acadiel

Those people count! They are the ones I mentioned that are the ones that I've met "virtually".

I don’t remember if it was Gemco (South Texas chain) or Toys R Us that my father bought our /4A from, but it was my 2nd grade year, likely late Summer 1982 or Fall 1982 when some sort of price cut took place. I also remember seeing the games in our stand alone Sears that was downtown. Hooked up with metal cables to the kiosk. We had a console and a handful of carts to start, not even a cassette cable. And Dad was the only one that could touch that system, learning how to program it in BASIC. He has purchased some small paperback book about BASIC programming from my school book faire with green and white stripes on the front and was determined to get some working on the TI. He had notes written in the book, and being 7, I was not allowed anywhere near the console. We did have MunchMan and A-maze-ing with joysticks to start. I could only play supervised. Well, he eventually after a month or two didn’t get into it as much - or something seemed to happen. I know Dad bought a cassette cable and tried to save programs. At some point, I just started playing with the system and turning it on myself and playing the games and programming it and think I might have passed him up in skill level and he stopped experimenting with it, and he also stopped telling me I had to use it under his supervision. 😆 We bought games like Blasto and Early Learning Fun and eventually Parsec and got a free speech synth. (Early 1983? Buy so many modules and get a free speech synth.). We owned probably a dozen cartridges at most, the joysticks, speech, console, and a cassette cable. Anyway, we kept the TI around, but it got moved around a bit, first in December 1983 to Louisiana from Texas (self packed move that was probably rather rough) and then again to another Louisiana home later in 1983. It worked for a bit in 1984 and 1985; then it just stopped working - black screen. Years go by, and around 1988 or 1989, my father brings home the console one day, and says “Here you go, it’s fixed.” It was supposedly a wire in the power cord. So, I take the console and set it up and make it mine. Then, I start talking to my cousins at school about my fixed console and they said that they knew someone with an “expansion system” that had upgraded to an Amiga. I got this gentleman’s name and number, and talked to him about purchasing his TI equipment - he and my parents worked out a deal to pay him in installments, and I got probably the most complete setup ever. PEB, cartridges in including E/A, mini memory, IUG cassettes and newsletters, old catalogs, countless disks, etc. This guy, Alvin, taught me some great things through the years, and I can blame him for getting me into modems and BBSing too. John Phillips, a TI author, wrote me back one day a year or two later (1991?) and sent tons of source code that was preserved. (I’ve been able to share and upload everything with the community, too - it’s all on Whtech!). It was a treasure trove that I was able to learn from. There are lots of great people that I have met along the way - Mattie (the President) and Louis Guion (who ran the BBS) from the Dallas TI group. (I rescued a lot of equipment from Mattie and Louis years later.) All these people probably wondered what this (back then not diagnosed yet) autistic teen was doing racking up his parents long distance bill calling them in Texas to ask all those questions about this computer that was discontinued many years ago. But, they listened and helped me, and Mattie made friends with my parents and I, and I’m still friends with her today. During college, the TI remained in storage until I got married, and started my first permanent full time job, and then took it back out - I got back into the community starting with the Joy Electronics inventory around 2001 in Yahoo Groups. Worked with all you fine folks on many things including countless archival projects, Chicago TI Faires, Vintage Computer Festival SE, the original 16K Guidry cart board, the 64K cart board, a Pitfall! Cart board partnership, an UberGROM partnership, the TI Books archive, and lastly, the CB Wilson treasure trove of schematics and paperwork. It’s been quite a ride, but I’ve met some amazing people along the way. And you know, as neat as this computer is, the people I’ve met along the way have been the best benefit of working with it. There are some amazing folks out there. For all of you that I’ve met in real life or that I only know well virtually, thank you.

If you need some help soldering, let me know, I can do it for free if you cover postage both ways and will test it.

How are they handling the alpha lock? Last I heard there were no auto locking Cherry switches left?

These were the switches I believe I got from Louis Guion’s lot of parts. @Ksarul has some but I don’t know if I sent him any - I do think I sent @FALCOR4 some for the switching supply.

