Installing the N8VEM Vb

Installing the N8VEM vb.net program

This VB.NET program is a graphical user interface for the N8VEM. It contains a VT100 terminal emulation (for talking to the board), plus a text editor for programming sbasic. It also enables batch download and upload of files so you can start with a brand new N8VEM and get all the files across with one keypress. And it also contains a utility for building new romimage.bin files with various options.

In order to speed up compilation, it has the option of either sending a file to the N8VEM and compiling on the N8VEM (minimum of about 1 minute), or the option of sending the file over to the altair SIMH program, compiling on the SIMH and then downloading the compiled file (about 8 seconds).

Files are here

Including the altair simh has made the program a bit more complicated as it needs to have a .dll installed and you need a specific version of the simh installed too. So there are three parts to this program that have to be installed:

Part 1:

Download the c_n8vem_folder zip (whatever the latest version is) and unzip to a folder c:\n8vem. Perhaps do a backup first if you have already downloaded this folder. This folder contains a wide range of programs needed for the N8VEM, and the vb.net program expects to find files in this folder.

Part 2:

Download w3sockets.zip. Unzip and put the sockets file in c:\windows\system32

Run the socketreg program to register it. w3sockets is used to talk to the Altair SIMH via Telnet, which is used both in compiling programs quickly in the simulator, and for building rom images

Part 3:

Downlaod the vb.net program. It will be called something like vb_net_package.zip. This changes every few days and contains both the compiled version and the source file. If this is the first time you have installed the compiled version, just run the setup program and it will install. If this is a reinstall, you may need to go into Start/Settings/Control_Panel/Add_Remove programs and uninstall a program called N8VEM.

The vb.net source is handy for debugging – eg a common bug is for the program not to find a link to a serial port, or to the altair simh, and then to stop running. If you want to see the source code, get (free) vb.net from Microsoft.

Part 4:

Download the file AltairExtractC_N8VEM_AltairSIMH.zip and put all the files in a folder c:\n8vem\altairsimh This is a simulation of a rather nice N8VEM that has 8 disk drives with useful files on each one. It is needed for compilation, but you can also run the simulation manually by running AltairAll.bat. You can also run wordstar etc by running AltairTelnet.bat, and then run any terminal program and connect via telnet.

Any problems, please send me an email