Well, I’ll be… I added one long bodge between the suspect points and I got past the RAM test. Now I need to come up with a bootable floppy.

Well, the floppy drive seems to have issues. The activity led turns on and either the hed or main motor grunts shortly at powerup. The head doesn’t move though and doesn’t try to read after POST. Not sure whether the worm screw is seized. The disc doesn’t spin either.

The worm screw was working, and depending on the position of the moon the drive spins and keeps on spinning until the whole computer freezes. If the drive doesn’t spin, the head motor just lets out a short grunt and gives an error about not finding a boot floppy, even though a bootable floppy is inside the drive.

After some twists and turns, the EuroPC now boots from floppy, and also from hard drive, thanks to XT-CF-Lite. I have MS-DOS 5.0 installed on it. Not the most period correct, but I chose it because of the larger hard disk support. It’s great to see it working after all the work. It has been really educational.

I wonder if I can finally call my EuroPC fixed… I found one more broken connection between one of the address latches and the video chip. That was causing the Sierra SCI games not to work and also Check-it was crashing. Now both work, and I’m able to enjoy the Plantronics ColorPlus graphic modes.

konc wrote on 2021-04-01, 16:25:

The EuroPC part is correct, but I believe their joystick was the exact same common 15-pin PC joystick for both PC and PCII.
So for the PCII they did give the y-cable as you wrote, but it also has two 15-pin connectors for normal PC joysticks (and not two 9-pins)

Sorry for not letting this go. I would very much like to get the Joystick port working.
Have you (or anybody else) ever used a joystick with the EuroPC1 or 2?
According to the manual it is using port 258h and instead of the usual 201h (analog). I cannot see that the joystick port will work without a driver, or the game been made for this machine.

Jinxter wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:07:

According to the manual it is using port 258h and instead of the usual 201h (analog). I cannot see that the joystick port will work without a driver, or the game been made for this machine.

Yeah, exactly. On the Euro PC (non-II), you need a 9-pin digital joystick and software supporting the Schneider-specific interface.

mkarcher wrote on 2022-04-23, 18:55:

Jinxter wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:07:

According to the manual it is using port 258h and instead of the usual 201h (analog). I cannot see that the joystick port will work without a driver, or the game been made for this machine.

Yeah, exactly. On the Euro PC (non-II), you need a 9-pin digital joystick and software supporting the Schneider-specific interface.

Yeah, exactly. We need a driver that will take data from ports 258h and 259h and convert it into keyboard clicks, for example. Perhaps such software already exists on the supplied floppy disk, but we don't know how to use it. If anyone has documentation for the software from schneider, please share it with us

Would it be possible to write a short Basic program that listens to the ports to test how it works?

RetroBard wrote on 2022-04-26, 06:49:

Would it be possible to write a short Basic program that listens to the ports to test how it works?

5 CLS
10 x% = INP(&H258)
15 z% = INP(&H259)
20 LOCATE 1, 1: PRINT "Joystick1 =", x%
25 LOCATE 2, 1: PRINT "Joystick2 =", z%
30 SLEEP
40 GOTO 10

it work just fine, but how to control games with a joystick?

The actual driver should of course be written in Assembly, but is it possible to conceptualize in Basic that when, let’s say, joy up is read in the port, it would trigger the up arrow keypress?

RetroBard wrote on 2022-04-26, 07:40:

The actual driver should of course be written in Assembly, but is it possible to conceptualize in Basic that when, let’s say, joy up is read in the port, it would trigger the up arrow keypress?

I do not know how to program in assembler and am not sure how it should look, I think yes, the driver should emulate keyboard presses, so it will be maximum compatibility with all games, joy up is the up arrow, joy down is the down arrow, fire is the space bar, and need the ability to reassign keys through the configuration file

RetroBard wrote on 2022-04-26, 07:40:

The actual driver should of course be written in Assembly, but is it possible to conceptualize in Basic that when, let’s say, joy up is read in the port, it would trigger the up arrow keypress?

Is it possible to have a driver like this on an 8088 machine?

from https://t.me/retrotechsquad

when disassembling the game OperaSoft came across the processing of specific scan codes for Schneider

; non-standart scancodes handling
;# the Schneider/Amstrad PC1512 PC keyboards contain extra keys
;# a mouse, and a digital joystick, which are handled like extra keys.
;# The joysticks motion scancodes are converted into standard arrow
;# keys by the BIOS, and the joystick and mouse button scan codes are
;# converted to FFFFh codes in the BIOS keyboard buffer.
; 77h Joyst But1
; 78h Joyst But2
; 79h Joyst Right
; 7Ah Joyst Left
; 7Bh Joyst Up
; 7Ch Joyst Down
; 7Dh right mouse
; 7Eh left mouse

Jinxter wrote on 2022-04-26, 08:02:

RetroBard wrote on 2022-04-26, 07:40:

The actual driver should of course be written in Assembly, but is it possible to conceptualize in Basic that when, let’s say, joy up is read in the port, it would trigger the up arrow keypress?

