FarmerPotato
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Posts posted by FarmerPotato
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32 minutes ago, jedimatt42 said:my retro space had to give way to become the workspace. And then come 5 o'clock, and I don't want to be in there, anymore.
After a week of WFH, My family helped clean out my corner completely, organizing everything thoroughly. We joined (circular saw, drill) two IKEA desks (with backs) together. Plus installing two monitor arms for work. So now my personal stuff and monitor goes on one end, and I really like my corner behind the desks still.
we have a not very big 1954 house, extra room added in the 80s, so “corner” is what I get.
Outside of my walled off corner are the kids’ desks. School is closed through Apr 13 or longer, so I put on headphones a lot!
Last night I got electronics set up on the personal end, and began testing the 9958 card.
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I rely on Ninerpedia for Geneve hardware details whilst I wander through the MDOS source.
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I think the March 1983 99er reported it from the CES. Find the BYTE article too. It was intended as a low cost computer for teaching Basic, while the 99/8 would fill the high end. However the 4A price was cut to where there was no market position for the 99/2.
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1 hour ago, pixelpedant said:And I think given a lot of folks here are going to be IT people who can work on (professional) projects just as easily from home, we aren't necessarily going to be any less busy, if we're working from home. Heck, I was busier than usual, for the first couple days.
Same boat. Working from home. But I have more new stuff to do for the house, and I'm getting maybe one evening a week for personal computing.
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I'm posting this here for the eBay seller. Please, add your own knowledge.
To open the 99/2:
First observe the bottom, metal side.
In the left and right edges, you should see metal clips engaging under some plastic tabs. There appear to be 4 metal clips on each side. On mine though, on each side, only two of the metal clips are engaged.
Now I flip the machine upright. I raise it about an inch off the table, grasping it with a hand on the left and a hand on the right. I bend one edge of the plastic case outward and put pressure on a key. Do this where each of the four metal clips are. Do it gently! If you succeed, the bottom will begin to fall out.
Move to the other edge and repeat there.
Here it is when the last clip is disengaged. The rubber keyboard will stay put, but the plastic keyboard cover is loose. Lift the plastic case (and keyboard cover).
It's not necessary to remove the rubber keys. If you do, you will see a film underneath-- it's all guided into place by holes and pegs, not too complicated. But you don't have to disturb the keyboard. Above all, don't mess with the ribbon cable that connects the keyboard to the electronics.
Just take pictures of the electronics.
Here are my inside photos:
To reassemble:
Notice that the keyboard cover has a lot of plastic pins. These will fit into holes.
Place the top plastic cover lightly in place but don't press down yet. Make sure the keyboard cover is correctly placed and flush with the larger plastic at all edges. Making sure the pins are going into their holes.
Now press down and the metal clips should lock in place.
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On 3/20/2020 at 8:40 AM, Flottmann1 said:I messaged the seller. Roma does not have the power brick. Can someone who knows exactly, send the seller details on the transformer? I would hate to see the buyer damage the 99/2 by guessing.
I've tried to measure my power brick, but apparently I suck at measuring AC.
I also asked Roma to open the case and take photos.
-Erik
3 days left and it's over $1000.
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Yes let’s move F18A discussion over to your thread. One note: I2S is a different serial protocol, SPI like, used in PC audio. It’s always on, clocking stereo channels up to 256Ksps (I’m using 44.1 kHz)
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1 hour ago, matthew180 said:FYI, the MK2 has both mode pins so it has the capability to support the 9938 host interface.
Pins 11-24, 33, 34, 37, and 38 are 9918A and 5V compliant. The others you should leave disconnected if you don't have a 3.3V system (they are direct I/O to the FPGA). If you want the MK2's audio input capability, then connect pin-1 to a 1Vp-p line-level audio signal. Pin 39 is the direct DAC (audio) output, and if you provide a simple voltage-divider (two 10K resistors) and low-pass filter the signal will be ~1Vp-p line-level audio out.
In the future, do you think the HDL could include an I2S block taking digital input on IO pins? This would be 3.3V of course.
The Geneve2020 FPGA (ICE40HX4K) is using a CS4344 (or similar) for stereo D/A with I2S inputs. My Verilog mixes a final I2S stream from digital emulated 76489, other sound chips and (untested) TMS5220C speech.
it’s exciting that the Mk2 will have audio processing. I’d like to figure out how to integrate that.
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just hearing about the V9938 core, I think it’s nice, because I still have warm fuzzies from the late 80s programming it. But:
Geneve2020 is intended to use real chips wherever feasible. I just got the complete soldered 9958 board back from my technician (Amanda.)
