What is GPL w/ROMPAGE exactly?

[+jedimatt42]

That

 

 

When you rompage it sticks the emulated disk in front of real drives.. Geneveos supports an emulated disk image .. SO DSK1 is now DSK2

Is this true even if the user has no fixed disk storage, has performed no drive mappings in MDOS, including no ramdisk declarations?

I would think the emulation of DSK1 should be off when using ROMPAGE, or I would expect DSR's to collide.

 

I have tested with the GPL emulation of DSK1 option in both OFF and ON position, even though, I've not mapped anything to this emulated drive. I get no difference in behavior. DSK1 accesses my physical disk 1, and DSK2 accesses my physical disk 2, but I get a device error if ROMPAGE is on.

 

I also used CSAVE to dump my MINIMEM, and ran the little CRU experiment, the FDC DSR appears to be paged in. Looking at the GENMOD docs, and the MEMEX docs, I believe I have the switches correct. Switch 2 of the MEMEX gives me more memory or not. The docs say when on, It still doesn't shadow 0xBA.

 

Also, curious, am I correct that ROMPAGE as a feature showed up in MDOS 5.00? And was that in the mid-90s?

 

-M@

 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Here is a good change log that may be of benefit. http://ftp.whtech.com/Geneve/mdos/MDOS%20Changes.doc

 

DSK1 emulation is only available with the HFDC. If an emulation file is active on the HFDC, it only takes precedence over DSK1 during ROMPAGE (TI mode). Otherwise, the Geneve OS remaps take priority.

 

The DSK1 on/off option does not affect how the disk emulation works in ROMPAGE.

 

How are you setting the Genmod switches? Are the wait states turned on or off?

 

If your testing yields no success, perhaps you can open up the external switchbox and share how it is wired to the Geneve. There is no known schematic and without one, I cannot build the switchbox.

[+arcadeshopper]

Yeah I had the emulation turned off in mdos and after a rompage it was back on! confusing at first

 

Greg

[+jedimatt42]

Here is a good change log that may be of benefit. http://ftp.whtech.com/Geneve/mdos/MDOS%20Changes.doc

 

DSK1 emulation is only available with the HFDC. If an emulation file is active on the HFDC, it only takes precedence over DSK1 during ROMPAGE (TI mode). Otherwise, the Geneve OS remaps take priority.

 

The DSK1 on/off option does not affect how the disk emulation works in ROMPAGE.

 

How are you setting the Genmod switches? Are the wait states turned on or off?

 

If your testing yields no success, perhaps you can open up the external switchbox and share how it is wired to the Geneve. There is no known schematic and without one, I cannot build the switchbox.

I'll retest with the wait state switch on both States, but I believe I toggled that.

 

My switch box really sucks, so I will happily open it and draw up a schematic. I feel I want to build a new switch box anyway.

 

The manual I posted in the other thread has some of that info, but not spelled out.

 

-M@

[+jedimatt42]

Here is the switch box innards all drawn up.

 

 

I'm surprised by the asymmetrical relationships. But that is what I see.

 

-M@

[+jedimatt42]

I'm going to resurrect this thread, because I have no hopes of testing TIPI hardware on a Geneve unless I can get ROMPAGE to work.

 

Current things I know:

 

In GPL ROMPAGE mode, I appear to be able to turn on the cru-bit to enable the floppy controller, and see the TI DSR ROM (using easy-bug)

 

But accessing DSK1 from TI BASIC just fails.

 

I haven't re-varified that my 2M MEMEX card is configured to stay out of the way...

 

I've never seen any information on how to modify a TI Floppy controller or TI RS232 card to decode AMD-AME. I have conflicting information saying hardware mods need to be done, and information that MEMEX just stays out of that memory space, so no mods required. And 1 other test by TIM that (without a genmod switch box) his Genmod geneve does not work in ROMPAGE mode either.

 

Anyone new or old to the forum have any other recollections?

 

-M@

[+9640News]

OK,

 

Rompage maps out Geneve DSR page and places the Geneve mapper page >BA giving you direct hardware access rather than using the Geneve master DSR.

 

The original Memex diskette that came with the Memex card had a couple of things on it you would need. First, it had the documentation for modifying any card that were not fully decoded. It is probably located in one of the 9640News directories with the Memex Software. I may still have an original diskette from Ron with the mods, not 100% sure.

 

You could actually run the MEMEX test demo program that showed all the memory blocks on the Geneve. If any block in the >3A, >3C, >7A, >7C, >BA, >BC range showed red, then you had in your system a card not fully decoded requiring modification. The >3C, >7C, and >BC errors were tied to Rave speech card or the MBP card if they were in the system. I do not believe any other cards responded on those pages. On >3A, >7A, >BA, those were tied to specific FDC's or RS232 cards. I am not sure which one(s) were not fully decoded. I'm also not sure if the modification for the FDC/RS232 cards were used without modification for the Rave/MBP cards.

 

If you have a Rave card in your system, my first thoughts would be to have you pull it and see if Basic then works for what you are trying to do.

 

Where one got into trouble with MDOS and then GPL as well, was if the card was not fully decoded, mapping one of those above pages would result in a couple of bytes floating with different values depending upon whatever may have been called from the card. That would cause programs to potentially crash depending upon what the values were and/or redirecting code to miscellaneous code.

 

There was one other area, I think if one had a PFM modification, that resulted in memory issues for page >FA and >FC as the PFM modification opened up memory pages >F0 to >FB (????). Not sure if it was the last 16K or the last 32K one could not use.

 

Now, I do not know about the Basic error problem you were experiencing. I know Tim has solved some Rompage issues, but I am not sure if that problem was related to the GPL interpreter itself.

 

 

Beery

[+InsaneMultitasker]

There were a few problems introduced to MDOS and GPL when the SCSI support was added. I shared with Matt earlier that the rompage powerup routine might only run for the HFDC and Floppy controller card in its present implementation. One test he can perform is to use a debugger to map in the peripheral page, turn on the card via CRU, and confirm it is visible.

PFM is visible in banks F0 to FF. I do not recall ever installing PFM on a Genmod but I think you are right about a few pages in that segment being a problem. I think Michael had to make some addressing changes when he implemented PFM in emulation, I don't know if they were Genmod related.

[+mizapf]

I had to browse my archived conversation with you (Tim) to remember the details, but I think I did not try the PFM with Genmod. I was happy enough to get it going with the standard Geneve.