9938/9958 Discussion Forum

[TheMole]

As for VAPORWARE that is any software that does not exist but some one cites a example of how it could be faster on modern hardware compared to existing old hardware.

(Despite the new hardware does not have a single program that exists to do it!) VAPORWARE is musings with no evidence.

 

I would love to set up MESS but every attempt requires me to load something like Visual Studio which of course I do not have. Or load things that breaks other things.

Last attempt broke my BOOTCAMP drivers and made a mess that took me 3 days to fix.

 

Don't worry, I know what vaporware is Rich... I'm using the same definition as you.

Anyway, I've gone through the steps to set up MESS on my Windows work machine (Windows 7) and put together a zip file for you. It runs fine on my machine.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/be71yzc94e54ofx/mess.zip

 

If you download the above file and unzip it to a folder of your liking on your system you should have a fully functioning MESS install. It also includes the XHI and YAPP disks I mentioned above, as well as the extended basic and editor/assembler modules. In order to use it you will need to use the command line though, so be aware of that.

 

Suppose you've unzipped to folder to c:\mess then you can use the following commands to run XHi and YAPP respectively:

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/extended_basic.rpk -flop1 disks/XHI.dsk

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/editor_assembler.rpk -flop1 disks/YAPP.dsk

To run YAPP, you go to E/A option #5 and load DSK1.YAPP

 

Let me know if you need any further help with this.

[eck]

Nice!

 

I will give the link you posted a try! Thanks a lot, TheMole.

 

And, yes. I have a "Mandelbrot-Progamm" for the TI + V9938. I used to use it only to watch the pre rendered screens and played with the color options. Depending on the start values one would chose, the TI would be busy for 24, 48 hours and maybe more as I recall the description right.

[Willsy]

Thanks Mole! I saved that to my dropbox - that saves me a whole lot of messing about with the latest version of MESS

[+mizapf]

 

Yeah saw it before, that's a pretty nifty example. I also know that there's at least one arcade style game for the Geneve, but the name is eluding me. Either way, showing off more Geneve stuff is great, except for some very basic fiddling in MESS I haven't had any opportunity to see what it can do.

 

Do you think this fractal program is something that could run on the TI as well? Slower obviously, but would it be possible? Also, how long does it take the Geneve to generate one screen?

 

The last version of Fractals was intended to run on the EVPC, but I did not quite succeed with that; there were some memory issues. My particular problem was that I did not have an EVPC card and a TI console to test it outside of the Geneve, so I depended on reports from other people. Of course, now ... I could finish that by using MESS.

 

The program was written by me to fully exploit the on-chip RAM of the 9995. I wrote a multiplication and an addition procedure based on fixed point arithmetics (1 word integer, 3 words fraction) that fit completely into the 256 bytes (together with workspaces). So it became really fast.

 

Recently I tested Fractals on MESS against my real Geneve to fine-tune the timing in MESS, and both showed slight differences (fractions of a second) not before several minutes had passed.

 

I can upload a copy (disk image) here.

[TheMole]

I can upload a copy (disk image) here.

 

That'd be great, but I know so little of working with the Geneve that it would probably take me too long to get up and running. Is there a Geneve quick start guide for TI guys available somewhere?

[+mizapf]

If you use TIImageTool you'll notice a menu item "install Geneve OS" in "Utility". Use an existing image or create a new one and select this item. You can then use this disk image to boot the Geneve in MESS. (Of course, you need the geneve.zip from the ROM collection.)

[+mizapf]

Download link: http://www.mizapf.de/ti99/fractals.dsk

 

I just took the time ... for the standard image (whole Mandelbrot set; -2.6 < x < 0.9, -1.25 < y < 1.25) the program runs 76 minutes, with a maximum of 100 iteration per pixel, 512 x 212 pixels on screen. The number format that the program uses allows for a resolution of 2^-48, which is 3.5*10^-15.

[eck]

Hello, InsaneMultitasker!

 

I played with the HMMM command. It is working fine. - Faster than the HMMC command that is obvious. Here are some suggestions: if You are going to plot all the ASCII-codes from 0 to 255 into the VDP-Ram in a 6*8 shape than there are 3 rows à 85 characters in use plus the fourth row starting with ASCII 255 and probably garbage afterwards. First suggestion: fill this row via HMMM with all text-lines that are useful in your program that fits into 84+ ASCII 255, which is a blank character in the EVPC-dsr-rom, and assign these sentences with one or more HMMM commands i.e. the needed data and plot, paint, stick them where ever you want. (Hope You can follow my crude explanations.)

