Omega-TI Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 BETA RELEASE 9640 Menu System (80 Column Menu Loader) F18A & 9938 Compatible Best when used with Extended BASIC 2.7 Suite Cartridge TIMXT (80 Column Color ANSI Communications Program) F18A Compatible Okay here are the programs and unfinished documentation. I wanted to gussy up the manual more, but I've been slammed at work and will not even be home on Saturday which is the day this was originally going to be released. Enjoy the heck out of these programs, they are going to change the way you use your TI! Please post all questions, comments, ideas or bug reports to this message thread. Ω 9640 Menu System & TIMXT.zip 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 (edited) Thank you, Omega, for taking the time to put these together in releasable format and for your testing efforts. These are by no means polished products. Both were started in part to satisfy my curiosity about the F18A and GPL, and as part of the MENU source code reconstruction. A few comments about SMT: SMT's interpreter requires the F18a to display color ANSI. Constructing color characters with the V9938 is a bit more challenging and time intensive. If you want V9938 color emulation, you'll need a Geneve and PORT. Direct keyboard scanning and some receive functions are driven by a pseudo state machine but sadly, even this does not overcome the bugs in the console interrupt routine and the slow, small, VDP-based circular interrupt buffer. 4800bps is the fastest reliable connection speed as a result. If (when?) I augment the RS232 routines using PORT's RS232 routines, hardware handshaking will become an option along with direct polling for file transfers. Scrolling and character display make use of the F18a hardware features and GPU. Thanks to Matthew, Tursi, and Rasmus for answering questions along the way, and for putting up with my not having the actual hardware. Edit: SMT stands for Super Mass Transfer (aka TI MXT) Edited November 6, 2015 by InsaneMultitasker 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 This is nice! I've loaded the menu right up... First glance, on my system I see a strange back-tick character in menu option 'B'... Also, it doesn't seem to save the color selection. But it does save the menu configs. But this is pretty cool! Thanks! -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ti99iuc Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 Nice ! really thank you, i will try it in the weekend Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shift838 Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 This is nice! I've loaded the menu right up... First glance, on my system I see a strange back-tick character in menu option 'B'... Also, it doesn't seem to save the color selection. But it does save the menu configs. But this is pretty cool! Thanks! -M@ the 'B' has been part of the code since the beginning. Just ignore it. WE can say it states for 'BETA'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 the 'B' has been part of the code since the beginning. Just ignore it. WE can say it states for 'BETA'. I like that The tick is part of my 'visual debugging' for the clock routines. I haven't had the time to remove it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 Clocks.. Hmm, any plans to support the HDX1.TIME clock? I've heard a couple strategies for keeping time in the minesweeper thread, so I imagine initializing time from the whole PAB dance doesn't hurt too much. Also I remember the UberGrom can expose a real-time clock that Tursi made easy to read. Are any of those in play? Oh, the tick goes away if you go into the editing options and back. But you probably already know that. And, any quick tips on what JIMS is? I saw that when saving. I think it was a choice of BOOT or JIMS. Is that how you create chainable menus? And the answer can be wait for the docs. -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted November 6, 2015 Share Posted November 6, 2015 Clocks.. Hmm, any plans to support the HDX1.TIME clock? I've heard a couple strategies for keeping time in the minesweeper thread, so I imagine initializing time from the whole PAB dance doesn't hurt too much. Also I remember the UberGrom can expose a real-time clock that Tursi made easy to read. Are any of those in play? Oh, the tick goes away if you go into the editing options and back. But you probably already know that. And, any quick tips on what JIMS is? I saw that when saving. I think it was a choice of BOOT or JIMS. Is that how you create chainable menus? And the answer can be wait for the docs. -M@ HDX1.TIME may be possible. I do not have my HDX device built yet. I have not looked into the UberGROM clock. I did test and implement Classic99 Clock support though I don't recall if it is part of this shared version. The menu was called JIMS as a nod to Jim S. but BOOT seems to be more popular and is usable with the XB27 loader. Personally, I'd like to allow saving to any path.filename in the future. The "chainable" menus are created using FCTN-4 to save the menu options into an executable program. When you run the program, it loads the menu options and returns control to BOOT. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted November 7, 2015 Share Posted November 7, 2015 (edited) The UberGROM exposes a 7-point-something kHz timer, not a real time clock. The AVR series don't have an RTC function. We could make an ARM based one instead (something I want to do ), they tend to have RTCs. Anyway, my pipe dreams don't solve your issue. You could use the UberGROM timer if you already had it in the system and track elapsed time between calls to come up with a reasonable clock, but I wouldn't add one to solve clock. Edited November 7, 2015 by Tursi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 The UberGROM exposes a 7-point-something kHz timer, not a real time clock. The AVR series don't have an RTC function. We could make an ARM based one instead (something I want to do ), they tend to have RTCs. Anyway, my pipe dreams don't solve your issue. You could use the UberGROM timer if you already had it in the system and track elapsed time between calls to come up with a reasonable clock, but I wouldn't add one to solve clock. Thanks for clarifying that. I had totally misunderstood that I must have 