Jump to content
IGNORED

DOAD .DSK files on Mac V9T9 help!


Ed in SoDak

Recommended Posts

That statement alone yields this:

 

>>>>>

Last login: Mon Mar 31 16:00:25 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
dougie:~ Patti$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_19"
Java 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_19-b02-306)
Java HotSpot Client VM (build 1.5.0_19-138, mixed mode, sharing)

<<<<

My own investigations told me I had 1.5 java and I've pretty much taken most software I can to max supported under the older osX 10.4.11 and G4 processor.

 

To go higher requires me to upgrade, except I lose all my precious Legacy apps. I may have to content myself with using the Macbook for the conversions and limp along on my own system with what I have. Or drag out the even-older Win/Dos system, which may or may not work either!

 

Apple did not like Java much as it caused many security issues. They released their own versions, and I'd guess that's where the compatibility connection has been lost, even though my Java runtime is presumably 1.5.

 

-Ed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did grab a newer release. The installer told me I need to use os10.5. So I switched to 10.58 and it reported I already had a newer version of Java installed. I can't run image tools on that systen either. So I downloaded a coppy of the open source java and it wanted os10.7 to install, which I don't even own. See what I mean, I am thwarted at every turn! ;)

 

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, hmmm ... that's a real pity. You still get the class version error? I don't know what Apple did to Java, but this particular problem arose around 2009 or so (considering the date of the posts in forums), so I thought in the meantime, all platforms automatically have an updated Java.

 

As for the openJDK, you do not need the latest release, a 1.6 or 1.5 should suffice. Maybe this allows you to keep your OS version.

 

 

 

BTW, I always see these rumours about Java have security issues, making people wonder whether they should immediate uninstall it or check their computers. Java was shown to have some exploits when run inside browsers (for Applets). What we have here with my tool is completely unrelated to the Applet issue. When run as an application (as here), Java has the exact same level of security or non-security as any other application that runs natively. Sometimes I tend to believe someone took the opportunity to launch a campaign against Java, right after some (possibly) minor issues showed up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even the apple support website has moved beyond me. All I get is a blank screen and frozen progress bar. So I decide to try it on the Macbook and go searching for something in java newer than what I have, but not too new. Guess what? The 80 meg download I need from the Apple site is corrupted and is only 4 meg in size, total fail. I sent them an email about it, not expecting much. I did manage to grab J2SE 5, but it wants the Java upgrade that is corrupted. And that is only this one approach to my problem that I've tried. I'm hitting some wall with other my attempts with DOS emulation, etc...

 

It's a conspiracy, I tell ya! ;)

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I already thought about porting TIImageTool to a native C++ application and use a cross-platform GUI system like Qt so that I can compile it for Linux, Windows, and Mac (just like MESS). Maybe this makes it easier for some people to install and run it. However, it will be a lot of work (143 classes), and I'd have to learn how to map Java Swing classes to Qt. I'm not sure whether and when to find enough time for that.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Long ago, I played with Clint Pulley's C program for the TI. I also tried my hand with John Birdwell's word processor tutorial in Micropendium. I never got very good at it and have forgotten what little I did learn. My hat's off to you!

 

There's got to be a workaround I haven't stumbled on yet. I truly appreciate all your help, I've gotten closer using your image tool than by any other method tried so far!

 

I can port my own TI disks, which is a fairly decent collection of several hundred disks. But most of what is on the net is in .dsk format I've never been able to sample till just recently.

 

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would be nice to have a Mac-based utility...

 

Just for the fun of programming on an emulator of my second computer (Mac Plus) an utility for my first computer, I took the challenge.

 

In a day or two, you should have an minimalist utility just to list and extract files from DSK files.

 

So far, the first part (listing DSK contents) is working. Here it is (source code include): FIAD Extractor.cpt.hqx.

 

FIAD%20Extractor.PNG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool, thanks a bunch! I will check out what you've done so far.

