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