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dhe

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Posts posted by dhe

  2. Posted

     

    GPL Questions:

     

     

    One of the mill stones MyARC had hanging about their neck, was being able to run module software.

       Their first decision was no plug in for module, they had Peter Hoddie, write C-Save.

     

     Issue 1, C-Save didn't know how to save all modules.

     Issue 2, Not all modules worked on the Geneve. I remember Mike Maksimik spent a lot of time making modules work.

                  Broadly speaking problems seemed to fall in to four large categories.

                  a) Bad hygiene on VDP register setup, things you got away with on the TMS9918, no longer did

                            you get away with 96k of RAM and much more complicated V9938 with more registers.

                  b) Modules that either played fast and loose with the KSCAN routine, or tried to directly access the keyboard and joysticks via CRU.

                  c) Direct access to I/O devices like the sound chip.

                  d) Loose programming that worked on the 4A, because the 256 bytes of scratch pad RAM would roll over.

     

     Then you often times had module files, and you thought, is this the FIXED moon patrol from Mike, or just an original dump of Moon Patrol?  There never was a good database of patches or fixed modules put together. (Still isn't).

     

       Two other questions for the architect....

     

        I never saw from Myarc, what the maximum Grom banks that could be used.

        I also never clearly understood, if the Geneve could support modules with RAM memory like

           SuperSpace, SuperSpace II or Minimum.

        Also, Myarc promised P-Code compatibility, I heard rumors of a pcode file but never saw it.

             Now, this could have been for two reasons (or more) - their Grom Operation couldn't emulate a

             P-Card, the Geneve's hardware wasn't compatible with a p-card. Maybe someone got it to run and all the disk-based utility had problems, not unlike some of the modules, or faster term, etc.

     

             In Candyland, I'd like to have full emulation of the P-Code card, and maybe emulation of the SNUG HSGPL card.

     

     

     

     

     

    image.thumb.png.e2b2443c228af9a0d8fdcff92c11441f.png

     

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  5. Posted

    I consider the program to be very valuable. About the time the Geneve came out, the TI community was experiencing a pandemic of it's own. Corrupt software, either from bad diskettes, poorly aligned drives, bad BBS downloads etc. Many times, these were blamed on the hardware - people would say  'my Geneve keeps locking up'. Guru Meditation PROVED, the Geneve wasn't just 'locking' up, and in fact pointed directly to the problem. I remember at least two cases, where Guru, spurred me on to get new copies of the software, and that ended up being the fix to my 'lock up problems'.

     

    So, thank you for the Guru!

     

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    I was trying to build a GPI Case 4A Game Console and ran in to problems with the disk image I picked up from: ti99iuc.it

     

    Here is my tale of woe, in case it helps someone, or you have successfully used the image in question.

     

    I used this raspberry pi Zero:

    https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Retroflag-Raspberry-Heatsink-Carrying/dp/B07X53S356/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=gpi+case&qid=1605891581&s=electronics&sr=1-2

     

    The first mistake I made was putting it all together, because I turned it on, got a power light and a black screen. Pretty disconcerting.

     

    Also the video I watched on youtube of the assembly had stand off screws, the GPI Case I received, the pi Zero slides down four small Chicago screw like posts.

     

    Ok… Step 2, which should have been step 1. Let’s test everything first. Disassemble everything, and bring the pi Zero to a vga monitor and usb keyboard. Pull out your everything else needed to hook a pi Zero up to the keyboard and monitor and provide power.

     

        Plug power in to the outside usb connection.

        Plug keyboard connection in to the middle usb port - it angles at 90 degree and if plugged in to the outside port won’t let another connector be used.

        Plug mini-hdmi to vga converter into the remaining port. Plug in the vga adapter voltage booster into a usb slot.

        Plug in MicroSD card - the side with writing goes up, in the same direction as the component side of pi.

     

        Without a bootable USB drive, a pi Zero, will sit at a black screen.

