HackMac

Hello, Michael, I'd love to help you. However, I don't feel like reading through the previous 20 pages of messages. Only waste of time. So I can only guess. Which would certainly not help you. I suspect that a header file could be included twice. But I am not there in the detail. I would have to follow all the steps you have taken. From my point of view it is no miracle for the failures with your attempt to set up the tool chain, and/or to produce the source code. I wouldn't even be motivated to start working through the gibberish, although it's an interesting project. As constructive criticism to insomnia I can contribute the following: On the first page all versions of the patches are available for download, that's quite good. But unfortunately I can't see what an interested user should do. (Without reading more than 20 pages of comments.) What, an installer? What is that supposed to do? Is it a kind of build script? It's certainly independent of the platform, isn't it? Do these patches build on each other? So should you apply each patch one by one, or is it enough to just use the last one? What is the base of the patches? What are the requirements to build your own gcc? (Regarding the tool chain with version numbers.) It seems to me like in the 90's when you sent patches by mail. Terrible! If this procedure had proved itself, patches would still be exchanged today. But the world continues to turn and the opportunities are evolving. Nowadays one should use more modern technologies, which GIT really makes available to everyone. Just create a fork from the master of the gcc repository and maintain a branch with your TMS9900 extensions. (Or include the gcc sources as a git module for your extensions in the repository, like I do with XDT99 on my XDT-Wrapper project.) Occasionally rebase your branch onto the latest master of the gcc. Furthermore, you should provide some build scripts, like for commonly used make or cmake, etc. This increases the acceptance by a multiple: Clone, build - done! It can be sooo simple... Everything else is crap! No harm meant!

Hey Dano (and all other Macianer), I'm currently checking for new minimum requirements of macOS for my program and a possible change to a more current version (maybe 10.12, aka Sierra?). Which of you still uses macOS 10.8 (aka Mountain Lion)? Is there anything against using macOS 10.12 as a minimum requirement?

Oh, I'm sorry about that. You can, if you really need a Mac, put together a hackintosh with Mojave on your PC. However, macOS has some minimum requirements for the standard hardware, which must be met. Another way would be to use the VirtualBox. You can find a good starting point here: https://hackintosh.com/

Hello guys, it is exactly one year ago today that you received an update of the TI-Disk Manager from me. For this anniversary (because I switched my own {Mac|Hack}intosh to Mojave and noticed that I had to install many updates of other software) I decided to modify the TI-Disk Manager for Mojave and its dark mode. Now the program looks really hot in Mojave's dark mode. :-) This is the fifth release of version 2.9.2, which of course also includes some bug fixes. (See above messages and see my wiki for more release information.) Have fun with it!

I like this idea because I had the same plan a long time ago. Therefore, as a first step, I digitally captured the original circuit diagrams (to be found on the project pages at bitbucket) in order to realize single boards, which are divided into their own functions: CPU & Clk, VDP, Keyboard & Joystick, Sound, ROM/RAM, GROM, etc... Here I already tried to point out every single functional unit. I have already bought a suitable 19 inch slide-in case for this project. But unfortunately I am a bit frittered away with my many projects. The two projects TI-Disk Manager and the FPGA board for the TI alternately share the highest priority.

I like the Parsec Shirt very much! Very nice color combination.

"Single Click Install and Update Procedure" sound like it gets to an Apple Macintosh application... (By the way: "SCIUP" could be the name for that tool!?) I like to contribute to your idea, but sadly I don't use any TI-99 emulators / simulators. But when, I tried out MAME. What I'm trying to say, I don't think I have any ideas I can contribute to such a project right now because of the rare use of MAME. But we both already have some experience in working together on some lines of code. I've always enjoyed it. My preferred language is definitely German! But I also speak Java very well and also C/Objective-C (and even C++ is not very far away). So I can bring in my special knowledge of macOS. Phyton will work seamless on macOS. But this programming language is a mess! Every time I try to get a closer look at the code of XDT99 (for the Objective-C wrapper classes I write) I'll get eye cancer. (And if I can't get my eyes off the code, I will get brain cancer.) Sorry Ralph, I don't mean to offend you, it is definitivly not your fault! The fault is mine, because I can't read that kind of coding style. Meine eMail hast Du ja, Michael. Wir bleiben in Kontakt! P.S. This text was written with the kind support of https://www.deepl.com