'heard what I wanted to hear' instead of listening in that part of your video on the GromConfig tool. -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted November 9, 2015 Author Share Posted November 9, 2015 Okay... it's been download 27 times so far... Now that you guys have had a chance to play with this new 80 column menu, don't you think it's just about the slickest thing to come down the pike for F18A users so far? I'm curious to know how many of you have switched over to this new program already as your main program. When I first got my hands of this thing I was ecstatic and it took less than 5 seconds for me to switch and never look back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted November 12, 2015 Author Share Posted November 12, 2015 Oh, I forgot to mention... to the other couple of guys that were also doing some beta testing with TIMXT, you'll want to download & install this version as it defaults to RS-232/1, not the RS-232/2 that I use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wyerd Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 HeatwaveBBS in glorious Technicolor! Thanks InsaneMultitasker for all your hard work and to Omega for beta testing. It's fantastic! Love it! I spent over an hour hogging up Heatwave earlier once I remembered to change my settings on it. Here's what it looks like loaded up on my setup........ Now to check out the new BOOT menu system. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted November 13, 2015 Author Share Posted November 13, 2015 HeatwaveBBS in glorious Technicolor! I know, it's freaking great! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 Thank you, Omega, for taking the time to put these together in releasable format and for your testing efforts. These are by no means polished products. Both were started in part to satisfy my curiosity about the F18A and GPL, and as part of the MENU source code reconstruction. A few comments about SMT: SMT's interpreter requires the F18a to display color ANSI. Constructing color characters with the V9938 is a bit more challenging and time intensive. If you want V9938 color emulation, you'll need a Geneve and PORT. Direct keyboard scanning and some receive functions are driven by a pseudo state machine but sadly, even this does not overcome the bugs in the console interrupt routine and the slow, small, VDP-based circular interrupt buffer. 4800bps is the fastest reliable connection speed as a result. If (when?) I augment the RS232 routines using PORT's RS232 routines, hardware handshaking will become an option along with direct polling for file transfers. Scrolling and character display make use of the F18a hardware features and GPU. Thanks to Matthew, Tursi, and Rasmus for answering questions along the way, and for putting up with my not having the actual hardware. Edit: SMT stands for Super Mass Transfer (aka TI MXT) You say hardware handshaking is not available. So is it supporting XON/XOFF, or no flow control? -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 No flow control. Timxt scans for characters on an interrupt basis. I have not had time to add hardware flow control or to redo the interrupt polling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 Cool, thanks! And thanks for TIMXT! I've seen configurations for the UDS with TIMXT that configure the UDS for hardware flow control, but then I've also seen wiring to the UDS that binds the RTS/CTS electrically bypassing flow control, which seemed odd, since the UDS can just be configured to not use flow control. Which worked well for me with TIMXT, but I wanted to check I wasn't missing something. -M@ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted February 17, 2016 Author Share Posted February 17, 2016 Ever have one of those moments? I just found out that you can get the directory or a document to print from the 9640 Menu System by holding down the key! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aftyde Posted April 1, 2017 Share Posted April 1, 2017 Are there any updates to this software and where can it be found?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted May 14, 2017 Share Posted May 14, 2017 Are there any updates to this software and where can it be found?!? I've created a development thread for TIMXT so that I can post updates when they are available. There are also a few snapshots of the new emulation I added this week. I may be able to release that test version soon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted April 7, 2018 Author Share Posted April 7, 2018 Does anyone have a XB loader program they could share/upload? The 9640 Menu System is AWESOME with XB2.7s, but I'm thinking an AUTOBOOT from Extended BASIC using the FinalGROM 99 with the TIPI might be nice as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atrax27407 Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 It boots great from a RAMdisk! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 as an alternative I might suggest adding a boot flag to tipi's config that would mimic the horizon ROS. Essentially if set, tipi does its prescribed powerup then uses the tipi ea5 loader to run a prescribed program from whatever path/file is set in the config. Wouldn't matter what cartridge was in place. Don't know if Matt wants to do this or if his ea5 loader code can be called from the powerup routine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted April 7, 2018 Author Share Posted April 7, 2018 Yeah, about that... I can type in: CALL TIPI("TIPI.BOOT.BOOT") from Extended BASIC and get it to load... BUT, when I try putting it in a one line program called LOAD it comes back with "SUBPROGRAM NOT FOUND" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+InsaneMultitasker Posted April 7, 2018 Share Posted April 7, 2018 Yeah, about that... I can type in: CALL TIPI("TIPI.BOOT.BOOT") from Extended BASIC and get it to load... BUT, when I try putting it in a one line program called LOAD it comes back with "SUBPROGRAM NOT FOUND" my suggestion wouldn't even require a program, it would just be part of the tipi dsr and configuration to load a EA5 program at powerup. anyway, a simple EA5 loader should do the trick in the meantime. most game disks had them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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