     

                Now that we are all wired up, let see if it’s an os thing…. 

            https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/ - Install the installer, 

                            Run installer, it will grab the os for you and put it on the micro sd card.

     

                 And it works, keyboard works, video works….

     

                 Let’s go back to team Italy:

                     https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.ti99iuc.it/web/index.php%3Fpageid%3Dhomepage%26artid%3D203&prev=search&pto=aue


     

                  Download ZIP from:

    http://www.ti99iuc.it/web/index.php?pagina=articoli&artid=203#.X7f9auWSnRY

     

                   Conveniently, when you double click on the zip in windows, Raspberry PI Imager (v1.4) will notice, it’s an OS for PI and ask you if you want to install it on a SD! I did and tried to boot. Same black screen….

     

                    Pulled the SD card again, went back to Raspberry Pi Imager, this time choose Retropie 4.7.1 - Wrote to card and boot! 

     

    So my suspicion is: TI994a_Sim_Pack_for_RetroPie_ReadMe_V1.0.0.zip; is that this zip file is bad.

     

                I'm hoping someone else has used this, and they can tell me the one thing I need to do, to make this work!

     

     

  11. Posted

     
    I've been reading the TM 990/10 docs, and it's brought up a number of questions....
     
    Have you considered creating a hypervisor layer with an Arduino or pi?
     
    One of the nice features of the 990 chassis, was plug and pray - each slot was tied to a specific cru address, so need to set them.
     
    Two nice add on's that were made for the 4a, that would be nifty to build in, was Mack Mccormic published a circuit diagram when he was writing an assembly tutorial for Micropendium, that would slow down a 4a, to a craw so you could see what was happening in assembly, by playing with interrupts. The other, also interrupt focused was Jeffery Browns terminal emulator, where you programmed a non-maskable interrupt.
     
    When I was using a Genève mostly, I always loaded a little program that was tribute to the Amiga, when an illegal opcode was executed, it had a TSR popup with Guru Meditation Error, that usually mean code had wondered off into some area, that it shouldn't have - like executing data! 😃 IT would be neat if that situation could be handled by a hypervisor.
     
    When you get ready to release cards, maybe we can get Beery's permission to include his HD Image on an SD Card, that could save people years of trying to track down source code and get it transferred.
     
    A Geneve is faster than a TI, a GenMod Geneve is faster than a Geneve, where do you think Geneve 2020 will fall on the speed scale if you end up using 6Mhz TMS99105's?
     
     

  15. Posted

    I also got bit, by not knowing the rules for certs. For personal domain, I went with a .US - Compared to .com - lots of open names, and .us is short also.

     

    So I took out this .us domain, I literally started getting phones calls day and night, people wanting to sell me web services. There is no way to make your contact info private with .us <-=-- No wonder people don't want to do that thing!!!

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    As far as putting one of these together, Acadiel is way way out in front of me.

     

    There is a service that you upload *.stl files to that I have used in the past.

    There automated software check keeps failing on the keyboard bezel .stl.

    I'm working with the tech that actually runs the machines, so maybe next week I will have the bezel.

     

    Acadiel had a friend of his print his bezel, and the software they used needed access to the whole zip, so this might be a step that trips up the less 3d printing experienced.

     

    But, eventually will figure this out and make it easier for the next person.

     

  21. Posted

    >It mentions the nroff format.

     

    I didn't know that. Many years ago, I wrote a little help file for MDOS, people could do a help dir - an get examples.

     

    I've used nroff a lot to create custom man pages, I probably could have pulled off a man page like system....

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    Ok.. That did!

    I was being too darn dogmatic following the tutorial.

     

    The deeper reason I wanted to get this setup, is now I can use a rich compile/edit environment, use classic99 as the execution engine, and I have a TIPI on that way, after I make sure something passes muster with classic99, I can actually be bothered 😃 with running on an actually console!

     

    Thanks Home Automation!

    • Like 3
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