-ED

 

Edit: It does seem to be able to open and list a number of my .dsk image files, but not all. Some return "Invalid Disk FIle" as the error. It also seems limited to 33 files in the image. A dsk image of the Legends II disk lists gibberish after the 33rd file. That disk has 106 files. Looking at your Res Edit file, I see the WIND file has 33 as a dimension. Could that number be enlarged?

 

I can look at the code and I am barely able to follow it along. I just marvel at the programming ability of you, Mizapf and many others on this forum. Thanks for this!

 

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found a problem. I forgot a typecast of a 16 bits variable to a 32 bits variable before multiplying it by 256. That variable was the address of the file header in the DSK file. In the disk I used for the tests, all the file headers were at the beginning of the DSK file.

 

The Legends II disk from the gameshelf was already working, with its 103 files listed.

 

The size 33 of the window in the resource fork is just the number of bytes used to define it.

 

I'm almost finished, now it extracts something, but only the file headers, so it's still useless.

 

FIAD Extractor 2.cpt.hqx

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your change seems to have cleared up the iisting issue and opening .dsk images. I can't wait to try the finished beta. I'd think others still using older Mac systems will also appreciate your efforts (2007 for mine is not all that old, really, compared to the TI).

-Ed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lucien2,

YES! THANK YOU! I tried a couple image files and figured it out on my second attempt. I moved a newly created FIAD folder to Mac V9T9, named it as DSK1, loaded the XB module and it worked!

 

There are file renaming conventions for V9T9 as run under PC DOS and since Mac V9T9 is port, it suffers the same limitation. That's a small limitation and I found I can deal with it by manually renaming the offending files and that seemed to work. It boils down to the limitations of DOS filenames versus TI convention. The one I corrected was to replace the "/" with a ø (option lower case o, not a zero) as per the V9T9 rules. Many TI files use the slash as an extension of sorts, as in PROG/DOC, to replace a period which is not allowed. Just another wrinkle of emulation on different systems and this is the path that Ed Swatrz chose to take to deal with it.

 

To finally have a utility to extract files from dsk images, that's a small price to pay. I mention it for the benefit of others who may also try your program. It might be one of the V9T9 utilities can deal with handling any renaming. Most files can be used as-is if the original filenames avoid "forbidden" characters.

 

Thanks to you again for this! Now I won't have to borrow Sandy's laptop to check out all those TI disks I downloaded so long ago and more recently too.

 

Thanks again also to mizapf who kept trying to get me going using Java.

-Ed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't think MacV9T9 had these DOS limitations. I can easily implement this.

 

To test if a file renaming was necessary, I just quickly tried to find which characters were forbidden on both systems, and the only one I found was ":", on both systems.

 

I think your first try didn't work because no file was selected before running "Extract". I think I should extract all files when none is selected.

Edited by lucien2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Mac itself doesn't have these naming constraints, but the program's operation is pretty much unchanged from the DOS version to keep the file naming convention consistent. Raphaël Nabet wrote the Mac version with help from other programmers, based on Ed Swartz' V9T9 v6.0.

 

From the docs:

>>>>>

One problem is that filenames are mangled on the Macintosh. If any of the characters ":", "/", "\", "*" or "?" appears on the TI, MacV9T9 puts a "∫", "Ø", "‹", "™", or "ø" (respectively) instead. Furthermore, it inserts a dot (".") between the 8th and 9th letter of filenames. The point of this process is respecting MS-DOS naming conventions (!!!). I did this to make data exchange with V9T9 for DOS easier, but other possibilities will be implemented later.

<<<<<

 

To help make it more readable:

Original TI filename character = Replaced by V9T9

: = ∫

/ = Ø

\ = ‹

* = ™

? = ø

. is inserted between 8th and 9th character of longer TI filenames.

 

Implementing that would keep your DOAD to FIAD Extractor consistent with V9T9 and help prevent problems. Mac V9T9 has other disk-related issues and a few quirks, but I've learned to live with them over the years. It's pretty much the only TI emulator I've gotten to work on my old Macs.

