Vorticon
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Posts posted by Vorticon
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Mike, will the onboard Linux be able to read and write to and from the TI disk drives? In other words, will one be able to save data and programs directly on the TI and retrieve them later, all from within Linux?The TI will be able to access the Linux file system. At this time, I do not intend to allow Linux to access the TI file system. This means the Linux machine can not talk to the TI disk drives. (But the TI can talk to both its native drives and Linux, so interop is preserved).
I thought long and hard about it, but the Linux file system is not as abstracted as I originally thought it was (I thought it was more like the TI file system, which is pretty much completely abstracted). It turns out Linux needs to know about the file system itself, and doesn't just blindly ask for files -- at least, if you want a block device file system, which I was looking into. Given the vast number of TI file system formats, I didn't want to go there, and I feel it's less important since logging into the Linux machine to do work is not expected to be a normal operation.
Maybe once everything else is done we can look into it, or maybe a Linux guru will get involved when it's a little closer to functional and can do that side of it.
This is vaguely similar then to the P112 CP/M computer-on-a-card that I installed inside my PEB that connects to the TI via the RS232 and uses the ZT4 terminal program to provide 80 column display. The TI drives are still fully accessible by the TI as well as the IDE drive connected to the P112, but the CP/M OS does not see the TI drives.
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the 128D with that horrible, short keyboard cable.
Short cable = long arms ?
I LOVED that system. I had to give it up when I moved to New York for space reasons
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Walid...I'd be happy to send it to you if you have a scanner. I would really love to see it online for everyone to enjoy.
I do have a scanner, but I'd be hard pressed unfortunately to find the time to spend several hours scanning each page manually
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So I was Searching for information on this book on Google, and NOTHING. I searched on the OLUG and on wiki... There is nothing anywhere. So--- I'm guessing nobody else has one of these? It looks slickly produced, so I imagine there were quite a few made.... But not finding any info is vexing me... Are there other books in this series?
It appears that these books were made for a variety of platforms including the VIC 20, C64, Atari and Timex-Sinclair. Amazon actually has a copy of the TS version on sale. The TI version seems to be pretty rare, so I think you have a very nice find here. If you can find someone to scan the book into PDF, that would be awsome
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Work on spectra2 is coming along nicely. I did plenty of updates in the last week.
I completed the work on the runtime library initialisation and on most of the graphic routines.
It's now feature complete for the initial release.
Still not sure if the remaining features on my list will be implemented.
Guess it'll depend on the feedback and how I move along with further game development.
Excellent work! Are you going to make available a complete finalized package with documentation?
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Dan, I'd be interested in seeing your games. =) A baseball game, really??? That must have been a tough thing to code. Do you have a copy of these anywhere? Other than the CTIUG library?
all my games were done in XB,I entered them in the programing contest when they had the meeting at triton college.
the baseball game, was done because I didn't like the way MBX system handled their baseball game.
my version you can tell what outfield can get the ball,instead of having the computer do it.
I still have my orginal disk, but besides that CTIUG is the only place that would have the released copy.
I started basic and went right into XB because I enjoyed working with speech and sprites.
my second laserman on the 2600 is loosely based on my ti version.
I did a sequel to it on the Ti but never released it(I'm considering revamping it to port it to the 2600)
of course doing it on the 2600, I won't have speech.
Dan, I would love to post your games on the tigameshelf.net site to share with the community. If you are able to email them to me that would be great, otherwise you could mail the disks to me and I'll make copies then return the originals to you. I could look for them in the CTUG library, but without a catalogue it would be a nightmare trying to locate them...
Walid
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As a valuable usage of the above, I hacked TI's Editor/Assembler to no longer require a disk to work, and put that one up here: http://www.harmlesslion.com/software/editor
Mike, is it possible to have a cartrige made with your modification using EPROMs? Maybe Jon can help us here. This would be a great replacement to the E/A cart.
Walid
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Basically, I made a cartridge that contained, inside the cartridge, an entire Linux computer. In this case, it was a Snapper 9260 single board computer module. (http://www.designarm.com/products/snapper-single-board-computers/snapper-9260.html)
For the communication, I used the same chip that I used above for the GROM system. All I did was declare a "magic" address -- if you read or wrote to that GROM address, the chip would pass the data through to the serial port instead. That serial port was connected to the serial console on the Linux board.
