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9640 Menu System & TIMXT (Beta Releases)


Omega-TI

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This is expected behavior. The menu program uses direct sector IO to catalog the diskette. It is the fastest possible method for floppies, as it does not require floating point conversion or record-based IO. The downside is it will only work with floppy devices and only those supporting the direct sector access method (and in some cases, limitation).

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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.

This isn't a horrible idea.

 

My SD-Card image could then come pre-configured to run TIPICFG.

 

I don't know anything about ROS... Is there a video demo somewhere?

 

-M@

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One correction to my post - it is a combination of ROS (the dsr or Ramdisk Operating System) and CFG (the ramdisk configuration program) that make autostart possible.

 

When you set up a Horizon ramdisk using the CFG program, you can select whether to autostart the MENU program at system powerup. If the option is turned on, the Horizon ROS (DSR) will look for the MENU program and if found, will load and run it automatically. The title screen is bypassed. You can hold a key (I think it is the shift key) during powerup to bypass the autostart, giving the user a way to force a full start via the cartridge.

 

The CFG and MENU programs are just EA option 5 programs copied to the ramdisk once it is formatted.

 

So to tie the tipi idea back to how the ramdisk operates, the idea was to add an autostart path.filename to tipicfg. If set, tipi would auto-run the target program at startup/powerup. (to your point, you could initially set this to tipi.tipicfg) An on/off flag would allow for some additional control. Holding SHIFT could disable autostart for that startup, or disable for all subsequent boots until you re-enable it.

 

I don't know how the cartridge autostarts play into the sequence here.

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...you can select whether to autostart the MENU program at system powerup. If the option is turned on, the Horizon ROS (DSR) will look for the MENU program and if found, will load and run it automatically. The title screen is bypassed. You can hold a key (I think it is the shift key) during powerup to bypass the autostart, giving the user a way to force a full start via the cartridge.

 

Far freaking out! :thumbsup: That would eliminate those two wasted key presses every single time you exit a program! No more extraneous button presses to get by the title screen, then the selection screen, only to have to press a third button to load a program.

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This isn't a horrible idea.

 

My SD-Card image could then come pre-configured to run TIPICFG.

 

I don't know anything about ROS... Is there a video demo somewhere?

 

 

Couldn't the TIPI config program also be modified to have an entry or toggle for this function? That would make it super easy for any user to configure it for their tastes.

 

CALL TIPI... toggle it on... tell it where and what to load... WRITE... quit. Easy!

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My SD-Card image could then come pre-configured to run TIPICFG.

 

I don't know anything about ROS... Is there a video demo somewhere?

 

-M@

 

No video demos that I am aware of unless there is one from a TI Faire. I looked around for a guide to ROS and CFG to no avail, I don't even know if such a thing exists. I did reconcile the existing source code to the current release, and updated it a few years back. If you need to see any of it I can provide it. See post #29 for the rest of my response.

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My perspective here is mostly from the menu point of view. Just keep in mind that automatically running any program from disk could just as easily work from a cartridge as it can from a Ramdisk or TIPI.

 

True, if it's in cartridge format. Some programs must be run off disk or out of a RAM disk. Some programs even write to data to themselves, which precludes them being stored in some cartridge formats, but it's still nice to run them from the menu of a cartridge they cannot be stored on.

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True, if it's in cartridge format. Some programs must be run off disk or out of a RAM disk. Some programs even write to data to themselves, which precludes them being stored in some cartridge formats, but it's still nice to run them from the menu of a cartridge they cannot be stored on.

 

No, what I'm saying is that the cartridge could auto-load a program based on a configuration stored on the cartridge. No cartridge format needed so long as the loader and target filename are on the cart. Think XB on steroids. Lots of ways to skin this 'cat' as people make new hardware and software combinations.

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If it please the court, I could try to talk Vic Steerup into doing a demo of his HRD16, ROS, CFG, and Funnelweb during the next CTIUG meeting.

 

If you guys haven't seen them yet, I have posted several high(ish) quality videos on the CTIUG Facebook page of April's CTIUG meeting. We are discussing potentially having the next meeting at Vic's house anyway, so those would be optimal conditions for demonstrating hardware that resides in his PBox.

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  • 4 months later...

Is post 1 in this thread the official release location of the 9640 Menu System for TI-99/4As with F18As?

 

There is a boot-f18a on whtech in the f18a directory, but it is dated 2013. 2 years earlier than this. What is their relation?

 

-M@

 

If I recall correctly the one on whtech is the original Boot for f18A which was just a single menu of a handful of selections where the 9640 Menu System here allows for 3 columns of selects and chainable menus. This is the version I use.

Edited by Shift838
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