 

What program did you use on your Mac emulator to create the Extractor? Raphaël used Metroworks Code Warrior. I have an old copy of that, but have never really tried to learn it. Seems like I never progressed much beyond using Extended BASIC on an actual TI. But I am interested in trying again sometime.

 

Yes, I did have to figure out to Select All to get any files to extract. I would keep it that way, so that individual files could be extracted if desired. Maybe a dialog box could tell the user to select the files of interest to extract.

 

Another useful change might be to keep DSK and FIAD selection options separate so you didn't have to keep navigating back and forth between Source and Destination folders. I streamlined that by putting all the folders for a session in the FIAD Extractor's directory to simplify moving back and forth. If the DSK folder is on a different drive from the FIAD folders, it takes a little effort to keep going back and forth between folder locations each time a new file is chosen for Extracting.

 

I have to wonder how many people are still using the Mac V9T9 version? I know I am in a small minority of diehards who do use it frequently. That makes me doubly appreciative for your efforts!

 

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't know V9T9Mac ran on OSX. That's one of the reasons I used Mac DOSBOX for the TI program I created for my friend with a Mac.

It takes os9 Classic to run under osX, which ended with the G4 PPC models running osX 10.4.11 or earlier. Classic support was dropped in 10.5 onwards and also in the Intel models. So yes and no is your answer and was my issue with upgrading to some other emulator, as I use all older Macs. The gory details are in this thread, the result of which has led us to here.

 

Mac V9T9 runs just fine on even pre-PPC machines like the '030 and '040 using System 7 or 8. I keep a copy of my TI folder on all my old systems. It's over a gig in size now, I need to organize it!

 

I've continued to try DOSbox and some other PC-DOS emulator stuff I downloaded years ago. I actually made a little headway, but I'm lacking the soundblaster driver file to get DOS V9T9 6.0 to launch. I also hit a perhaps temporary dead end with the latest Java-based V9T9 getting that to work on my old confuser. I've persisted with Mac V9T9 as my best bet and it took Lucien2 to come to my rescue to finally solve it.

 

I'm just glad I found this forum! I owe a big thanks to everyone here. I've been a User Group of One for many years and it's been a blast getting reinvolved with the TI community.

-Ed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I used Think Pascal 4.0. Here's a link to the version 4.5: http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=17751

 

Good idea to remember the source and destination folder.

 

I will find some time this week to do these 3 modifications.

Thanks, I bookmarked it to have a look around. You multi-lingual programmers have me going in circles in a fun way. But I'm only glossing over things trying to reach my goal and not learning much about any of the programming behind it.

 

I enjoyed taking my old XB program collection and modifying them to suit me better. I spent many hours hacking the original Legends game to give me invincible super characters and display all the hidden objects on a map. I never could get a port of it to work on V9T9, but it worked fairly well on the metal. Both Legends 1 and 2 have some V9T9 display and/or file issues where the map is not shown or updated when you leave the current screen or it crashes. Some things just seem to require the hardware and not an emulator.

 

What you've been able to accomplish so quickly, that I was never able to do, makes me want to learn more how to "emulate" what you're doing. ;)

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe this is everything you need to get V9t9 to run under DOSBOX. I have the sound driver, modules and examples of how to modify .cfg files.

Like I said, I got it working on a friend of mines OSX DOSBOX a few months back with this setup.

I used version .74 of Mac DOSBox which works on intel or PPC.

I lost the copy of the V9t9 I had made on my OSX VM and I no longer live in Atlanta so I can't get it from my friend.

But, it worked really good. I had FOADs working on it fine.

Hope this helps.

v9t9.zip

Edited by hloberg
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never used DOS much. I think I need a lesson or three on syntax. I can't seem to get the slash or colon or what in the right order for commands to work.

