Ksarul

The 32K test program from PeteE would be one possibility there, as would the CorComp memory test (less comprehensive though) or the original TI Diagnostics cartridge (also somewhat less comprehensive). All three would expect to run from cartridge space though. . .and Diags needs GROM space. If the original poster has a FinalGROM or a FlashROM99, that would let him load the programs to perform the testing.

It is also possible that only the lower 8K of the memory card is bad/unstable, as that's the memory area the CALL INIT is working with. A regular Extended BASIC program without Assembly support would run fine on the card, but anything trying to use that lower 8K would probably bomb out at some point.

You might also look at the needle files in a store that sells beading supplies. I have a round one that comes to a beautiful needle-sharp tip for reaming out tiny holes.

Reading through their website, the page you found is still there @jbdigriz, but the only way you can get to it is via Internet search (none of the internal links seem to point to it anymore, as of the 2018 site update).

You will find that the WHT site has a huge amount of useful data--although it will take a while to find it until you are familiar with the site layout and the things you are interested in.

Here is another source for the disk images.

There were over 250 PLATO software packages released on disk for the TI (all of them need the cartridge to work). The entire set is available online. You also have the option of going to an online PLATO server at Irata Online, as he has resurrected one of the master servers and updated the TI PLATO Terminal program to access it as well--that gives access to many more PLATO programs that weren't compiled to run natively on a /4A. The programs needed a disk drive--they were much too large for cassette use.

There were still a lot of beige systems in the early flat screen era, but even thinking back on what I saw on sale back then, less than a quarter of the flat screen monitors were beige--and a lot of the later CRT monitors were black or dark gray too, come to think of it, so that transition period went all over the map.

Me three! Now who will get the Forth?

From what I've seen, Kienzle used 68000 and MIPS-based machines (running UNIX), at least during the later period where Mannesmann owned them. Their somewhat earlier 9000 series (late eighties) did use the 99000 though (along with their own proprietary MTOS operating system).

I probably need to build a single cartridge header for all of these titles and turn them into another of the 2048K games cartridges. . .

Note: that CC-70 is a mockup case, so there aren't any electronics inside. . .as such it is probably only worth a couple of hundred dollars to a serious collector. I seriously doubt he will get anything close to his asking price.

Understood--I was more giving a tip to anyone who finds one of the male connectors somewhere and tries to combine it with a standard 44-pin female connector on the other end of the cable. KEL-AM works great if it is on both ends of the cable, but things go wrong quickly if you mix them with other brands of connectors. I have a couple of these cables connected to my systems as well. They work great. I should probably make a layout for a finger-board connector with a 44-pin header socket on it so that people can build stable connectors with currently available parts.

The occasional old man brain fart is a normal thing--it is when they start to take over your life that there is a sure sign of interference from good old Alfred E. . .

I can think of two ways it was fully eliminated in the past: the Rave PE2 allowed the motherboard to be installed into the case and brought the cartridge port and keyboard interface to the outside, and the SNUG 99/4P, which actually needed three PEB cards to replicate the entire console (although it also gave a lot more GROM space, AMS memory, and upgraded the system to 80-column video). Of course, there was also the mostly compatible Myarc Geneve 9640 as well, so that would make a third solution.

Unfortunately, they used KEL-AM connectors on those cables, and they reverse the positions of the even and odd pins when compared to a standard connector. That said, you need the KEL-AM connector on both ends or your pins will all be switched (even to odd and odd to even).

Thanks, Rich!

Please do so, Rich. Source code is always good. . .

I know Siemens vacuumed up a lot of the 990 stuff, and I think there was at least one other company over there that made a number of add-on boards.

QI boards don't bring two lines out to the cartridge port (I think one is CRUIN and I forget the other at the moment). This may be an issue--and I would suggest reading the entire FinalGROM thread to be sure of where the known issues are. Some QI boards have the 1981 GROMs, but that doesn't really change anything but the console's ability to recognize ROM-only cartridges. It is the QI board's hardware differences that cause problems with the FinalGROM, IIRC.

One very important note on putting these into the PEB. The data lines are extremely sensitive to variations in trace length between the bits. Even minor variances can introduce some serious garble. . .I have a design for one that I'm still trying to fine tune because of that.

PC--and it is only your sub pages that go insane, I can get to the store, just not past the front page of it.

Looks like your store is in some kind of infinite loop--you can get to the page that shows the various systems you support, but then it goes into permanent hourglass mode.

Thanks for the interesting test utilities!

Nice new toy for you to play with, @acadiel