Want to part with one? I’d love one to replace a 2364 which I don’t have enough clearance to put a 28 pin 2564. 🙂

Old topic, but tossing this out here. You can program a 28 pin 2564 and just throw the lower 24 pins in a 24 pin socket and it should be happy. I am using one to replace a 2364 Commodore ROM and just going to bend the upper pins in and tape them. 1980_TI_The_MOS_Memory_Data_Book_for_Design_Engineers.pdf

I'll have to find the switches I found - I know I sent one to @FALCOR4 that was rated and spec'd just like the original PSU switch. I don't remember if it has a part number (I think it did.)

I see them here: https://www.itweba.com/en/product/spectra-c-023-jumper-switches-dip-switches.html - though this is an "inquire" site. It'll get you some part numbers. Here too: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/dip-sip-switches/0321105 Here: https://www.newark.com/erg-components/sds-6-014/dip-switch-sds-series-spst-through/dp/08WX5540 And lastly found them here: https://www.radwell.com/Buy/ITW/ERG COMPONENTS/SCS-8-023?redirect=true

Thanks, @OLD CS1!

Paul Urbanus himself wrote this detailed description on Reddit about how he had Parsec accomplish smooth scrolling and simultaneous speech/gameplay back in the early 80s at TI. Amazing stuff, thanks Urb!

I have them and the other one you sent downloaded. I just have to find a good web editor to see if I can stay with the same theme that was within the original web page.

Yep, that sounds awesome. We haven't had a ROM/GROM matching algorithm to go with the "Review Module Library" (for those modules that work at other GROM bases). The HSGPL worked kind of like this; the only caveat was that we found some carts that didn't like being at the non-default GROM base. Ours has always been the "one game, one ROM" mentality in the past, so I'm excited to see your release where you're adding these hooks in GROM to do matching/pairing! (Edit: Sure would make it easier on homebrew too if there were a paired GROM/ROM active at the same time - double the assets available without having to trampoline.)

The ROM part is simply a ROM cart - if you "write to ROM" you can bank switch in 8K increments like normal for all 512/8 banks. Put that in your code in the AVR, and you're good to go. Keep in mind, there's other AVR inputs and such we didn't really touch that are available... serial (which some people have used for HDX and Bluetooth transfers), ADC inputs, and others.... Jim and I tried to make sure we exposed what we could to the front of the board on jumpers to make it hobby friendly. About the overrides... from an old quote from @Tursi: "I disabled the UberGROM overriding the console GROMs because the MPD will use the same tech, and then you'll have two TTL devices (one in the console, one in the cartridge port) both driving the bus at the same time if you try to overload the console GROMs. That /will/ damage one or the other. I tested the UberGROM overriding real GROMs without issue. IMHO notwithstanding, I did that test. I'm still deciding how to deal with that anyway since the same problem would occur with GRAMKrackers, and I don't want to cause issues for those. The MPD will probably just need resistors on the outputs so it can be overridden." So yes, it looks like you can simply just override them w/code (since you probably don't have a MPD LOL), but I'd ask @FALCOR4 or @Tursi if there's any other recommendations for mods to the cart to keep things safe.

[PSA] Just in case any of you have dealt with this lowlife…. (GWSS - Sean). I really hope nobody in our TI community has been burned by him. If you have been taken advantage of by him, please speak up on the video and make yourself known. It’s only by discussing, and like Adrian said, making it known among the community, that we can openly discuss it as a retro community. (This has been making the rounds in many of the Discords that I belong to, and really threw the NABU one for a loop over the past week, like was mentioned in the video.)

There's a mega UberGROM thread to start with, please feel free to add to it as you have questions, etc, so we keep discoveries and questions in one spot for new folks. We try to go through everything in here, including linking to software images that are pre built (there's tons of them in that thread).

Looking at things like this makes me wonder how easily we can use something like MESS to make a Z80 "Ranger" TI-99/3B if we were able to translate the ROM and GROM0, 1, and 2 into something compatible with Z80. (Yeah, I know stuff would need to be recompiled, but am really curious if we could reproduce the "great experiment" )

Good innovation! 👍 Your method reminds me of the picoPSU’s - it’s a good way to get multiple rails off one source, and I’ve used it to power an entire XT class system. There’s also the breakout board for those, and I wonder if they have one that doesn’t have the “ATX” part that retro users like us can use in a modular fashion and just place on a board like this?

