Gary from OPA

Good idea, I would include one more line the 'other number row' as least then you have FCTN-9 (BACK) and FCTN-8 (REDO) which alot of games use, at game over acreens, or include the two lines to allow for Y and N, which would also give you the + and - (used in the Atarisoft modules) One question why the 3? -- Is not 1 and 2 enough for most games.

Now that is rumor has been beated to death and buried, but it still is kicking around. Is there some other long time old Atari rumor we can move onto and focus on instead and dig up some real dirt on it?

Yeah that is one problem to make it easy for install, unlike the 9918, the 9901 is soldered along with the 9900, leaving you the messy option of disabling the chip and pushing a connector over it, or unsoldering which most people don't have the skill set for.

Yeah looks like they designed a replacement 9901 using an Altera EPM5064 chip. As for Rochester they can be costly at times, but yeah you can get newer versions. But it would be nice to have a replacement version with added features and pin compatible somehow.

Personally I would love to see a drop in FPGA replacement of the TMS9901 which still does all the normal CRU logic to keyboard, joystick, cassette ports of the TI99, but with a certain series of commands flip into an enhanced mode offering new forms of signals on old joystick, cassette, keyboard pins for other devices then old slow CRU logic, maybe even a direct USB port. I have to look at the TI99 schematics again, but I am sure a few of pins go directly from outside or without much logic in way to the actual TMS9901 chip, so it just might be possible. Either way we do need FPGA replacement for TMS9901 as they are starting to die and finding replacements in old unused stock from china and other places is slow and hit and miss at times for length of usage before they die off.

Well TI99's assembler is two-pass one, which means you get the luxury of doing wonderful math operations on labels. So like INTRT-2 points the jump two bytes before the actual label, or something like @5*2+DSRWS really is using the R5 location of the set of previous or future workspace registers, which are not currently loaded. Makes it easier to follow instead of labeling every point you need access to like in line-by-line assembler, one pass compiler.

Over the years I done some very tricky assembly, wait until you see some of my bigger public releases. If you want to see some good coding look at the V9958-S file and see how it does its graphics with nothing but plain math add and sub no mpy or div or floating point.

We recently had a request in regard to this, back in the early '90s we wrote an improved powerup DSR for DIJIT AVPC cards that contained a V9938 chip. This card unlike our TIM or the earlier Mechatronic sidecar installed in the PEB, and because the GROM's have errors in the way they setup the video if you using a chip other then 9918/28 (TI didn't follow their own specs. in masking unused bits) these devices needed a way to override those errors on powerup, and when launching TI Basic so the DSR tries to do it, and then re-check on each VDP interrupt. But the original was not perfect as such we sat down and improved it, and this release contains all the versions, plus a neat 'video testing' program and hopefully the release will be useful for those wishing to emulate the card or wanting to burn themselves an eprom containing our improved DSR. Please Visit This Link For The File: http://o-p-a.biz/avpc/ Enjoy! ********************************** * O-P-A (Oasis Pensive Abacutors) * * * * Public Release AVPC Source Code * * * * Original Coded from 1988 - 1993 * * * * Release Done on May 24th, 2014 * * * * Long Live The TI99/4A & GENEVE * *********************************** The Dijit Systems Advanced Video Processor Card (AVPC) was an 80 Column card that fit into the PEB. Along with a suitable RGB monitor turned the TI-99/4A console into a 80 Column device. For More Info on this card please see here: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/peb/avpc.html There was only one problem the original TI99 Operating System on powerup writes the registers in such a way that it was incompatible with the new register setup of the upgraded V9938 system, so DIJIT Systems designed a special power-up DSR located on the card's EEPROM that tries to correct this error, but their layout was not perfect as such we wrote a improved DSR version for others! Inside this archive, you will find the following files: AVPC010-S - Original DSR EPROM coded by DIJIT AVPC020-S - The First Improved Version by OPA AVPC030-S - The Commerical Release of new DSR AVPC032-S - Newer 3.2 Update But Not Released AVPCSOB-S - Custom Version for those with SOB SET994A-S - Code to set 994A mode in XB Progs V9958-S - Super-Cart Program to Test Video! BackupV9T9.zip - The above files in TI Format! Release Rules are simple, you are free to study and improved this code to use on your Card or to emulate it. Just please remember to give correct credit to the original source of this set of Assembly files! Thanks, for more information please contact via the following: Our Website: http://www.O-P-A.biz Our Email: [email protected] Or visit one of these two forums, contact me 'GaryOPA' or start a thread: My Video Gaming News & Forums: http://www.maxconsole.com/maxcon_forums/ The Best TI Programming Place: http://atariage.com/forums/forum/119-ti-994a-programming/ -=( Gary from O.P.A. )=-

As promised here is what the insides look like in the XB3 Super Module (basically) a POP-Cart with smaller eeprom's installed. On the back of this one is also 8K of RAM that can be enabled via Function-Key on the OPA Micro-Manager title screen, or by software via a CRU bit command. This was NOT normal, some of the shipped XB3 modules were just plain banks of ROM and GROM with no super-cart ram, but it was optional feature that POP-Cart pal's could perform if need be, but it looks like from the title screen you posted earlier you had the option available using the BEGIN key to 'toggle the RAM'.