Second suggestion: change the HMMC command to plot 8*8 chars into VDP-Ram 64*4=256. The character definition is already 8*8 so the LI R6,3 and LI R6,4 have to be both incremented by one and the step counter changes from 6 to 8. Advantage is: avoiding the MPY statement times 6 to track down the right x position of the searched character. A slightly faster SLA R?,3 will do the trick here instead. There should be still enough room for whole sentences to hide in the VDP-Ram I think (see suggestion one.) If You have found the right x and y positions to copy from use only the 6*8 snippet with the HMMM command and plot it to your screen.

 

Better stop here now. Ciao.

[RXB]

 

Don't worry, I know what vaporware is Rich... I'm using the same definition as you.

Anyway, I've gone through the steps to set up MESS on my Windows work machine (Windows 7) and put together a zip file for you. It runs fine on my machine.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/be71yzc94e54ofx/mess.zip

 

If you download the above file and unzip it to a folder of your liking on your system you should have a fully functioning MESS install. It also includes the XHI and YAPP disks I mentioned above, as well as the extended basic and editor/assembler modules. In order to use it you will need to use the command line though, so be aware of that.

 

Suppose you've unzipped to folder to c:\mess then you can use the following commands to run XHi and YAPP respectively:

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/extended_basic.rpk -flop1 disks/XHI.dsk

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/editor_assembler.rpk -flop1 disks/YAPP.dsk

To run YAPP, you go to E/A option #5 and load DSK1.YAPP

 

Let me know if you need any further help with this.

OMG thanks will give it a try on Windows 7. Hope to get back to you soon with great results.

 

Rich

[+mizapf]

Rich, if I understood you correctly you are using OSX. I don't understand why there are issues for you building or running MESS under OSX. Don't you have a gcc compiler?

 

Also, within Windows, the recommended tool chain is MinGW. Nothing about Visual Studio or so.

[RXB]

Rich, if I understood you correctly you are using OSX. I don't understand why there are issues for you building or running MESS under OSX. Don't you have a gcc compiler?

 

Also, within Windows, the recommended tool chain is MinGW. Nothing about Visual Studio or so.

 

On OS X I never run TI stuff as every time I view a folder it messed up the stuff. Why I went to Windows 7 instead as I have Virtual PC running Windows 98 for PC99 and others like XP running older stuff.

 

Saves me the the issue of switching back and forth as everything is on Windows 7. And sorry no I do not have the GCC Compiler yet.

[+mizapf]

The gcc is freely available; I guess you can find that in your software installation management. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about OSX to give helpful advice.

[RXB]

No problem. But thanks I now have MESS running on Windows 7 and will post a video I just made soon.

[TheMole]

Download link: http://www.mizapf.de/ti99/fractals.dsk

 

I just took the time ... for the standard image (whole Mandelbrot set; -2.6 < x < 0.9, -1.25 < y < 1.25) the program runs 76 minutes, with a maximum of 100 iteration per pixel, 512 x 212 pixels on screen. The number format that the program uses allows for a resolution of 2^-48, which is 3.5*10^-15.

 

The MESS keyboard on the Mac is unpredictably difficult to understand. On the "select language" screen, how do I proceed (in English, if possible )?

[+mizapf]

You must enable the mouse with the "-mouse" command line switch when starting MESS. This will capture the mouse for the emulation. You'll see that you get a text mode mouse that you can use to select a language.

[RXB]

 

Don't worry, I know what vaporware is Rich... I'm using the same definition as you.

Anyway, I've gone through the steps to set up MESS on my Windows work machine (Windows 7) and put together a zip file for you. It runs fine on my machine.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/be71yzc94e54ofx/mess.zip

 

If you download the above file and unzip it to a folder of your liking on your system you should have a fully functioning MESS install. It also includes the XHI and YAPP disks I mentioned above, as well as the extended basic and editor/assembler modules. In order to use it you will need to use the command line though, so be aware of that.

