Ksarul

That's why I'm glad Turtles is in the house--a teen with a strong liking of old computers and game consoles. Yesterday, he spent a couple of hours fixing a Super Famicom that we bought a while back as a deader. He took it apart, cleaned out all of the gunk from the previous owner that covered most everything inside, made sure all contacts were good, and fired it up once he got it back together. The deader worked beautifully. . .and best of all, when he was uncertain of the possible results of one of his disassembly/cleaning/troubleshooting steps, he came and asked me what I thought of his plan before execution. His plan was spot-on every time. He's also my road navigator. He can read paper maps really well, but will usually resort to GPS and Google Earth to gather the finer details while we're in motion.

Do we have the unmodified side port code for Springer? I have the version Tursi converted to launch from the normal 32K space, but I was thinking of trying to make a TigerVision side port board for the fun of it, using a dead TigerVision shell I have to house it. . .

It just has a different GROM0, CD4457, based on the V2.2 code with a modified title screen. I thought this one was an option in MAME, so the GROM should already be out there.

This one resulted in an interesting classroom discussion while I was teaching English at the University of Kaiserslautern about 30 years ago. One of the students wanted to know what Rapsöl was in English. Canola wasn't a thing yet, so the direct translation at the time was Rape Seed Oil. I wrote that on the blackboard and underlined the word rape, explaining to the class that this was the only positive use of that word in the English language. One of the more quiet students spoke up to ask what the non-positive use was. I looked across the room and calmly told her the word would be Vergewaltigung in German. She was a bit shocked--but then the whole class realized that I carefully explained the meaning of one of the more not-nice words in English, at which point I had to explain the meanings of half a dozen other not-nice phrases and words that the students had run across but couldn't find in their dictionaries.

Canola, for those in the land of round doorknobs. . .

I think you've beaten the highest score I've EVER had on this game. . .IIRC, my highest score was somewhere just above half of what you got. I am definitely not good at games. I'll have to ping Turtles to see if he wants to play this one. . .

A little hint about protected disks. The standard TI method was to add the letter "P" to a specific spot in the disk header. that letter informed the computer that it should not copy the disk contents. Individual program files could also be protected so that you could not list them--a problem that can be solved with a specific CALL LOAD routine. A quick way to remove the disk level protection is to use the DSKU program, as it can easily clear the protection. You can also go in with a sector editor and remove the letter "P" if you want to get closer to the bare metal. . .

Coupon did not work. . .

So now you can build one of the new keyboards in black. . .

And it arrived from the West Coast already. . .and excellent packing too, so no damage to anything.

Interestingly enough, the /4 as sold in Japan in 1980 has the same monitor as the later /4A monitor, but with Japanese text for the various controls. I found one for sale in California about ten years ago. . .

There are still interesting things to find out there, even for those of us with extensive reference sets of equipment and software.

I take it you have your own personal bubble memory boards now too @Stuart. . .

I was actually surprised that no one noticed that one of the PEBs for sale on eBay this week was the Control Data version. It even had the CD Flex Cable and 32K cards in it. I snagged it, so I now have an almost complete CD system (just missing the CD- branded Disk Controller and RS-232 cards).

I had this one as well, but it only lasted a few hours, so I didn't need to go the cache-clearing route. Firefox as well.

It does have a lot of English loan words that you won't find in Pfälzisch though. I have several books in Pennsylvania Deutsch, along with a more-or-less comprehensive dictionary of it that I bought at the Mennonite Library/bookstore in Lancaster, PA about 30 years ago. And from personal experience, if you understand Pfälzisch, you understand nearly all of conversational Pennsylvania Deutsch. The people in their farmer's market were a bit surprised to find an outsider that understood what they were saying. . .

Here are fully functionl versions of the p-Code strip in both possible /4A formats. . .this is actually one of the harder TI keystrips to find as an original. They turn up once in a while, but nowhere near as often as the other TI-sourced keystrips.

And I did beta testing of it for Winfried while I was in Germany. I also put him into contact with Chris Bobbitt to arrange for it to incorporate utilization of AEMS memory. He received on of the first AEMS cards delivered to Asgard for the project--a fortuitous event which got Michael Becker interested in adding AEMS memory to his SGCPU card.

I suspect that if you look at your two beige cartridges, one will have the cartridge door and one will not, as the ones with the door were made in the same molds as the regular black ones. . .

And a stack of two of these nicely fills a standard TI binder. . .storing 8 cartridges or tapes.

Thanks for the outstanding explanation of the process you followed here!

The Tomy Tutor and Mattel Aquarius versions are up on his site now too.

I understand your pain here. Existence of one or more of those in a lot that is otherwise on the wrong side of acceptable price-wise will tip me into attempting to purchase said lot. . .those cartridge holders are great.

I noticed what look to be disassemblies of all three Thorn EMI cartridges in there. I saw a note in the Computer War (high) file that you had relocated it--I take it that this change moved it out of 32K (sideport) and DSR ROM space and into cartridge ROM space. If so, that explains a lot about how MicroPAL was able to release that title as a standard cartridge (but kept the other two running out of expansion memory).

As noted, it means the signal on that line will be an active low. Lines without the circle will be an active high. Note also that sometimes active lows will be tied high voltage-wise to make the circuit respond as desired, and active high lines may be tied low for the same type of reasons. . .the important parts of this are that the circles at the chip do not prevent the line from connecting or being read at any point along the trace it is part of, they just tell us what kind of signal is there.