retroclouds

Anyone seen this one before? Game cartridge 1984 - Cydex Software “King of the castle” https://www.ebay.de/itm/133522179579

Please create a new topic for this. This sticky thread is dedicated to TI-99/4a development resources in general. Thanks.

Cast your vote if you haven’t already done so. Still some days left, poll closes on September 30th. 😀

I didn’t even bother to try to erase SAMS before use. As long as your pointers and memory structures are ok, it doesn’t matter what is next to what you have in use. Don’t see a benefit in initializing memory up front or am I missing something?

Thanks. I’d like to integrate my Stevie Editor in FC, so I’ll be taking a close look at this. The thing is that Stevie is a cartridge image itself with multiple banks and using most of the 32K memory space and some SAMS banks. Having said that, don’t see this as being impossible, guess it’s a matter of setting up the proper environment on startup and doing a proper exit.

Yeah, a box would be mighty cool! Guess that would make it the first new cartridge in a complete package. Unfortunately it makes things more expensive and probably not easy to design and source.

oh yes, would be cool to have the source code available for this one!

Hi Matthew, yes, think it’s a great idea to get the mk2 out with VGA output for starting. I’m sure there are many people out there that already be very happy with just that. Activating features via later firmware upgrades is the new normal and nothing to be too worried about, if you ask me. You also get the joy of getting the product out in the wild and get a little return on your big invest (both on time and money). Filip

There’s this guy mixing his own spray colors for Atari, Commodore, etc. https://hackaday.com/2020/09/01/retrocomputing-spray-paints-amiga-beige-commodore-and-atari-grey/ https://retrohax.net/spray-painting-a-computer-case-a-short-how-to/

I have the same issue with my FinalGROM, although I renamed the binary as suggested in the documentation. Could this have something to do with the firmware revision on the FinalGROM? Can that be updated (haven’t checked). Do know that my FinalGROM was in the first batch produced.

Jim, truly hope you are doing fine and that COVID-19 didn’t cause you too much troubles.

ROS in the HDR ramdisk supports direct RAM transfer in addition to the classic VDP memory for records. Haven’t tried it yet but is interesting to see how much speedup it would make.

The poll is open until end of September. After it closes and depending on the outcome I’ll contact Albert. Changing poll conditions (duration) would not be fair, as I stated in my 1st post that the poll goes that long.

That’s a fascinating idea! Always wanted to try an arduino project. Being able to use my VDP knowledge would be mighty cool. A while back I stumbled on a project where someone used a F18a MK1 in his propeller project (if I’m not mistaking). Unfortunately I can’t recall what it was otherwise I’d include the link here.

ok, I solved this stupid, stupid bug that took me too much time 😁 The problem was that R15 did not contain >8C02 at the time the TI-Disk Controller DSR was entered. >8C02 is the VDP port address. Due to the fact that R15 was >0000 at the time the TI Disk Controller DSR was entered, obviously no byte was ever read from VDP memory and the DSR could not check if it owned the VDP file buffer itself and went into a loop between >4744 - and >4754 Might be a check to add to classic99; verify that R15 contains value >8C02 when the TI Disk Controller is entered

Thanks for pointing out where to select the TI Disk Controller! I knew I had seen it somewhere in classic99 but could not find it. The problem is not the CRU card itself, it’s there. Somehow the VDP byte read routine in the DSR code gets messed up and returns >00. Yesteday evening I didn’t have time anymore to step through that part as well, so that’s something I like to try this evening.

I've been able to nail down the problem in the Disk Controller DSR. Don't fully understand it yet, but the story goes like this: 1. DSR takes over 2. DSR calls preparation routine 3. In the preparation routine, the DSR looks for a VDP file buffer that was created by itself by comparing CRU stored in VDP file buffer. (On startup of the TI-99/4a with call files equivalent done by DSR power-up routine). 4. The preparation routine calls a VDP read routine that should bring back the CRU in the VDP file buffer. The problem is that it always brings back >00 instead of the CRU MSB >11 5. As there is no match, it jumps to the next buffer in (3) and is in an infinite loop So I need to find out why the VDP byte read routine in the DSR brings back >00 instead of the CRU >11. That will have to wait for another day. Here's what I did to get there: 1. I used mame and got a version of Stevie running there (no F18a support) so I'm a little bit blind, but works ok. Mame is setup with SAMS and TI Disk Controller 2. I downloaded the commented disassembly of the TI Disk Controller DSR from Thierry's Site and used that to step through the DSR and set breakpoints. By the way, I really dig the mame debugger: Multiple windows possible each with memory, disassembly, debugger, ... Multiple breakpoints possible, trace to disk, etc. Control the debugger via LUA scripts (sorta, not sure how well that works though) Don't think I would ever be able to find the bug without stepping through the DSR to actually see what is going on. It works fine in all other emulators as there is no Disk Controller DSR there, so cannot reproduce. I thought there was an experimental feature in classic99 where you can enable the TI Disk Controller ROM, but could not find it anymore (checked multiple classic99 revisions).

OLD CS1 just out of curiosity, are you able to create new subforum(s) or is that something only Al can do?

I thought about that too.... 😀 Please vote in the poll! Thanks

Next to my multiple TI-99/4a home computers, I also own multiple Tomy tutors and even a Geneve. In The last 10 years or so Atariage has become the home of most of the TI-99/4a community. Unfortunately for the Tomy Tutor, the community is really scattered on the internet and it's hard to find technical details and programming details. Also have the feeling that most Tomy Tutor, 99/8 and Geneve owners are here on Atariage in the TI-99/4a section. To better focus the threads and gather additional interest I propose to create a subforum in the TI-99/4A Computers section right here on Atariage. Target group for the subforum are the close relatives of the TI-99/4a like Tomy Tutor, 99/8, DS990, ... Minimal requirement for that is that the heart of the computer, the CPU must be a Texas Instruments 16bit CPU like TMS9900 (or closely related like TMS9995). The VDP chip alone does not count, machines with a Z80 CPU (Colecovision, MSX) have their own forums here on Atariage. I have opened up a poll that goes until end of september. Depending on the poll results we can then discuss with Albert. What do you think? Please vote in the poll and comment here. 😀 Retroclouds

I would propose to create a separate thread. This thread is about Pitfall on the TI-99/4a. Thanks.

Lee, perhaps it’s easier to patch xas99.py so that it tollerates ‘$’ in labels. Another possibility: for what it’s worth I’m using the dot “.” character as a delimiter in my labels and that works ok.

For the sake of history I'm linking to the updated dsrlnk routine (V5B) written by the great late Paolo Bagnaresi. As a matter of fact in this version you have the possibility to save the state in memory so that following calls in your program can jump right into it, without having to do the DSR scan again. http://www.whtech.com/ftp/YAHOO group backups/SWPB/FILES/Disk Access/DSRLNK DATA A - Corrected, CRU search start REV5B CPU PAB.txt

hehe, I seriously thought about that for a moment 😊

Next to the TI-99/4a development subforum I’d love to see a subforum for close TI-99/4a relatives such as Tomy Tutor and 99/8. Here’s the place where the folks hang out, so why not make it official as a subforum. Quite sure that most Tomy Tutors out there belong to folks that also have one or muliple TI-99/4a’s and as such are on Atariage.