 

Suppose you've unzipped to folder to c:\mess then you can use the following commands to run XHi and YAPP respectively:

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/extended_basic.rpk -flop1 disks/XHI.dsk

c:\mess\mess.exe ti99_4ev -skip_gameinfo -peb:slot8 hfdc -window -nomaximize -natural -cart carts/editor_assembler.rpk -flop1 disks/YAPP.dsk

To run YAPP, you go to E/A option #5 and load DSK1.YAPP

 

Let me know if you need any further help with this.

Thank you very much.

 

I ran the demo and here is my review of what I found:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpRNIZtv4o&feature=c4-overview&list=UUULwPKqrRFCtNv5_xMuOqQw

Edited November 27, 2013 by RXB

[eck]

Thank you, Rich!

 

I watched your video and I am thinking that is it what we can expect from an extended basic program. I do know that there is a copy of XHI on my SD-card but I have no idea if the demo program is located there too, to confirm your supposition. I have to say one thing about the 255 to 256 fixed colors within the G7 mode: they are very "pinkish" missing earth tone colors like brown and grey. I remember watching .gif pictures made on other systems given them a look like taken out from a Barbie magazine. SNUG sold their EVPC with the option to add a RAM-DAC to the card which offers the user 256 color registers - and depending on the type of the RAM-DAC a color palette of 18 or 24 bits (original = 9 bits = 512 colors to chose from (G1 to G6)). So I wont wonder if this option is used in your mess setup. But starting by default with the 9 bits color palette would be the better way.

 

I remember you were referring the differences between the V9938 and the V9958 pretty well somewhere in the forum. But sometimes you were using the wrong information found on the TI*MES website regarding the GENEVE 2 project. The V9938 has built in functions to read data from a mouse or light pen hooked to the right pins of the VDP. With the V9958 this functions are dropped to be able to install a 19K color mode with the chip. I never got my TIM card, so I have really no idea how OPA managed it to spend these device a mouse port. Both chips can handle 192K VRAM. The V9990 handles 512K. The V9958 has more squared pixels than the V9938. So, pixeled circles are looking more "cyclish" on a V9958 compared to the ones displayed by the V9938. All VDP commands are faster on the V9958 and a very good bonus is that they are now compatible with the G1 to G3 modes.

[TheMole]

Thanks for making the video Rich, it'd be great if you could do one for YAPP as well if you find the time.

 

As for the color issues, what I think is happening is that MESS (and/or the EVPC in real life) don't support the second data port for changing the palette registers. As you know, the v9938 is not pin-compatible with the tms9918a and you need to solder an additional address line from the CPU's address bus to the VDP. This creates a second port to communicate with the VDP and according to the v9938 manual the palette registers reside on that second port. So without soldering that extra wire there is no way that you can change the palette registers from their default state. It could be that MESS or even the real EVPC don't implement that second port and just make due with the standard palette. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the SGCPU combined with the EVPC could give the results you're expecting, but I don't know how to configure that in MESS as they seem to be two separate drivers.

 

Maybe Michael can chime in on the EVPC and it's implementation in MESS...

[RXB]

Thanks for making the video Rich, it'd be great if you could do one for YAPP as well if you find the time.

 

As for the color issues, what I think is happening is that MESS (and/or the EVPC in real life) don't support the second data port for changing the palette registers. As you know, the v9938 is not pin-compatible with the tms9918a and you need to solder an additional address line from the CPU's address bus to the VDP. This creates a second port to communicate with the VDP and according to the v9938 manual the palette registers reside on that second port. So without soldering that extra wire there is no way that you can change the palette registers from their default state. It could be that MESS or even the real EVPC don't implement that second port and just make due with the standard palette. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the SGCPU combined with the EVPC could give the results you're expecting, but I don't know how to configure that in MESS as they seem to be two separate drivers.

 

Maybe Michael can chime in on the EVPC and it's implementation in MESS...

Thanks, I did see Earth Tones on my TIM card.

I think the issue may be the EVPC did a crappy job of colors for the Color Palette registers.

 

That is the only way I can explain the colors in MESS demo of XHI using EVPC being so badly off.

 

I suspect that this same issue would make Y.A.P.P. almost useless. As even the start up screen would be impossible to read.

Edited November 28, 2013 by RXB

[+mizapf]

Hi Rich,

 

I just watched your video (about half-way, not completely). One thing I have to say is that the v9938 emulation in MESS is of low quality, not comparable to the TMS 9918/28. For instance, the colors of the palette do not look correct. I have my real Geneve side-by-side, and there are differences in the saturation of blue and some other colors, but not completely different hues. There is a long standing comment in the file, asking for somebody's favor to modernize the implementation.

