Asmusr

Yes that would be a really great development tool. I for one would be very interested.

Of course, but I thought the real problem was that the 379 reacts to the lower bits (11-14) of any address. If it was only an issue of write protecting the first words you could just decide to write identical words, like MOV @>6004,@>6004, when you switch banks. In order to prevent bank switching when writing to other addresses you would need logic to determine if any of the other address lines (3-10) are set, and if so prevent the latching. Edit: I see the problem now, when you actually did want to change the first words it would also switch banks, which would make it difficult to set up a cartridge header.

What I mean is that it should only switch banks when you write to the first 4 or 8 words that are probably occupied be the header anyway.

Fascinating project. For some reason it made me think of this: But I guess it's the other way around. BTW, Did you know that the future in Back to the Future II is 2015? And the present is almost as old as the TI.

Is it possible to make a 64K battery backed RAM cartridge where you change banks the same way as for the ROM cartridges?

I wish I could be there.

Thank you Matthew. I will have to read it 2-3 times more, and then I will ask my questions.

I have tested it on my console, and I don't have this problem. Anyone else?

Scramble is hanging in this loop: ********************************************************************* * * Wait until fire button and fire key are not pressed * WTNOFI * Read joystick 1 LI R12,>0024 * CRU address of the column decoder LI R0,>0600 * Column 6, i.e. joystick #1 LDCR R0,3 * Select it LI R12,>0006 * Base CRU address for joystick 1 WTNOF1 TB 0 JNE WTNOF1 ... Titanium is hanging in a similar loop waiting for the joystick button to be released (although it was never pressed): * Check fire button WTFIR1 LI R1,>0600 * Column 6, ie joystick #1 LI R12,>0024 * CRU address of the column decoder LDCR R1,3 * Select it LI R12,>0006 * Base CRU address for joystick 1 TB 0 JNE WTFIR2 * Wait for press ... * Fire pressed WTFIR2 TB 0 JNE WTFIR2 * Wait for release ... Is it possible to set a breakpoint in the debugger? Thanks, Rasmus

I don't know if they have the latest version now. The two nanoPEBs I bought from this site were SIO versions. It wasn't entirely problem free, the first one was delivered without the CF card, the second one had a badly soldered connector. But that's nothing compared to waiting for months for a unit to show up on ebay.

If you're in Europe you can buy a nanoPEB/CF7 here. This includes the 32K expansion and disks on a CF card: http://www.stargames.be/shop/105-accessoires

Great. I will send you the information you need. For now, the latest versions are attached to the first post of the respective threads.

Sounds like a bug. I will try it on my system.

I have made a Titanium ROM image for the 64K bank switched cart. It still requires 32K RAM but no companion disk. To load it in Classic99, add something like this to classic99.ini: [usercart1] ; *** Titanium 64K bank switched cart name="Titanium" rom0=3|0000|10000|mods\titanium3.bin or you can just Open it as a user cartridge. If any of you have the hardware to make a real cartridge, please let me know if it works. Titanium3.zip

I haven't arranged anything. Any volunteers?

Your nose, however, is very familiar to all of us!

Thank you for the answer. It's really exciting that I could improve the game by putting it in a cartridge. I have read the the 379 chips can start up in any state, which is why you need the header and start up code in every bank. This is really annoying if you data segments are exactly 8K. Is there anything you can do about that?

Great idea. Is there no performance difference between reading from 8 bit ROM and RAM?

Another question about this feature: If you add more banks with data to a file generated by Classic99 and go from 4 to 8 banks, I suspect the copying code becomes invalid because the bank switching addresses change (because of the reverse switching order). Is there a 'poke' to fix this? [edit: I think I figured it out: I can just reverse the order of the banks in my ROM file and the code will work.] [edit 2: I couldn't make it work so I have decided to write my own loader.]

I wasn't aware that an emulator written in Java existed until yesterday. I'm very pleased about this because I use Java in my daily work, and having emulator source code available that you understand can be very handy. It was very easy to set up, and a like the front end, but unfortunately my two games (Titanium and TI Scramble) don't work - both are hanging on the opening screen. I couldn't get into the debugger (SysRq doesn't work) to see what was wrong. BTW, are there any plans to support the F18A on v9t9? I might be able to contribute with code for some of the VDP features, but the GPU would probably require too much knowledge of the source code.

I have been experimenting with the feature in the debugger to save memory as a 379 bank switched cart file. The thing that strikes me as odd is that the generated file is not exactly 32K or 64K long. For instance, the attached file for TI Scramble is 28,330 bytes. And when I tried to make a cart for Titanium the file was 24,756 bytes, ending with a cartridge header. I also noticed that the cart doesn't work on Classic99 if there are fewer than 3 banks, perhaps it's starting up on a non-existent bank? [edit: perhaps that was something I did wrong, it seems to be working now.] Thank you for any help you can provide. tiscramble3.zip

Did he also design a boat? Where do you plug it in? Seriously, did you buy assembled boards or did you have to solder them? Where did you get the 379 chips from? Which EPROM did you use? Just to explain about my carts, what I'm planning is the simple solution that still requires the 32K expansion to be present. It's admirable what Retroclouds did with Pitfall, but even if it was possible to do the same with my games it seems like a huge amount of trouble in order to reach a few more users. With the easy solution it takes 2 minutes to make the necessary ROM file for Scramble from Classic99. I will also try a similar approach with Titanium, but this requires some more work because the data files will have to be converted to ROM banks. I don't think any tools exist to help you with this. I will need two banks for the program, and probably 5 more for the maps and and the music. I guess a test cycle would involve 1. compiling the code to run from CPU RAM, 2. loading it into Classic99, 3. exporting to a 379 ROM image, 4. adding the extra ROM banks to the exported image, 5. testing the combined image in Classic99. It would be easier if I would swap cartridges in Classic99 without the TI resetting, then I could test the loading of data files from ROM banks without also running the program from ROM. Any ideas? Anyway, this is all experimental. I'm not committing to selling any of these carts, but it's definitely something I will consider.

A floppy disk release is a very abstract concept to me. I don't have a PEB and have never actually seen one, except on pictures! I don't know how many PEBs were sold in Denmark, but I have never seen one for sale. Even within the whole of Europe they are very rare to find on Ebay. I could probably get one from the US for $200-$300, but then I don't really have room for it, and I wouldn't know how where get floppies either. Basically I'm very happy with my nanoPEB, but there something magical about a cartridge, and it's also much more practical if, for instance, my 6 yrs old son wants to play Scramble.

The area I haven't seen documented much is the tiles. I can figure out how the ECM works, but I'm not sure about pages, banners, scrolling and fixed/non scrolling tiles. I'm not sure how the scanline interrupt works either. Where do you put your interrupt routine? It would be great if you would write something about that.

As I wrote earlier, this would also make the stars bigger. The image shows how it would look, and I don't like it. The image also shows how it would look with virios' suggestion to make the flames red. I like that slightly better, but no. If you want more colors you can play on a F18A. That reminds me, if you want to assemble your personal version of the game, this is very easy to do in WinAsm99. Just create a new project and include the 3 .a99 files from the src directory. There are some nice options at the beginning of scramble.a99 to set infinite lives, fuel, invincibility, turn speech off, etc.The characters for the bullet are defined at line 4859/4860.