Ksarul

You could try to put Lobster Bay, Lasso, or Crossfire in there. . .I'm pretty sure I've seen The Attack as an EA5 file, but I've not seen the other three you listed as anything but module BIN files. You could almost fill a whole 512K with 8K cartridge files in BIN form and the menu would launch them from their bank without any problems at all--giving you a 512K multicart of games that you could use in a console-only mode. I think Acadiel did one like that a while back for the 512K cart that was broken into four 128K banking zones via switches (using the V4 boards, which are very uncommon, as we only made about 25 of them between us, and I have most of those). . .I seem to remember that he had a bit of trouble finding cartridges to fill the last few slots to get all 64 banks full of 8K images.

I did some careful rerouting of signals this morning and succeeded in getting everything in place to use the 512K BQ4015Y in addition to the DS1230Y and the DS1245Y. New boards will now have the capability to use EPROMs from 8K to 512K and use nonvolatile SRAMs of 32K, 128K, or 512K. That was a bit of fun to twist into the board. I had actually considered upgrading the board to use 42-pin 1024K or 2048K chips and a 74LS377, but I think I will leave that kind of modification for the future, as the current boards pretty much max out the capability to display everything on the menu. If someone decides to write a single, massive cartridge program that needs that much space, I'll revisit the issue. Note that there might not be enough room on that board to make it fully jumperable to accomodate all of the smaller chips--a 42-pin socket eats a lot of space, leaving very little usable space to set up the jumpers. We really need to make a separate thread for this discussion though, unless Retroclouds thinks he'll need a 512K with Nonvolatile SRAM for continued development of a cartridge version of Tutankham. . .

Rolo, were you able to make it to the TI-99 regional meeting that was held at Gasthof zum Engel in Birkenau this past April 26? You probably would have found that and a lot more interesting things there--and usually one or another of the folks who shows up can do some repairs using the parts they have with them. They usually have at least one meeting there a year--just look for a notice on the Errorfree website: http://www.errorfree.de/Menu07.html

The wooden racks from Napa work really good. I have several of the ones that are supposed to hold 100 cassettes, you lose three or four slots per column due to the thickness of the TI cartridge cases, but they work quite well (although they seem to be really popular for other purposes, so they end up costing $40-$50 a pop used, and if you're lucky, that's the shipped price). Bonus is that you can hang these on the wall, so you can have all of your TI cartridges right at your fingertips. . . Here's a link to someone selling four of them for $139 + about $20 shipping. http://www.ebay.com/itm/400707778059?

I finished analyzing the signaling differences on the 512K board when using the Nonvolatile SRAMs and determined that I can get the necessary changes for the DS1230Y and the DS1245Y into the board relatively easily. That would give 32K or 128K of development space to those who need it. The area around the 378 is getting a bit too crowded to try to fit the necessary changes for the BQ4015YMA into it, so it looks like the upper limit is 128K in nonvolatile SRAM mode without doing some flying wires. I may still be able to fit it in, but it will be tight (even though I only have to deal with one more signal line). I'm going to have to mull it over some more to explore the realm of the possible. . .

Nice! Many thanks for your work here!

I have one of those (the 9-drawer variant) next to me right now. I don't use it for TI cartridges yhough--I have about 130 cartridges for my Tomy Tutor/Tomy Pyuuta systems in it (I have a lot of duplicates, as there were only 10 cartridges released for it in the US, 11 if you add the Demonstration cartridge, and 26 released in Japan, 27 if you add the Japanese Demonstration cartridge). Some slots also have some of the cassettes released for the Pyuuta in Japan, so it is not all cartridges. It works great for those, but is much less efficient when storing TI cartridges--as already noted.

You've gone insane, Willsy! I mean that in a nice way. . .LOLOL

BTW, here's the deluxe adapter for doing PLCCs: http://www.ebay.com/itm/271325542721? The version I have now won't work that way--but it might be possible to modify the circuit for the Speech Synthesizer 32K daughter board to do that--it still has some extra outputs on the 138. . .and it would just need to use one of them.

You just need to build one of my TI 128K cards, Acadiel--it has 8K or RAM paged into the DSR space already. . .

The slots allow me to take a whole lot of one or two GROM cartridges and load them into the cartridge all at the same time, with each cartridge on a different GROM base so that they will all show up in the Review Module Library menu. This is especially useful when they all have the same starting address. It makes them easier to insert into the device simultaneously, with a minimum of fuss. Please, push it to its limits--I really like that idea, as seeing folks use what I design is what spurs me on to do more. . .