 

The G6 and G7 modes should be correct. What could be the case is that the other modes show wrong behavior. I do not know what modes Alexander used in his XHi demo. It would be necessary to verify all operations of the demo step-by-step and see where we have differences. It need not even be the color palette, maybe the command implementation is faulty.

 

Maybe I can verify some points if I can get Fractals to run on the EVPC.

[RXB]

Ok now have a copy of the YAPP booklet that came with my TIM card.

A few things quickly stand out.

1. YAPP uses the Myarc or Asgard mouse, but also has a Joystick driver. 3 drivers are included and MUST BE installed before running the program.

2. Many functions in YAPP like Hard Copy and other editing features REQUIRED 8K SuperCart and 192 VDP RAM!

3. YAPP will run from XB and only has the above limitations but without the driver installed the program will do nothing at all.

 

Also the manual for YAPP is 1.33 Gig zipped so I will have to load each page separately.

 

Will not even let me upload single pages of JPEGs I made? Says files to big to upload!!!!!!

 

Well my only choice is to make a video and post it:

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR1Cb8qLfmk&feature=youtu.be

 

 

 

[+mizapf]

Here's another program using the v9938 on the Geneve. I uploaded the disk image here: http://www.mizapf.de/ti99/xmas.dsk. Just download the disk and use it in MESS or copy it to a real floppy disk and run it on the real Geneve. Start the program by entering XMAS on the GeneveOS prompt. The current directory must contain all the files on the image.

 

This is a TIC program which features

- using G6 mode and video commands in C

- playing 3-voiced music by notes from a list

 

Have fun.

Edited December 1, 2013 by mizapf

[RXB]

So MIZAPF I am looking at the docs of MESS and it is like reading a manual on how to construct DNA from scratch and assumes you have been doing it for years.

 

Or more aptly put assumes programmers only that use the tools to build MESS know how to set it up.

 

So my question is...

1. How do I set up RXB and GRAM Device?
2. How do it set up 9938 with 192K RAM?

2. How do I switch Carts or even better run multiple carts like a PGRAM or HSGPL or GRAMKRACKER or GRAMULATOR?

3. How do I set up SCSI Hard drive access and how do I use it?

4. How do I set up SAMS for 1024K access?

4. How do I import and export files from Classic99 or PC99 to MESS?

 

I would like to do Videos and testing on RXB on MESS as on Classic99 does not let many features work in Classic99. (Files and Disk or Hard Drive demos do not work)

I would like to do extensive testing on MESS using the 9938 and XHI to see if some games can be created on the MESS platform.

 

Lastly I would like to run YAPP on MESS and see how it works but for the life of me have no clue as the the scipt I need to make that work.

 

Well got a private message that included:

 

http://www.ninerpedia.org/index.php/MESS_TI_emulation_usage

 

http://www.ninerpedia.org/index.php/Features_of_the_TI_and_Geneve_emulation_in_MESS

 

And most of my questions are now answered.

 

Except for SCSI access and export or import files tool used by MESS and of course the ones using the 9938.

Edited December 1, 2013 by RXB

[RobertLM78]

4. How do I import and export files from Classic99 or PC99 to MESS?

I'm pretty sure that Classic99 and MESS both use raw TIFILES format, so all you should need are TI99DIR and TIImageTool and you're set to switch between emulators. Just create a .dsk image for MESS and import your Classic99 files into the image, or extract files from a .dsk image for MESS to use in Classic99.

[+mizapf]

v9938: The EVPC and Geneve emulation currently do not support 192 KiB VRAM. When I last tried it, the additional VRAM was not detected in MEMTEST on the Geneve, so I removed it again. If it will be supported in a later release, you will find an option in the on-screen menu under "System configuration".

 

SCSI: There is no SCSI emulation yet. You can use TIImageTool to convert a SCSI image to HFDC format and back.

 

Files import/export: MESS requires you to use a disk image in sector dump (v9t9) or track dump (pc99) format. TIFILES files are not recognized by MESS because it can only work on disk images, not on files. One of the main features of my TIImageTool is to make it simple to interchange files between the emulators by importing / exporting files on images. You can use a TIFILES file and import it into the disk image, and you can export a file on the disk image which creates a TIFILES file. So that is what Robert already wrote, but MESS itself is not involved.