-Ed

Give me a few days and I'll see if I can recreate what I did for my friend on my OSX VM. He didn't know any DOS so I made it fairly straight forward and Mac friendly. FYI: I had one of the first bondi-blue iMacs with OS9 for many years (loved it) before returning back to Windows (I am a computer consultant with lots of Windows Certifications so had no choice :) and ran V9t9 in DOSbox on it successfully.

Would still have all the disk but we were broke into recent and they stole all my backup disk (for what reason, I have no idea. It would be useless to anyone but me.)

Anyway, if you want to go this direction, I'll be glad to help.

Edited by hloberg
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the offer! I'm working on it, but at the rate I'm going that would probably help. A lot of my trouble is invalid paths in the V9T9 config files. Comparing the ones in my own copy and in the one you attached above, it's beginning to make more sense. It's been a good 10 or 15 years for me and I never used DOS much then, just playing around with emulators then too.

-Ed

Edit: Actually got it to run tonight. I can get one module to show up and load, modifying MODULES.INF to try to add more just makes an error. I got XB2.5 to work, so I then figured out how to get a FIAD directory to work.

 

I tried a Legends 2 disk that I did have working in Mac V9T9, and on the DOS version, it won't load the character data. Substituting another disk with a LOAD/BOOT program on it, and it won't do a full disk catalog. It might be an invisible Mac directory file called "DS-Store" Mac V9T9 can also run into this problem.

 

Aside from that, it runs really, really slow, especially when reading an emulated disk. For all the bother thus far, the DOSbox-run V9T9 was a little disappointing.

 

It was good to learn some ropes on using it though. Maybe I can run some of the V9T9 utilities. Or some other DOS programs I haven't tried in years. I have a copy of GW-BASIC that runs on DOSbox.

 

For DOS V9T9 I need the most help with setting up the MODULES.INF file. I tried the video speedup to make it run faster, which didn't help much. Maybe I'm missing a speedup command?

 

On Mac V9T9, that's found in the preferences options, and speed can be set to 300% or higher, while leaving the video rate 1/60, and even slow-running XB programs will zip right along at that setting. Disk access is very fast even at the default 100% speed.

 

Thanks to those who are tagging along with my trials. At least I am making some progress!

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

some notes:

to speed it up try changing some of the speed setting in dosbox.

in dosbox.conf change frameskip=10, cycles=max. also be sure cputype=auto and core =auto. that 'should' set up the fastest processor for your system.

In v9t9.cnf change DelayBetweenInstructions = 0, VideoUpdateMaxDelay = 0, VideoUpdateSpeed = 0

set all those and that will have the speed flat out for your mac.

to read emulted disk DSRCombo = realdisk,realrs232. FIAD only DSRCombo = emudisk,realrs232, both (drive 1,2,3=emudisk / 4,5=FIAD) DSRCombo = bothdisk,realrs232

V9t9 has historically had some issues with emulated disk. try copying your legends disk to FIAD directory. look at my *.conf files and you can see where you can run v9t9 with different *.cnf & *.inf files.

I found some of my old stuff. I am going to .zip it up in a coming post, if it isn't too big.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the tips, I was wondering about DOSbox-related speedups, but didn't immediately pursue that as it seemed to run just fine, it was V9T9 that dragged. Last night I was using an 800mhz eMac G4 in the Man Cave. My main system is a dual 1.25mhz G4, that's about as hopped up as I can get and still run Classic apps. DOSbox does run on Sandy's MacBook Pro Intel chip, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that. It will probably run just zippy on that system and make we want to upgrade my Mac! ;) :_( :spidey: :D (Mixed emotions on that one)

 

I think the config file already has those settings, but I'll review it. It would help if the program docs had a quick startup walkthrough. Lots of cluttered up small docs to have to wade through to get the specifics you seek, and then it's obtuse and not specific enough to my own setup to be able to customize things properly.

 

Since it seems to take so much horsepower to emulate the orphaned TI, maybe we should write a Mac or DOS emulator to run on the Ti99/4A? :roll:

-Ed

Edited by Ed in SoDak
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...