Date : Sun, 03 Aug 2003 21:13:01 +0100
From : "C Alastair Seggie" <alastairseggie@...>
Subject: Re: BBC controlled lathe (Re: BeebEm Development)
Thank you very much Wouter I will follow this lead.
I have been looking for a ROM for my Denford Starturn lathe for about 2
years now. I have seen many different people in Scotland, Wales and
England. I have covered about 1500 miles in the UK, spoken to people
from as far a-field as Australia and India, all in search of this little
ROM.
I have the software now thanks to a kind gentleman called Spike. I even
have dumps of the ROM from his BBC. The problem is not the ROM itself
but the carrier it is inserted into, before being placed in the BBC.
See this link for pictures: 8bs.com/substarturn.htm
The carrier has a GAL that seems to intercept the signals then send them
on to the ROM. It is in essence the lathe manufacturers' copy protection
as you can copy the software discs no problem, but you can only run them
if you have this ROM installed. The ROM is only 64K so we eliminated
this as the type that is used to page a large ROM. When I say we I was
getting help from another BBC-Micro group user Called Mark his initials
are MAC.
He wrote a small program which I ran through the ROM in Spikes BBC and I
gave him the output file. He then looked at the ROM dumps firstly in the
carrier then on it's own out of the carrier. And started a disassembly
of the ROM and software. He believed that he could hack the program so
that it no longer looked for the GAL on the ROM carrier. He made some
progress but then vanished I have tried to contact him via his email
address and this group but to no avail.
I do not have the knowledge of assembler to do this. I got some books on
basic and assembler and tried to teach myself so I could finish the
project. I have learnt a lot but I am still way out of my depth.
I need help, is there any one willing to have a go at cracking the
software? I still have every thing that I gave to Mark along with
schematics, pictures, SW, ROM dumps and the software owner's permission.
Please don't make me beg.
Alastair
-----Original Message-----
From: Majordomo List Manager [mailto:majordomo@...] On Behalf
Of W.Scholten
Sent: 03 August 2003 18:51
To: bbc-micro@...
Subject: BBC controlled lathe (Re: [BBC-Micro] BeebEm Development)
C Alastair Seggie wrote:
> Is there any way to implement the 1MHz bus via the printer port? My
> question is because there are quite a few BBC operated CNC Lathes,
> Milling machines etc out there which operate off the 1MHz bus. You
> normally find these with out the original BBC and more importantly the
> ROM and software, which render it useless (I hate seeing things like
> this go to waste.) At present people are just ripping out the guts
> and replacing this with some simple electronics, just so that it can
> be operated on a PC. You loose some of the better functions such as
> thread cutting but it is at least useable.
>
I saw a BBC offered on ebay a few days ago, and the accompanying text
said it was used for a lathe that the buyer bought.
I've looked it up again, see:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3038727666&category
=16166
It might be worth contacting the seller if there's any ROM/software with
it for that lathe (and for the lathe type).
Regards,
Wouter
--
BBC/atom/old magazine scans etc:
http://www.astro.livjm.ac.uk/~bbc/