Ksarul

Nice! Many thanks for the update!

I have several of these titles that I bought from Asgard back then, but so far as I know, they remain under copyright. The author was Ken Gilliland. He still maintains a website, so it might be possible to ask him about them. An interesting point is that he actively sold them right up until the year 2000, which would make him one of a handful of TI vendors with original content that remained at that time. Here's a link to his site: http://www.empken.com/favorites/notung.html

Hey Mark, I seem to remember that there was a small group of TI users in either Moscow or Kiev back in the day--and they had something like half a dozen users. There was also a small group in Beijing. I saw mention of the Soviet group in one of the German TI magazines, IIRC, and I think the Beijing group (it was at one of their universities) was mentioned in either Vulcan's Computer Monthly or in Computer Shopper.

Here's the complete manual to the Supermodul. Note that the manual works with both versions of the module, as it notes the only differences between the two in the text (one version has 2 RAM banks at >6000 and the other has 4 RAM banks there). Supermodul_2_0-Anleitung.pdf

Making a new run of these would require the permission of Sven Dyroff, as he holds the copyright to the software and to the board design. The other individual who had significant input into this module, Horst Wiese, died a few years ago and his family got rid of all of his TI equipment (reportedly to a dump, which was a major loss to the community, as several items he had in his collection were unbelievably rare). I'm still in contact with Sven, so getting permission would be possible, and I'm good at doing board layouts. That said, it will not fit into my queue until after any remaining issues with the 512K board have been ironed out.

Here's part of the manual, as typed in during breaks. Supermodul_2_0.pdf

The dummy file downloads, so it must be something with the way Rich tagged his files on upload. . .or a system glitch.

Interesting, it seems I no longer have permission to download from here. . .at least not in this thread, as others do work.

I have both versions of the Wiesbaden Modul. It can be used to load cartridges like a GRAM Kracker (and actually uses the same cartridge format in the version you have) and run them. One of the switches moves between the cartridge and the loader, one write protects the ROM space, and I thnk the other one does the same for the GROM space. I think I have the manual around here somewhere. I'll try and dig it up (it may take a while, as I have a lot of stuff in my computer room--too much to easily sort through).

The last one is the website for Brian Tristam-Williams. The first one looks like it is in France.

I actually bought all three parts back in the day--I think the only piece I din't get was the character program. I'll have to check my disks to be sure. . .and that was a sucky protection scheme, but it was possible to copy them with Copy-C, which is what I did for my working copies.

I shall dig into it once work gives me a rest! Thanks!

The extra graphics routines in XB-II+ were originally sold on disk by APESoft (Alma Peschetz Software). Her husband wrote the programs but used her name because she had a Doctorate and he didn't and they figured that would lend greater legitimacy to their products. There were two versions of the APESoft Expanded Grafic BASIC disks. I think I have originals of both of them. The routines were later sold in the US as Amerisoft Expanded Graphics BASIC, with an English manual. The routines didn't change. Mechatronics later included them in the XB-II+ cartridge, as they were pretty popular extensions to Extended BASIC in the German-speaking portion of the TI world.

It may actually be an early piece of commercial TI software. I believe it may have been from Norton Software or possibly Ehninger Associates. A game of this name shows up in early Tenex and Unisource catalogs.

Nice work!

You're right about the Sage II being an interesting machine. I hunted for one for years--and finally tracked down two of them at the same time! The Sage IV is basically the same machine with a hard disk controller. A lot of interesting p-System data shows up in the files section of the UCSD Pascal group on Yahoo!

Actually, WiPoSoft was based out of Munich. IIEC, one of the reasons there isn't a lot of data on them is that they apparently also liked to copy software from other companies and sell it in their store--and the German Police had issues with that. . .

That's one of the reasons I don't let too many people know what I'm working on until it is more-or-less working. The main reason I do hardware is for my own enjoyment though--if other people like it, that's great, but if not--I still had fun developing the layout. . .and please do keep up your hardware efforts. There are a number of us who do appreciate them, and the random folks who like to pick everyone else's achievements apart because they are too lazy to do the initial development themselves can ride off into the sunset where the sun never shines. . .and for those who pick things apart to find the real flaws and resolve them, I say: great, more power to you and keep that up too! On Cortices, there are very few of them out there. They were developed at TI, but by a bunch of engineers in the semiconductor division. They couldn't get permission to build them through TI, but they did get permission to give the design to a British computer magazine (Electronics Today International). Powertran did the boards for them as a kit project for the magazine readers. In five years of hunting, I've tracked down about 25 surviving systems (and five sets of unbuilt cards). Oddly enough, their closest relative is probably the Marinchip TMS9995 board for S-100 systems (the system on which AutoCAD was originally developed). Most of the Marinchip software was ported to the Cortex. The BASIC dialect in the original Cortex system ROMs is a modified version of Power BASIC for the 990 computer family. The best repositories of Cortex information are on WHT and at the following web address: http://www.powertrancortex.com/

Actually, I did understand you, but my answer wasn't as clear as it ought to have been. As noted, if it works on CorComp controllers (not all board revisions used the 2793, I have several with the 1773 as well), it should work with the Atronic and also the BwG controllers, as they also use the 1773. I am definitely interested in the code in any event.

This is actually a very good thing to preserve--there are other programs that do similar things, but none of them from a p-System environment, and none were designed to manipulate p-System volumes. The only thing that comes close is Copy-C by Christopher Winter. Note that your software is also likely to work on an Atronic controller, as a lot of software recognizes it as a CorComp controller.

I ordered three--one for one of my Tomy Tutors, one for a 99/4A, and one that I plan to try out with one of my Powertran Cortices. . .though it will be replacing a 9929 there. On the CF7 thing, I actually went back and sorted through Jaime's feedback to see how many he'd sold over time. He's up to about 150 of them in all variants now, so he has sold quite a few of them into the community. He was on one of the Yahoo! lists for a while before he moved a couple of years ago, but he took a lot of unjustified heat there from a few opinionated types and he never restored the connection afterward.

I put a notice under Vintage Computer Hardware on the Vintage Computer Forum, since they touch just about every computer system that ever used the 99xx series of VDP chips. . .

Excellent. . .on my way over there shortly.

Jon, if you look at the 378 board and the GAL board, everything on the GROM side is identical--this was to ensure full compatibility. As to the differences between it and the 379 version we did in 2010, Tursi asked me to move four of the data lines to different positions on the Atmel to allow the Analog section to be added using the pins there. He also asked me to make some minor changes on the address lines and the pins coming out to use when reprogramming the Atmel. Note that the GAL version should work fine with code for this board as well--just set the jumper for non-inverted outputs. Did you ever get the GAL code operating on one of your boards? We might be able to fit one of those sockets on a test board. They look a little wider than the usual ones, so they might impact the capacitor between the socket and the outer edge of the board. . . I'm glad you like our new toy. . .

It requires the PEB and the p-Code card for the PEB to Run, Guillaume. It also requires a set of disks with the software. There WAS a version of it modified to work as a cartridge back around 1991 (from Austria), but other than the one opportunity I had to test it on my Geneve for the author's primary beta tester, I never saw it again. Alexander Hulpke had the test code at the TI Treffen in Berlin, but kept it very close-hold to honor his agreement with the author. It won't work with a CF7 system unless you get lucky and turn up one of the modified versions for cartridge use.