Mike, will the onboard Linux be able to read and write to and from the TI disk drives? In other words, will one be able to save data and programs directly on the TI and retrieve them later, all from within Linux?
Walid
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I personally had a heck of a time. In the end, it's the people you meet that makes all the difference. The technical wizardry is just the icing on the cake
It's really amazing how dysfunctional each one of us is 
The hangover was a bitch however 
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Well, something I just thought about is that no one turns the camera around to show the "other half" of the Faire. Next year I might take a camera and do a montage of the Faire, surrounding Evanston (which has a lot of nice ASSets), and the people at the Faire. The presentations are ok, but IMO the fun is going on in the back. I had a good time, but again the "presentations" cut deep into the time people had to talk shop and see what everyone brought, etc. In the middle of the day I counted 30 people in the room... Another 70 would have been nice!
Matthew
You're right. Maybe the Faire should be spread out over 2 days instead of one. Something to think about for next year, given the number of pending projects currently slated to be completed and presented in 2011.
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Thanks Tim. I had a great time watching you and Marc trying to get that Geneve code working too.
Oh, I finished the whole 38/58/9999 cores last night after the pub crawl, and threw in the 9900 core too in my spare time. Boards will be ready tomorrow.Matthew
I hope you didn't have too much of a hangover after all the water you drank
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Just started thinking about Keith's Dead Station game... This BBS could be a great place to have turn-based strategy games.
We could have a contest on here for the best war/strategy game and set up a data bank for storage of variables and score. Of course it would take "sign in, play, sign out, opponent signs in, plays, signs out" kind of thing-- so not terribly arcade-like... But a really good game with great chess/stratego-like elements and an immersive plot could work quite nicely. Sounds like fun.Now that's a thought... I wonder if I could create a multiplayer version of Ultimate Planet that could potentially connect to the BBS and download/upload game data from each of the players. Hmmmm... Definitely worth looking into.
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I don't mean to sound like a party-pooper, but I'm not keen on bringing actual hardware to the American Legion.
The original idea, if you can call it that, was to set up some hardware, demo whatever people wanted to demo, hash around some ideas, and whatever else turns up. Sort of a throw-back to the Faires of old. Guess we'll see who turns up where, when, and for how long. Regardless, I'm getting my equipment ready, stocking a cooler, and plan to be in Evanston Friday afternoon.I happen to agree. Before everyone gets worked up (in TI community fashion
lets pause here. There are many choices one can make, period..... Have fun, be young... drink Pepsi... Go with what makes you feel good and have a good time..... Pretty simple really.Err.. Is Coke OK? You're right though. We'll figure it out in situ. Planning anything with TIers is always dicey at best anyway
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I don't mean to sound like a party-pooper, but I'm not keen on bringing actual hardware to the American Legion.
The original idea, if you can call it that, was to set up some hardware, demo whatever people wanted to demo, hash around some ideas, and whatever else turns up. Sort of a throw-back to the Faires of old. Guess we'll see who turns up where, when, and for how long. Regardless, I'm getting my equipment ready, stocking a cooler, and plan to be in Evanston Friday afternoon.Marc, I don't think the rooms at the hotel are big enough for you are envisioning. I suggest we go to the Legion first, and then afterward come back to the hotel and check out the new hardware. We can even pick up some of Evanston's walking dead chicken wings on the way and make sure there is a fire hose nearby
Huh ??? seems you got the wrong number Walid
Oops! This was meant for Tim
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Well! How uncivilized... Gentlemen, consider yourself slapped in the face by my white gloves. I graciously accept the challenge and wish you all good luck. Good day sirs.
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I don't mean to sound like a party-pooper, but I'm not keen on bringing actual hardware to the American Legion.
The original idea, if you can call it that, was to set up some hardware, demo whatever people wanted to demo, hash around some ideas, and whatever else turns up. Sort of a throw-back to the Faires of old. Guess we'll see who turns up where, when, and for how long. Regardless, I'm getting my equipment ready, stocking a cooler, and plan to be in Evanston Friday afternoon.Marc, I don't think the rooms at the hotel are big enough for you are envisioning. I suggest we go to the Legion first, and then afterward come back to the hotel and check out the new hardware. We can even pick up some of Evanston's walking dead chicken wings on the way and make sure there is a fire hose nearby
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Marc, are you planning on selling the cards? If you are, please put me down for one. PLEASE!