Is it possible to have a driver like this on an 8088 machine?

I do not know, it must be hard

lazer725 wrote on 2022-04-26, 08:11:

from https://t.me/retrotechsquad […]
Show full quote

from https://t.me/retrotechsquad

when disassembling the game OperaSoft came across the processing of specific scan codes for Schneider

; non-standart scancodes handling
;# the Schneider/Amstrad PC1512 PC keyboards contain extra keys
;# a mouse, and a digital joystick, which are handled like extra keys.
;# The joysticks motion scancodes are converted into standard arrow
;# keys by the BIOS, and the joystick and mouse button scan codes are
;# converted to FFFFh codes in the BIOS keyboard buffer.
; 77h Joyst But1
; 78h Joyst But2
; 79h Joyst Right
; 7Ah Joyst Left
; 7Bh Joyst Up
; 7Ch Joyst Down
; 7Dh right mouse
; 7Eh left mouse

I think that there is the right program on the floppy disk from the package, there is a file "keybext", I assume that this is the same program that translates data from JIM into key scan codes, but I don't understand how to use it

It is possible to remap keyboard with ansi.sys and ANSI ESC codes. If the joystick port is reachable with ANSI ESC codes one could remap them to cursor keys?
It's a long shot.

Even if it worked in dos, i doubt it work work in games. They are probable programmed to talk directly to 201h.

RetroBard wrote on 2022-04-26, 07:40:

The actual driver should of course be written in Assembly, but is it possible to conceptualize in Basic that when, let’s say, joy up is read in the port, it would trigger the up arrow keypress?

I don't think a DOS driver is feasible. But maybe a patch for games. Like the patches @Cloudschatze makes for patching DOS games to support MIDI on Serialport. Peter De Wachter (https://github.com/pdewacht) also makes pacthes for games, like the ADPATCH with patches games to send OPL music to the paralellport.

Would it be similar to the mouse driver? In the EuroPC’s case, both use the same physical port. Not sure if they listen to the same port addresses.

Jinxter wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:07:

Sorry for not letting this go. I would very much like to get the Joystick port working. Have you (or anybody else) ever used a j […]
Show full quote

konc wrote on 2021-04-01, 16:25:

The EuroPC part is correct, but I believe their joystick was the exact same common 15-pin PC joystick for both PC and PCII.
So for the PCII they did give the y-cable as you wrote, but it also has two 15-pin connectors for normal PC joysticks (and not two 9-pins)

Sorry for not letting this go. I would very much like to get the Joystick port working.
Have you (or anybody else) ever used a joystick with the EuroPC1 or 2?
According to the manual it is using port 258h and instead of the usual 201h (analog). I cannot see that the joystick port will work without a driver, or the game been made for this machine.

Sorry I don't know how I missed that, thankfully it was replied by others. But let's clear any confusion that might be left once and for all.

Schneider only made one joystick during the EuroPC era (at least branded as Schneider and sold to be used with its machines): a common and terrible 15-pin PC analog joystick. On the EuroPC you were meant to connect it to a game card in the expansion slot. On the EuroPCII and EuroXT that same joystick was meant to be connected to the 9-pin port that looks the same (they kept it like this because of the mouse I guess) but is not digital, using the Y-cable adaptor I posted here Re: Schneider Euro PC

There was a technical note released that describes nicely the joystick issue with the EuroPC. Google-translated reads

"Joystick on the EURO PC
The Schneider EURO PC has a Microsoft compatible mouse connection. A digital joystick can also be connected to this connection by making the appropriate settings in the SETUP program.
This joystick cannot be used with the usual game software, only in self-made programs.
The game software expects an analog joystick in connection with a game port card as the joystick. In order to be able to operate games with the joystick, this game port card must be inserted in the expansion slot of the EURO PC and the corresponding joystick on this card must be used.
A corresponding game port card and an analogue joystick is available, for example, from Lindy Elektronik GmbH [company contact info]
But the game port cards and analogue joysticks from other suppliers can also be used."

I attach the original in German: