About programs in H8 processor

[Wesley]

Hello everyone !!!

I'm a fan of old machines, as well as old program emulators.

Making a search, I realized that there are some programs that run on H8 processors and could not be emulated in Messchess.
So I found this forum, but I don't know if it's a little late to make this questions because the posts about this topic have 5+ years...

Still, I come to try.

Programs from old machines on h8 processor? (Like Grandmaster Excalibur, Saitek Cosmos and more...)
Appropriate emulators?
Any indications?

Thanks.

[Tibono2]

Hello,
welcome to this forum!
The issue with H8 powered devices is the singlechip architecture of this MCU. The program code is stored inside it; this makes a difference with a CPU (e.g. Z80 or 6502) leveraging an external ROM storage. With the relevant tools and skills, the external ROM can be red to retrieve the code.
So far a H8 is sort of a black box with no way to read inside.
By the way, I am also (as you are) fan of old program emulators (for chess). Feel welcome to share experiences, eventually ask for support...
Cheers,
Tibono

[Wesley]

Hello,
welcome to this forum!
The issue with H8 powered devices is the singlechip architecture of this MCU. The program code is stored inside it; this makes a difference with a CPU (e.g. Z80 or 6502) leveraging an external ROM storage. With the relevant tools and skills, the external ROM can be red to retrieve the code.
So far a H8 is sort of a black box with no way to read inside.
By the way, I am also (as you are) fan of old program emulators (for chess). Feel welcome to share experiences, eventually ask for support...
Cheers,
Tibono

First, thank you for the kind words.

I am modest collector. I have only 10 old machines that I started collecting 30 years ago.


Regarding other machines, the work of Franz Huber came to complement the dreams of many enthusiasts, with his 440 Mess Chess emulations of old machines, combined with the work of Lars (With his program for electronic boards).

Franz, also, managed make an emulation for 220 famous old chess programs for DOS that run practically at the same speed as the computer we are using.

This gives us the impression that our searches for old machines and programs are over.

Of course, with the exception of machines that have the h8 processor. As for these, i think so only if the programmer himself provides us with the program to create from an emulation.

But, with these hundreds of virtual machines and programs available to us, in modern times, I think we can live with this lack.

Hugs.

[hap]

the work of Franz Huber came to complement the dreams of many enthusiasts, with his 440 Mess Chess emulations of old machines

Hello,

Almost all of the emulation is from MAME, the chess computer emulation was created by a handful of programmers. It's not solely Franz's work.

About H8: Never say never =) Who knows, hopefully one day it'll be possible to extract the ROM data. We thought the same about Hitachi HD6301 MCUs (the forerunner of H8) and recently it became possible to emulate them. For example Novag Super VIP, or CXG (Super) Enterprise.

[Berger]

About H8: Never say never =) Who knows, hopefully one day it'll be possible to extract the ROM data. (...)

And so it has happened!
Thanks to the hard work of Sean Riddle and hap, we already have several emulated chess computers with Hitachi H8 MCU: Saitek GK2000 (with clones Saitek Travel Champion 2080, RadioShack Mega 2050X, Mephisto Mythos...), Saitek Prisma (and clones), and even the Novag Star Diamond! The latter thanks to my humble collaboration.

And stay tuned... more to come soon!

Best,
Berger