I don't think this method will work for any of the larger GROM cartridges, Acadiel--at least not without doing some form of GROM packing first. The other question is how much space does the loader need to set up and execute (both for itself and the GROM files in RAM). I think this loader is just tricking the system into thinking that the GROM data in RAM is still in a GROM when it executes.

I think you're right on target for the way we need to program it now though, Gazoo. The three-page P-GRAM is probably a very good way to look at it for now.

Gazoo, that issue of programming the slots is exactly why Tursi was designing his loader--to make it easy for just about anyone with some programming skills to be able to set up a new cartridge configuration and load the GROM data into the proper slots. Turning it into a 3-page P-GRAM would actually reduce the capability of the board, as it would then only have access to three GROM bases instead of 16 (that would still be one mighty capable cartridge though, so the thought has some definite merit if we weren't planning on doing a user-friendly loader). Once they load the GROMs, all they have to do is burn a PLCC for the ROM side (if needed) and go.

No problem there, I can deal with a nice brew or three now and again. . .

I think I need to make a small circuit card that puts this into the Speech-Synthesizer case. One more ExpressPCB project for me to work on. . .although this one will go fast. I just need to set a jumper field on one side so you can connect the wires between the SS connector and the daughter board, and put six chips on it. This might be interesting. . .

That is a very useful tip, Gazoo. May I add it to the manual?

Though Rich is voicing his disquiet here, it may be a very good idea to document the entire manual process of creating a GROM file for the UberGROM cartridge. There are a lot of less capable folks than you out there, Gazoo--and having a path to follow may actually get them thinking about what to put into their own UberGROM. I've had several back-channel requests for a how-to guide more detailed than what is already in the manual, and I'm not able to provide them a better answer than to direct them to this thread--which has a lot, but it is scattered amongst a lot of posts right now, so it is a bit daunting. Many thanks for all you've done so far, as each of your files significantly increases the use case for the cartridge I just got half a dozen Atmel 1284s in the mail today (and my AVR programmer arrived from Ukraine a week ago), so I'm going to load one with Tursi's current test code to see what I can see. I'm not so much of a software geek, so that may not be much, but I will look at it. I'll add the process to the manual too if you do put it up (for what you've done with both sides of the cartridge), assuming you give me permission to do so.

Look in the West Penn-99er's newsletters. I seem to remember something there (John Willforth put a lot of his hardware mods in there).

UberGROM is a 512K EPROM cartridge (using PLCCs) that also has the option of adding an Atmel ATMega 1284 to it to simulate an additional 128K of GROM. This will let you build cartridges that would otherwise have to be in a GRAM device--so they can (assuming they aren't dependent on the 32K memory like the Cartridges Gazoo populated for us, and which are also excellent use-cases for these boards) be available to everyone from the console-only user to the Uber-programmer. This means the board can have up to 640 of mixed ROM and GROM on it--and can also give you physical copies of such useful programs as Tony Knerr's XB 2.7, Winfried Winkler's XB-3, and Rich Gilbertson's RXB or REA cartridges. You can also use it to make physical copies of ultra-rare cartridges like Test Trainer, the SMU Engineering module, Crossfire, the Disney cartridges, Lasso, Plant Genetics, Advertizer, TI Calc, or any other module you can think of. . .once we have the loader for it, and Tursi has been working on that on an as-time-allows basis. With luck, hee'll get the time he needs for that sometime this year, but the cartridge is usable for any form of EPROM cartridge now (working much like the 128kx4 (inverted) and 512k (non-inverted) boards you have from me).

He says that it is just the bare board in the description, but it is a bit more complete than the other one was--and it is the late version of the board with the card edge connector.

That was Acadiel's experience as well, Atrax. Once he had a good socket to burn the chips, everything worked fine.

I have not. I still have to do a small run of the board with the most recent requested changes (so that it can also use Non-Volatile SRAMs) to verify the layout. I also plan to do some additional tweaks to the jumper field to try and reduce the jumper count a bit without changing the functionality. I will post the Gerbers at some point after that set of tests is done. I still have about 20 bare boards of the current iteration (and about 12 more bare UberGROM boards), which work great, although I prepared the last of the assembled boards for shipment this morning (both the 128K and the UberGROM). I plan to assemble another group of them over the next three days to keep both of them in stock. I'll probably send the UberGROM off for fabrication first, as I have fewer of them left right now.

These were this shade of yellew whe they were new. They are not exactly thick plastic, more like the plastic that shields an item in the store (but about double the thisckness of that stuff). They actually hold up quite well. . .

So you've got your 512K file running on an ÜberGROM now, Gazoo?