Thanks for explaining! That is the reason why I like your projcets so very much. That makes them so unique. And I think, you like much bigger challenges. You'll run into trouble with your available space on the motherbord. I think you have to start to put components on the bottom side of the board :-) I like to know how you decide if a component is a vintage one or not. Is it sufficient when they have a through hole footprint or must they have matching technology (or both)? In my opinion, components would match that criteria when they where available in the 80th or 90th in principle, even if the mounting form and thechnology (and used voltage) vary. Like static CMOS RAM. They exists in principle back the days, but today they can have a much higer capacity, and their mounting form and technology changes. So if you plan to realize some lage memory devices, will you choose such components like a more modern 64 Mbit SRAM? Or do you recycle all your old Computers at home and take all parts off them and prevent to buy new components?

I hope you'll remain true to your decision / principle, to use 'oldschool' components only! :-)

Great, I like the idea of creating a soft core that is leaned on to the original TI specifications using the datasheets! Doing a core, implementing a stupid state machine which only emulates the behavior of a 9900/99xxx, is boring to me. I already started such a project some years ago, but gave up for the moment (just right before my brain explodes ), because it is really hard to implement a more asynchronous 70's hardware design with alls its tristate busses, Latches and so on, into modern hardware. Because I got some issues with synchronization and edge-detection. Thirty years old hardware designs works with asynchronous edge-detections. But because using the modern synthesis tools creating configurations for FPGAs, your synthesized result does not depends on VHDL syntax but rather often on your used coding style. So if you write something like if rising_edge(strobe) then ... Your synthesis tool thinks "Aha! A clock!" and act accordingly: It will route your strobe signal through a clock buffer, and if you have a few of these edge-detecting, you will soon run out of these buffers. If you try an synchronous implementaion, you will waste many of your FlipFlops and get timing issues, because the result of one tier is available the next (or the next after) clock cycle.

I'm not sure, but in 1989 (it is also a year with two 9 in it, but this doesn't count ) there was the fourth international Treff at Nijmegen in the Netherlands. (Perhaps our member "It's Sparky" can say more about that, he lives there.) I was also there with all my equipment, this time I traveled together with another guy, not with Jürgen.

Yes, I can remember that we met us at 5th Internationale Treffen in Wiesbaden in the year 1990. (Please pay attention to the 99 in the year )

These days I did some restauration work done... Due to the 30th anniversary, I digitized my old papers of my EPROMer512 project and publish these documents to my repository. It was one of my first greater hardware projects, back in 1988. The hardware component was created by Jürgen Reimer and me. We both where sitting in front of the TI-99/4A and handwired each track pixel by pixel on a two layered PCB, which took several month of work. After that we printed the PCB out on an EPSON FX-80+ impact printer to make a transparency film from this print, where the PCB can be produced from. You can find some more information, schematics, PCB layouts and see some more pictures on my Wiki pages at bitbucket. There are also some screenshots of the including operating software. You probably remember my posting announcing my repository for TI related schematics? Greetings

Hi there, I just want to notice that there are some known bugs in the TI-Disk Manager, which will be fixed with the next release: Macintosh file names which have a '/' in their names causing errors converting the names to TI files (i.e. importing files). Because the slash is reserved as a path separator, a ':' is used internally. So for now you should rename the Mac files and replace the slash before using them. There is also an out of bounds exception in a file name formatter, witch will also be fixed with the next release. Currently no workaround for that.

Hello Easter bunnys! Today I hide an Easter egg on the TI-Disk Manager Site. It is the fourth release of version 2.9.2 with a lot of surprises (fixes and improvements) . As usual, for a complete overview of changes and a download link, please have a look at the release infomation. Enjoy and happy Easter!