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I dug around and found the Soundgen program. Here it is. Docs are included.
Could we have the MOUSE file too ?
I'm afraid I can't seem to find it as I don't have the Mechatronics mouse anymore. However, I do have a Horizon mouse, and I'm thinking I could probably adapt it for that purpose. And while I'm at it I may as well implement sound lists. I haven't touched that program in 13 years, so it would fun to revamp it a bit
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I think we should give an award on whoever can actually FINISH a TI game, crap or not. There seems to be a lot of unfinished games.
Unfinished, yet! I always finish what I start, but usually after a fair amount of side-tracking
Need an example? This year I finished no less than 7 ASCII based games in Turbo Pascal using a combination of the IBM PCjr and a TRS 80 model 4 running CP/M as part of a project to redo and preserve some of the original classic games dating from the early days of computing. Then the last three and a half weeks I frantically put together 3 mathematical demo programs for the TI in assembly Which I will present at the upcoming Chicago Faire this Saturday. I'm hoping to go back and finish Ultimate Planet this year. We'll see about that 
Remember, this is a hobby after all, and it should never feel like work -
Okay... so, here's the history here. I started writing this converter for "Honeycomb Rapture"'s music... Mark Wills was intending on helping me automate the process and create a disk-based load and save feature. Unfortunately for me (but VERY fortunately for the TI community) Willsy got tied up with Turboforth and was unable to help me out. So, the development kind of died out for a while. I am actually very glad you brought this back up, because I should really finish it. =) There isn't much to update from the previous postings... just a bypass for instructions at the beginning and a LITTLE better UI... but nothing significant. Just be careful to only input valid values, otherwise the program will crash. I will add safeguards against that today. =) For now, here's the latest update. Thanks to Mark for support and Tursi for helping develop the convert formula--- The CLIP feature is awesome. =)
DSK access and writability to DV80 should happen today or tomorrow... then again, we've heard THAT before. =)
Nice work Owen
A long time ago, I had created an XB program called Soundgen that had a graphical interface (including mouse support for the Mechatroninc mouse!) which let you set up the parameters for the 3 sound channels and one noise channel and printed out the needed values for the CALL SOUND statement as well as played the sound. I always regretted however not including the ability of linking sounds into a playlist, something that would not have been too hard to do (I may do that at some point still ). Are you considering adding the playlist feature to your program? I think it will greatly enhance its value.
I dug around and found the Soundgen program. Here it is. Docs are included.
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That's quite a haul from the Best Western. I sure wish Hal would post all this info somewhere "official" as to what he has reserved, the days and times, etc. Maybe it's just me who does not know these details though?
So, are we going to do this Friday night "thing" at the hotel or the A.L. Post? Personally I'm more interested in talking shop (hardware, programming, etc.) and maximizing the time since we will only have a few hours Friday night. Also, how late can we stay at the A.L., anyone know?
Matthew
Hal is arranging transportation for all of us, and I also have my car, so that should not be an issue. Typically people bring in their laptops as there is wifi internet access available and run TI stuff on emulators. Most, if not all of the conversation is TI oriented, although things start going off on tangents proportionally to the amount of beer consumed
The gathering is in the banquet room which we normally have to ourselves, and there are lots of tables to set up equipment. As to how late we can stay, I don't quite recall, but it's usually at least 11pm. After that, we can always "retire" to Tim's room or the local water hole for more chatting -
Truthfully, looking back... I probably wouldn't have gotten far. The speed of compilation is so slow on the TI, and without a debugger, you'd be tearing your hair out trying to find problems. Plus, I'm pretty certain I'd have burned out my disk drives with all the compiling eventually.
I do need to dig up some of my old Extended BASIC projects, dust them off, maybe put them up on Walid's site.
Adamantyr
If you have an IDE card or a RAM disk and SuperBug, it's really not bad. I still do most of my programming on a real TI system and only use emulators, and mostly V9T9 because it can run completely unthrottled, when I need to test out computation heavy programs that can take hours (or days) to complete on the real thing.