But Geneve2020 will also have an option to plug in an F18A, because that’s the new coolness and I want it to ship with an F18A only game. It will support at least two VDPs (I’m reserving 4x 8-bit bus ids for VDP)
I’m using the FPGA only for memory mapping for MDOS and GPL, and it will be Verilog because open source IceStorm. . Oh, also the DRAM controller., and 16 to 8 bit bus interfaces (speech, VDP, sound) and I already did digital audio mixing to the stereo DAC. ok, a few more things.
Thanks for sharing the HDL. and also I’m always recalling your TIM and SOB (though I’ve never seen one.)
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23 hours ago, Shift838 said:I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.
I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago. However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.
Would anyone be wanting one of these boards? I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble. If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.
I would be interested in one or maybe three kits.
What are those empty pads next to the clock chip? Are they for alternate clock chips?
What happens with a dead battery? Is it just the timestamp feature that stops working, or does it lock up?
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3 hours ago, Airshack said:The early bird registration discount period has been extended:
”We on the Committee have decided that because of the current uncertainty, we will push the opening of registration back to April 30, 2020. For this reason, we will also be extending the Early Bird registration discount. ”
Hmm. Kansas governor just ordered no gatherings of 50 people or more, for the next two months.
Odds are not good for KansasFest (July).
I cancelled my trip to Midwest Gaming Classic (Milwaukee, April 2) just before the show itself was cancelled by the mayor's orders. (10,000 people in the city convention center.)
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53 minutes ago, GDMike said:My local wm was out of tp and on my way home I decided to stop at a dollar store 2 blocks away from home, and wholla...tp..I was like, wow, really?
This alternative is also back-ordered.
We got one a long time ago.
I went to Costco on Friday. Quite orderly. For the first 45 minutes anyone could get 1 TP. It ran out. Tons of food though - filled up my whole freezer.
HEB grocery stores now close at 8pm for restocking. We love HEB in Texas.
Stock up on Tylenol, Guaifenesin, cold relief. You may be caring for your neighbors, loved ones, or yourself.
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3 hours ago, Tursi said:Looks great! For the astronaut one, you have a bit of black border at the left which is causing the first column of pixels to look stretched (as the black is considered more important to preserve than the detail in the moon's surface) - crop out the black border and it should convert better.
First, I added a bunch more, with links to the source at APOD, plus 9918A versions.
I checked the astronaut picture, and the black border comes in because the image is 509 x 385. I had to crop out some white pixels on the edges.
Is the black bar just filling empty space then?
Here's some details of that one, before and after Convert9918:
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On 10/1/2016 at 10:34 PM, Tursi said:Bugfix update posted today -- the F18A palette and scanline palette files were saving the palette in the wrong order, meaning viewers wouldn't load them correctly. This has probably been the case for quite a while.
I don't think anyone was using those modes except me, so if you have any saved off, I recommend reconverting. If you have a lot of them or can't reconvert, contact me. I wrote a little tool to fix up my own collection. It's hacky but it works, assuming you have the files on a PC.
Convert9918 v 166
•improvement to quality of ordered dither 1 - far less color shift
•more minor speedups
•fix order of palette output for F18A - to fix old files, remove index 2 and insert at index 14
Thanks, Tursi, for another great tool.
I've been using it on some space images in F18A palette mode. The palette of 15 colors is perfect for combining images with other graphics in the other 48 palette slots.
These images are from Astronomy Picture of the Day. There is an F18A palette version and sometimes a 9918A bitmap version.
Apollo 16 Exploring Plum Crater
Scaling the original 509x385 leaves black border
An Apollo 15 Panorama: Astronaut Exploring
Saturn's Iapetus: Painted Moon
Apollo 13 Lunar service Module Damage
Lunar Orbiter Views Crater Copernicus
Astronaut Exploring: An Apollo 15 Panorama
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Like many others, my employer has sent us all to work from home.
It's important to keep a positive attitude. With that in mind, here are some ways my office is better than it was last week.
- I have a parking space right next to the office.
- It's not just lunch--I can get 3 meals a day at work.
- All my favorite snacks and drinks are here.
- No more worries about losing my key card.
- It's OK to bring pets to work.
- The nap room has my favorite pillow.
- Child care is now offered on-site!
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On 3/7/2020 at 1:18 AM, FarmerPotato said:The other parts of the video board:
All the video signals go on one 2x8 header, so the ports can be arranged in other ways. This build has VGA, a TI-99/4A composite DIN-5, and S-Video. SCART and RCA jacks are doable.
I was building this today. When I discovered that the VGA footprint doesn't work. I made a mistake and selected the one that says 1.97mm spacing instead of the one that says 2.54mm spacing. No wonder I had trouble routing the trace to a pin in the middle. My 2 kinds of connectors are 2.54 between rows.
