dhe

Peak reverse engineering? https://github.com/DuPAL-PAL-DUmper/DuPAL_Board The DuPAL board is a simple circuit that mounts an AVR MCU (A classic ATmega328P of Arduino fame), three 74HC595 SIPO registers, one 74HCT166 PISO register, a MAX232 to adapt the serial port to RS232, a linear voltage regulator and a bunch of other passive components. This board was designed and built to help myself bruteforce PAL devices. It has the hardware facilities necessary to scan all the inputs of the PAL, to check whether an output is high, low or hi-z and to report back the status to the host. Details on how the features are implemented can be found on the Firmware's repository.

What's the first 40 bytes of the file it outputs? Can this be read by ti99dir?

Ok.. I ordered the specified drive. Now to wait wait and try again.

The drive came out of a working pbox about six months ago, where it was replaced with a gotek.

Nope, a teac 55br.

Well, I can't seem to get it to work. I say read a TI 360K disk - it seems to work, but it tells me there were read errors and it quotes me on tracks up to 79 - even though a TI 360K disk only uses 40 tracks. Further, it does create a 360K file, but ti99dir can't read it as a TI disk.

Does anyone have any experience with the device side FC5025? http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html

Neat, I didn't know this:

Presents a fascinating view of how Tandy saw their-self positioned in the home computer wars and after. The Color Computer 3, like the C64/C128 crossed the 90's finish line. Tandy transitioned from a home grown architecture to MS-DOS machines. There were ruthless in giving their engineers numbers they had to meet, and used their chain of stores to their advantage.

I'm pretty amazed at one can be done by true artists with a relatively low pixel budget. I wish TI would have thought about a "HiRes" black and white mode, but I guess on a TV that wouldn't have worked out well.

My Favorite Data book - Got to love the PAL illustrations! 1981_MMI_PAL_Handbook_2ed.pdf

True that! Either way, Commodore said we need something, and it was just like Microsoft to take advantage of the situation.

After a bit more reading, I found that... In the late 80's Commodore went to Microsoft for a new license agreement for the Commodore 128 (it had a Zilog CPU onboard) - Micro$oft really put the screws to them since they (Microsoft) got cheated on the other licenses. Also, in the late 80's - Tandy went to Microsoft and said - "We are introducing an upgrade to the Color Computer II, and we would like for you to upgrade Basic for this new enhanced machine." Microsoft must have been feeling particularly onary that day and said some thing to the effect. We have no interest in doing that, or giving you another basic license. We want you to put all of your time, energy and money in to you MSDOS machines. Tandy got around it by putting the same ROM on the COCO3's mainboard, then they paid a company to immediately copy the basic ROM, to RAM and patch it with enhancements. Microsoft like a good neighbor.

Any word?

Why would you need to dis-assemble them more than once? 😃

Thanks Rich, I know you don't get the appreciation you deserve.

Just thought I would prod this, did "The River" OLUG messages ever make it some place?

Weather Channel says: 25 degrees, feels like 15 here in Hawthorne, FL - Dang it Jim (Star Trek Reference), we should move to Florida. er.. Uh... Well nice day for indoor work anyway.

I don't remember seeing it, is there a memory map of what the TI looks like once the P-Code OS is loaded? RAM Usage Here: https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/pcode.txt Anders via Nouspikel: Shows RAM Usage, but not the who memory map. I must assume, ROM, GROM, Memory Mapped I/O, DSR space remain constant, and only the RAM usage changes? Is there a disassembly of the ROMS/GROMS on the P-Code Card - like is available in "The Intern"?

It might have... Looking at wikipedia, the situation seems like it might have been complex: Commodore contacted Microsoft to upgrade BASIC for the new machines; this resulted in the soon-to-be-familiar BASIC 2.0 which removed the 256 element array limitation and had a rearranged zero page. Most bugs were fixed and IEEE-488 support in BASIC was made to be functional. The PEEK function was unblocked for memory locations above 49152. BASIC 2.0 also included an easter egg that Bill Gates personally coded, which would cause "MICROSOFT!" to appear if the user typed WAIT 6502,x (x being the number of times to display the message); this was reportedly due to a dispute with Commodore over ownership of BASIC (years later, when Microsoft developed BASIC for the Amiga, one of their conditions was that Commodore credit the original authors of BASIC, so BASIC 7.0 on the Commodore 128 displayed a Microsoft copyright notice). This feature was present in all 30xx series PETs. Commodore executives were unhappy when they learned about it and it was removed from BASIC on all subsequent Commodore machines. Microsoft also remained sensitive about their copyrighted code and pressured Commodore to not release any BASIC code listings to the public, although user groups eventually made disassemblies of BASIC.

Do you know what the actual take over mechanism is? I know when the switch is in one position, p-code is silent bob, flip it to the other and it totally takes over?

Faster Than Light: The Atari ST and the 16-Bit Revolution A fans chronicals of the birth, growth, peak and the waning years of the Atari ST lines. Covers hardware, software and innovations. Does a good job of covering the awkward in-between years from the end of the 8-bit years, until the rise of the IBM/Apple Duopoly.

I'm reading a book with a heart warming story. When Commodore purchased the rights to basic for the VIC-20 - the deal said, they could use it on any machine (or variant) that Commodore produced with a 6502 processor, and then could extend the software any way they wanted under that one license. Commodore went on to use that ONE license for the VIC-20, C64 and Plus/4 lines, with multiple enhancements over time. The book says - Microsoft felt they got cheated on the deal and never did a deal like that again. 😃