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FarmerPotato last won the day on April 9 2023
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About FarmerPotato
- Birthday 01/01/1971
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TI-99/4A. FORTH. Verilog.
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In disassembly of some TI code , I found this: BL @SUBR CLR R7 JEQ L2 ... I was confused, but I looked up CLR and saw it does not change the status register. Apparently R7 is used by SUBR, but this code wants R7 to be 0 before L2.
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Second that. I built ought on a wire wrap perf board once I had the Geneve2020 CPU module ready to plug in. Memory, 9901, 9902 and sundry went in wire wrap first. Im tempted to go back, or a combination of PCB with next steps in WW. So much trouble soldering my latest boards. Along the way, I learned some history of wire wrap. It is a superior technology! Connections, physically, are superior. Breadboard doesn't compare. . The standard Radio Shack WW hand tool is still reliable. (1980s). Got the parts to a Jonard electric tool, but still the hand tool is second nature.
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I bought from him a keyboard compatible with my TI-928 terminal. It was in amazing shape and so an amazing value.
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I researched this recently. I was going to start a thread of "other Texas Instruments instruments". From memory: It connects by DB25 to a PC where you run WINSDS.EXE. That software sends your audio samples to the box which has a TMS320C6xxx in it. (Or some flavor of the 320 DSP, I forget.) Alternately, it can synthesize speech. The DSP extracts MELP code parameters, not LPC-10. For playback on one of the late speech processors. So, even if you had the software, it would be of no use for Home Computer speech which is LPC-10. I found two datasheets that describe the SDS-6000. They do have the guidelines for getting good recordings. Pretty cool that, ultimately, Texas Instruments distilled the speech analysis workstation to a little box. Compare @Stuart's big SDS workstation. I found one mention of a little box like the SDS-6000 that still did LPC-10. Maybe SDS-5000?
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Many, many thanks, Colin! This is the most exciting databook I could have read. I have been reverse engineering my XDS/22, TMS34010 emulator. Like the first XDS/22 for TMS7000, it has an SE9996 just to run the XMPL software (or whatever they called it by 1988). At first it was a greatly satisfying puzzle, to trace or test out continuity for the 9996 pins. I deduced the set of pins that match the 9995. Made some guesses like 'pin 56 to PAL could be the necessary byte/word signal'. Your databook confirms those guesses, but fills in all the mysteries! FREEZE, MAP, MID, 9995se/9990-- I could never have figured those. (9995se/9990* is grounded!) The EPROM is two 64K byte images selected by a jumper. There is 16K of RAM. The PAL generates chip selects for EPROMs or RAMs. It re-maps the top address bits. The code proves that C000 must be 16K RAM, and 8000-83FE is memory mapped devices. But I didn't know how it gets to C000 in EPROM. The 9996 databook pin 58 is the inverted ST8, MAP0/MAP1. Similar to 99105 ST8 Map Select. That goes to the PAL too. I looked for code that does LST (Load Status) and found subroutines that set/clear/restore ST8. So that's the clue to unravel how the full 64K is accessed. Thanks again!
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Nice. That's a TM990/101MB, the last version of the 101. It's a great board to see how Texas Instruments would take advantage of all the features of the 9900. For instance, the single-step capability and DMA memory access grant. $113 was a great price! (though you still need to have a backplane, or at least power hooked up.) I have a 101MA and 102, so I'm good for now.
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Why does CALL SOUND use millisecond durations?
FarmerPotato replied to OLD CS1's topic in TI-99/4A Computers
For BASIC, I think you would want to use familiar units like seconds. I first learned what a millisecond was from Beginner's BASIC. "Oh yeah, 0.25 seconds, 250 ms." Thinking in "ticks"of 1/50th would be more nerdy. TIBASIC insulated you from machine implementation, unlike others with PEEKs and POKEs and OMG AppleSoft shape tables. (Packed byte of 3 "turtle" commands.) Shame there was no calibration for NTSC/PAL. At least the frequencies are both 3.579 MHz right? -
Wow. Interesting bug testing, @OLD CS1 Here is "File Control Statements" from Specification for Texas Instruments Standard Basic, pp. 55-59. That is the "Green Book" from the C.B. Wilson documents (see documentation thread.) It's a really interesting book. You can find the definitions for PERMANENT / TEMPORARY and KEYED. And the SCRATCH command. It also shows CLOSE #1:DELETE. From Chapter 1, I infer that our BASICs were of the EN subsets. EN = Education Nucleus with supersets E1, R2 IN = Industrial Nucleus. No string variables! BN = Business Nucleus. Keyed-Indexed files are required in BN2. TI-BASIC File Specification.pdf Originally posted in this thread:
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Hackaday project: keyboard PCB replacement
FarmerPotato replied to retroclouds's topic in TI-99/4A Computers
I have wondered if anyone still makes extra wide space bars. -
I didn't notice on my own, but Erg titles it "EIA Colors" so there you go.
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Self Learning Kicad as I design a FDC/IO card
FarmerPotato replied to RickyDean's topic in TI-99/4A Development
In the old days, a wave soldering manual called for chips to face their prow into the wave, rather than get hit broadside. Arrr. -
Another interesting offshoot was Lilith (1976). Niklaus Wirth was at Xeroc PARC in 1976 and used the Alto. On returning to ETH Zurich, he had a small team create a "desktop workstation" by 1980. It's really interesting reading, how Wirth re-created the Alto concepts in the Lilith workstation, starting with a very large bitmap display. This article claimed about 310 in use.