Yep, that is for sure one of rare babies that we shipped to Asgard in the first production lot, to cover their pre-orders. I think about 150 if my memory serves me right they got, but not sure if they sold them all or not. Sadly in total 500 pop-carts were produced, with another set of 250 populated but never shipped as payments stop arriving from them. And these unsold pop-carts, and pcboards also were sadly left behind in warehouse along with alot of other stuff after I had business problems with a partner of mine in early '2000s over our chain of Internet cafes. I have lucky one of original babies here that is socketed, so I will post pictures of it later on today here, and will removed the two eproms and read them on my universal programmer on my old pc later on this weekend. The pop-cart overrides the original 3 groms in the console, but that is not needed to make XB3 work, you also don't need the second grom bank containing the teii cartridge, that was only added to give 'text-to-speech', If yours is socketed you can removed the chips and replace them with larger ones and get more cartridges in it, as the pop-cart custom pals can handle up to 8 banks of groms along with matching roms, there is even a option to enable 8k of super cart ram, if you solder in ram chip on the bottom, you will see from the pictures when i post them later.

The XB3 uses more then two banks of rom, it bank switchs similar to the MB carts. Does the 'custom menu' contain any mention of OPA or Micro-Manager, if so it is one of custom POP-Carts we produced under license for Asgard containing the XB3 along with other programs. I have one of these left in my collection, and plan soon to dump the original rom and grom chips, and release the POP-Cart design and info on 3 PAL's inside at somepoint this year on my site O-P-A.biz Tomorrow I will post pictures of the original one I have that was produced for Asgard, and see if this matches your version.

Anyone else noticed this video is 'Presented by Microsoft', so maybe the kids are upset as they are forced to play E.T.

The Joystick port on the TI99 can do more with the right software, there was even a serial/printer interface built for it once. I myself even wired up those Atari StarRaiders VideoPad thingie's to the TI99, worked great for adding more options for control to video game. Not to mention the MBX addon for Joypad, of course that is more hardware, but just shows that TI99 Joystick port can do more, as you can think of it like a 4 bit slow interface using CRU opcodes in assembly.

I like this part! (^^^ QUOTED ABOVE ^^^) Tried a few times sitting my toe into MESS, and I always end up getting it chopped off for various reasons, falling back to Classic99 or V9t9 to do stuff outside of my real iron setup.

There is nothing on 'ti994a.com' is blank web site!

There should be no issues, 99.99% of all commercial cartridges produced use the standard VDP timer to control their game graphics, as such they will function fine on either system. I can't recall ever seeing an issue, or having something labelled as NTSC or PAL only.

Neat, if you ever get previous MUG years done, or even Chicago tapes, let us know. Still would like to come across 'cough' one of my own speeches on youtube, would be weird watching myself again after all these decades!

Well, originally the Speech Box was to have a small cartridge slot in that 'cavern', so plenty of room for 'word' expansion. Sadly, the option was dropped when 'text-to-speech' was decided as the route, instead of modules with sets of recorded words for box to synthesize. There was to be various modules to expand, chemistry, math, other languages like german, etc.

Yeah I have the same problem, I have heavly modded console with 32k on 16bit bus, and the video ram is gone. -- thinking the only way to save this console is mod it more put in F18A as it does not use the old onboard now flaky video ram.

I am sure it was done before. You could search thru all the scanned in Micropendium and Various User Group club newsletters. (They are all on WHTECH FTP site) Thinking of that it would be nice to have a searchable index of everthing that can be only found in scanned PDF format, so you know where to look for old useful info. EDIT: (added my personal opinion on doing 32k mods!) Oh'tho personally if you going to solder in chips, I would get two 32k sram's solder them over the two sram's in the console, and just with a tiny bit of support wires and some bending of pins, and one or two support logic chips, you got yourself nice 32k 16bit memory instead! (and extra bank of 32k with a switch if you wish)

Yeah I agree, with the 99/8 actual picture with its keyboard and case, it is misleading this and his previous one, it should be just photos of the bare board, and at least a bold listing of all the missing chips you need to make it possibly work, as some needed jumper wires to replace wrong PCBoard traces also, besides the 'custom chips' and rom's/grom's

It is about right. -- Remember back then it was 'masked roms' -- bare min. was at least 1 million per production run to make it worthwhile to produce the mask and grow the silicon dies in the lab. Atari is not the only one that ended up with tons of unsold cartridges due to the '83 crash, many other companies ended up with millions and millions of unused masked roms for their cartridges, for example TI, for their 99/4a they stockpiled almost billion unused grom's for all their solid-state-software for years and decades in warehouses, selling it off by inventory part number for those companies that request the unused rom's during the late 80s and 90s, and the rest was melted down in or buried and in some cases still stored in warehouses today.

This is from the same seller that sold his first BARE 99/8 board just a little while ago, which ended up at $710 with 4***u (41) winning it. Hopefully, both of these 99/8's will end up in someone hands that can complete it from being BARE to filled with all its custom chips, cpu's, vdp's, and grom's, rom's. At least this one is newer revision with the memory in place solder to the board, and not missing as much as the other one, but still missing too much to get it working. Personally, I rather bid on the /4 that same seller is dumping which is at currently $117.50 it has a much better chance of working, and at least is repairable worse case.

Here is the clip from last night's show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dXtP2ZdjwTE And his famous 99/4a glory days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlU4HTefxmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnn9dHUiMT4

If we going to poke around Sunnyvale dump, what about all the other dumps, or written off warehouses packed still with stock. Atari was not the only one to find up pits with goods, so did many other companies, and others just packed it away in warehouse for a rainy day, those would be more nicer to open up and go thru, at least the stuff would still be in almost working condition.