My initial TI system back in 1981 consisted of only the console and a cassette cable, along with Video Chess and Adventure with Pyramid of Doom on tape. I did not even own an Extended Basic cart... And yet I still recall having a huge amount of fun programming in TI Basic, although I unfortunately lost all of my early programs except for TI Puck which now lives on the TI Gameshelf. I dropped out entirely from the TI scene after my dad got me a PC clone as a reward for getting into medical school in 1986, and to be honest the PC was light years ahead of the TI in just about everything except colors as I only had a CGA adapter and I absolutely went wild programming in Microsoft Basic. Also for the first time I was able to get my hands on things like Flight Simulator and a variety of wargames, something that was sorely missing on the TI. The TI carts in my opinion were generally very lame as compared to what was available for other systems, and without a disk drive I had no access to the 3rd party software that was starting to come out.
Finally in 1994, having graduated from residency and with my first job secured, I decided on a whim to acquire a completely decked out TI system, the dream system I had always wanted but never could afford including newer additions like a SAMS card and a SCSI card. And then something funny happened: The PC (I now had a pentium system) became gradually relegated to utility status for the likes of word processing, presentations and internet, and the real fun was happening on the TI system. Now I had the tools needed to explore other languages starting with UCSD Pascal, later on c99 and eventually assembly. I also discovered Micropendium and the Chicago TI User Group (I was living in Illinois at the time) and attended my first Faire in 1996. I have not looked back since
Owen somewhere on this forum had mentioned that he regularly contracts Cyan fever: I get you buddy -
That sounds fantastic... I would still need a phone line for the callers to "call" right? Or would it require that the end user also have their TI hooked up to a PC and it is all done via Internet connections?
No need for a phone line if most callers will be "calling" from a PC or Mac via internet. The TI will however need to be connected via serial cable to the PC. Any old PC that can connect to the internet should do. If you also however want people to connect using their actual TI, then yes, you do need a phone line and modem, at least until someone decides to write a TCP/IP stack for the TI...
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It has been suggested that there be a TI -Tech room at the BW on Friday afternoon evening. Everyone could set up their stuff and have informal discussion concerning all the new events. It is BYOE(quipment) so bring your wares and your ideas. Should be a blast IMO anyway and may be the only venue for face to face discussion if Saturday is packed with lectures er... presentations
What room will we be using? Did someone set aside a small conference room with the hotel, or is this just going to happen in someone's regular room?
I'll be leaving Michigan about 4pm Friday, and it takes me about 3.5 hours to get there, but I gain an hour going from EDT to CT, so my and my non-TI geek friend will be arriving about 6:30pm if we don't hit a lot of traffic.
Owen: I don't understand how you let your real life and day (night) job get in the way of your hobby??
I wish you were going to be there man, I was looking forward to some live FlyGuy music.Matthew
I believe Mr Tesch has volunteered his room and his liquor with the only caveat is that anyone needing to deuce it go elsewhere
He's a bit more of a night owl than I am so won't be running anyone off early. Hell I may try and stay up past 9:30 for this one.Indeed I have. I'll even bring a card table just in case we need the space. And since I have no idea how large (or small) the rooms might be it could be pretty cozy. As for the night owl thing, well, 9:30am is actually pretty early, sir but that should get you to the Faire on time. <grin>
It's starting to feel like a pre-Faire fiesta in the making.
Should I bring cheese from the dairy state?Tim, this is what Hal Shanafield posted on the Yahoo site. Definitely a bigger space than a hotel room (unless you booked the honeymoon suite
). I've been there before and it's not bad and the beer is cheap "Walid, I have arranged to have the Friday night event at theEvanston American
Legion Post. We can use the main room, there is free WiFi, and the beer is
cheap. We will be cruising downtown Evanston during the Saturday night pub
crawl. We will provide transportation to and from the Legion for everyone
staying at the hotel. For everyone coming to the Post by themselves, there is
plenty of free parking, a commodity not to be taken lightly in Evanston. The
post is located at 1030 Central Street in Evanston. There is a map and
directions on our website (which I helped design) at evanstonpost42.com under
maps. There is also some pix of the meeting room and the bar. Some may
remember that we held the Faire there a couple of years ago. BTW, Berry is in
room 406 at the Best Western. --Hal"
Walid
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You are right there Mike. I remember when every table was packed with goodies, then it kind of dwindled away. This year was the first time when we actually had a ton of stuff to look at and acquire. As far as time management, it definitely could have been better, and setting time limits is going to be essential with all the new stuff coming out!