Kinda cool to relate the actual draw to the rating of the internal coffee warmer. At least we know what we have to work with.

I dumped the ROM. And the video chip (TMP9118) should be emulated in MAME. Someone needs to just write the bits that tie it all together with the Hexbus interface to get it to run in MAME. As far as getting it to work in another form factor, I don't think it would be that hard to recreate it. There's a TMS7000 cross assembler for the Arduino. https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/libraries/libasm/ - I just don't know if we can interface a TMS9118 and some 4416's to the Arduino as well, and recreate this with some Hexbus glue logic. Someone would have to disassemble the 4K TMS7000 code ROM and figure it out.

Yep. (context for newbies, man I’m feeling old now) Those initial 16K and 64K carts were mainly copying and extending what Databiotics carts did (as the primary >8K carts). Pitfall being the primary homebrew that used it with TurboForth being the primary utility. But, we later just changed it to non inverted with the 512K and Ubergrom because it made more sense and was less work. It’s easy peasy to shuffle around the 8K banks and reverse them using a hex editor if someone needs to “invert” it for some reason. All Jim did was just flip the lines around for the LS377/378 and it’s essentially the same write to rom method, just bottom to top instead of top to bottom. I still dream of a board with two components: one being a ROM board with just level shifters on it and a socket, and the other being an 32MB flash IC and a small CPLD that could emulate a LS377+ (what I could call it) that could deal with 12 address lines, the max. Maybe even an ISP port on either the cart or chip. We might even be able to put the entire thing on a chip form factor of 42 pins or such with SMT. (Some folks have made “EPROM emulators” like this with flash chips for rare, hard to find, high capacity EPROMs. See pic below.) We could make two options for the board - one for just the ROM (all banking on that one chip), and one board could also have an Ubergrom. The pinout for the chip could even have some sort of standard pinout too. I figure 32MB using the max address lines ought to keep most folks out of trouble before delving into the bank switching using the data lines (like Dragon’s Lair) to get above that. Just imagine the mega cart we could build there with 32MB….. 🙂

I got the auction mainly because I noticed quite a few of the books aren’t on the http://www.hexbus.com/tibooks site and plan to scan them in. The seller was very cordial and changed the auction for me to where not only could I bid on it, but he fixed it so I could pay for shipping. (I really have no use for the console, etc.) Things like “PROGRAMMEZ VOS JEUX SUR” isn’t on the site. The Connors/Edwards book next to it in English is, though. Many of the TI pamphlets and other books in the pictures don’t appear to be scanned either, so I’m going to do those as well, like the TI Basic Etendu manual in French. These French auctions for TI paraphernalia don’t come up too often, so thanks for bringing this one up.

It's a lot of testing, trial, and error. Most of these ICs are regular and can be replaced. The joystick, not so much. We'd have to trace where the inputs from the joystick are going (likely to the two ADCs through some passives), and also look at where the PIA is hooked up, to the 6809. (I'm guessing one ADC for each joystick, and they probably offer some input to the PIA, along with the keyboard matrix. The 6809 processes this input, and probably sends it out through the joystick port. No idea what the MBX joystick port is besides a ground, there's two other pins in use there. Maybe audio in? Always remember, the MBX source code is available... https://forums.atariage.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=190583

Precompiled firmware for DuPAL: https://github.com/hexbus/DuPAL_PAL_precompiled_fw/tree/main

Question: Can we load it from a bank switched cart at >6000 (kind of like Tursi helped do with the F18A Updater cartridge)? That's 8K x however many banks you need - possibly a 32K 27256 EPROM is all that's needed. (Code + the firmware put together into one image burned to the EPROM). That means also that a FinalGROM or FinalROM user can also load the cart image too, as well as a regular EPROM cart user (UberGROM, Guidry board, red board, black board, 64K board, etc.)