fabrice montupet

Thank you 🙂

Sorry, I made an error. The file I am using and that works fine was made by you:

The game using the Eric's file works fine on my FG99. But it doesn't work using the RockRunnerC.bin and RockRunnerG.bin you made, with or without the 32K RAM expansion. I have the same symptoms as for Nick99.

@Omega: Please, could you replace the background color, the dark grey you've chosen makes the black text hard to read, thanks 🙂

On my FG99, I prefer playing the prototype of Munchman than the commercialized Muchman that I found rather ugly.

I like your project and I think that I will make make one , thank you 🙂

Excellent! I'm impressed by what you made in years 80 with just a Minimem cartridge, a tape recorder and a documentation that was not as abundant as now.

Since I made the correction, all the expansions of the computer are presents, among them the Speech Synthesizer, SAMS 1MB, RTC, expansion bus with the TI FDC and PIO cards. I have tested Facemaker. In game and build mode, it works. I made 5 heads and no graphic garbage or anomaly on screen appeared.

I played again Tutankham during near 30mn and it works like a charm 🙂 The game has been tested in the two speed modes of the computer (with 12MHz and 14.318MHz crystals ) without any problem. Since the beginning of my hardware correction, I have used the Tursi's modified files so I wanted to see how the game now reacted with the original tutankhG.bin and tutankhC.bin files... and the game works too with these files. Entered in the Stage 3. The game becomes more and more difficult, the green labyrinth asks two keys to enter Stage 4. I like this game!

I Think I made a good progress about Tutankham 🙂 At the beginning, I noticed that (using the FG99) : - The game regularly crashed on the real TI-99/4A with the Speech Synth. and expanded memory plugged. - The game generally works on a real TI-99/4A without any expansions plugged. - The game works even lesser on the TIny-99/4Av2 (has embedded Speech Synth. and SAMS ) That led me to look more closely the signals at the GROM connector for each computer setup. After having study them with my logic analyzer, I noticed a weird behavior on the memory space decoding. On the 99/4A computer and (also the TIny-99/4Av2) the components responsible of the decoding of the memory space for GROM, Speech Synth., VDP or sound are two 1-of-8 demultiplexers 74LS138 ( U504 and U505) and a quad 2-Input NAND Gates with open-collector 74LS03 (U506). As all the IC on my TIny-99/4Av2 are socketed, I tested the game after replacing the two LS138 with HCT138 (high speed with TTL compatibility)... and FG99/Tutankham perfectly worked! It worked during long minutes and passing the two levels (I lost before passing the next level but I was able to redo a round). I switched-off the computer, relaunched the game: The game has worked fine too. No garbage. I redone the operation 9 or 10 times: And the game still works! 🙂 OK. now It will be interesting to deeply study what is happening with the F99 and the game but I haven't any low level hardware specifications/information about this (great) cartridge. It will be complicated. Anyway, I'm happy. At least I can play the game with my FB99 with all the peripherals attached.

Fortunately for our quest ! 🙂

@Tursi: Yes, Popeye works fine, I have never saw it crashing after at least two years using it this the FG99. But these two games are quiet dissimilar: Popeye and Tutankham don't share the same hardware design. Yes the FG99 is an new hardware, and this is exactly why I said that a timing or a signal problem can be a possibility. Maybe the problem is software, I don't exclude as well. I just like to not exclude any way of reflection. Studying the behavior of Tutankham on FG99 is interesting. I have noticed that the game crashed even more on the TIny-99/4A v2 than the real TI-99/4A, so an analyze of the bus connector of each computer could point on a/the problem.

Thank you for these informations. I wondered why, if Parker Brothers was allowed to produce TI GROM, they made a GROM simulator instead of using the TI dev kit and tools. Now it is clear that the reason is that they haven't any licence. Timing problems... This possibility is running in my head since the beginning. I have to do some measures.

Just a thought. Looking at the picture of the Tutankham cartridge, we see that there is a whole world in it. Reading the history of the game we learn that Parker Brothers was one of the few companies to be allowed to produce their own GROM, we also learn that the cartridge was in its release stage. But we well see that there is still no GROM on the cartridge. Instead of that, we recognize a complex logic components set to emulate this GROM. So, could we imagine that the game were finally not really finalized and that some problems were stayed? The produced TI GROM didn't react as the emulated one in this prototype? That caused game working problems? And the GROM file that we use is really the one that is in this prototype? Is it really the file ready to release? ... Many questions! 🙂

Thank you again Jim, that's so kind!