I should have noticed this on the 3D viewer. I didn't notice it on the paper-punch copy I made, but know that I look, it's obvious on the holes on paper.
I'm going to have to spin up a new VGA breakout board to test this thing.
Also, comically, I didn't plan for 220uF caps to be bigger than 47 uF caps. I can still solder them on, but it looks like a shrub.
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2 hours ago, GDMike said:This is really what I'm waiting on. I hope it can go into my old peb and just run
I'm not targeting the Pbox. I'm not saying I won't someday, but, just the number of interface ports would not fit on a card edge.
Here's my concept art with all the ports. This back plate is 33 x 3 cm.
I don't know how I could chop it up to go on multiple P-box cards. Maybe it could take up 2 or 3 slots like a PXI controller.
At any rate, it has a 16-bit data bus internally. It's totally different from the Pbox backplane. At best it will use a second 8-bit bus to talk to some chips.
I'm just trying to get the technology to work first, then figure out how to package it. So far it looks like a rectangular box about the footprint of a 4A console. I'm working with 10cm deep and 6cm high inside, because it's cheap to get PCBs made.
Geneve2020 is being designed to be an all-in-one. Expansion would be on the Hexbus or small 16-bit cards inside.
It's really easier to integrate RS232 onboard the CRU module, because the modern chip count is so low.
The onboard 2, 16 or 32MB dwarfs any memory card in the pbox. Then the memory SIMMs stick out maybe too much to go into one clamshell.
I do want to find a way to accommodate disk controllers or HRD. One way is to build in a 44-pin side port with 4A mapping for the fire-hose cable. Or a new Flex card with a round cable. But having your 4A cards "just work" requires a very perfect GPL emulation - not likely to be perfect soon. Running Disk DSR ROMs as-is instead of the MDOS total-rewrite model is a serious dilemma.
Still with all the integrated peripherals, I will leave some 16-bit slots for hackers. It will be far easier and cheaper to build for, than making your own Pbox cards.
If I get it to run MDOS and GPL software off of an SD card, I will be happy.
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22 hours ago, Mehridian Sanders said:hmm well I may be taking on too many projects at the moment but will see what comes of it. If I cannot do anything with the boards. would you be interested?
I’m interested in all things 9900 for historical preservation. I’d try to get it working, but with no floppy disk for the OS that might be a non starter.
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7 minutes ago, GDMike said:Is it going to do solid-state hard drive, and wireless connectivity?
There will be 1 or 2 SD card slots.
Any networking will be through a TiPi (which is indifferent to wired or wireless). That idea is a long way out. But JediMatt42 already has a standard so I'm sticking with it.
Putting a wireless stack (ESP8266) or even a USB controller inside seems unfair - either chip has far more power than anything inside. Sure the Pi does too
I haven't thought about how it gets to any Pbox cards like an HFDC where all your software exists. Or how it might live in the pbox. But there is one 8-bit bus for starters.
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I've arrived at this design for a motherboard and system modules. I moved to this design because my main board was becoming a mess.
This is flexible enough to support many experiments. It may stay on as a system in its own right, but each proven technology can move into a single Geneve board.
The backplane carries all of the CPU signals and is a 16-bit bus. All connectors are keyed 40-pin. To make a working system, you would plug in:
- CRU / IO interrupt processor (9901). Serial, keyboard, mouse ports.
- BIOS ROM/RAM.
- Main RAM with memory mapper.
- Open - maybe a sound/video card
The fourth slot connector can be soldered vertical or horizontal (for easy debugging.)
The bottom ports are an interface to a 3.3V FPGA card. One pin is a signal that the FPGA is taking over the memory bus. The idea is that the FPGA will manage a very large DRAM and do the bank mapping, while also providing the overall memory map in GPL or MDOS mode, including access to 8-bit devices.
An 8-bit bus from the FPGA goes to sound, speech, and video cards (my 9958 card). And any other 8-bit legacy devices, which it can map at the right addresses for GPL or MDOS.
However, this design is useful for experiments that don't involve an FPGA or Geneve compatibility. You could run any of Stuart Conner's 99105 ROMs as the BIOS (in fact I'll test with his FORTH in the ROM.) I might adapt the sound and video card to plug into the 16-bit bus. The fourth slot could also host a slot expander to 4 more slots.
This is the first prototype of the Geneve2020. I think it will appeal as a new system on its own, like the RC2014. Its purpose now is to test modules, that will later become integrated on one Geneve board.
That is a KiCad 3D view, with copper exposed. I’m not ordering the PCB just yet.
Remaining parts of V9958 boards are arriving though.
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Just now, Toucan said:That reminds me of one of the sound effects I really liked. It was that intro music/effect that plays at the beginning of "Space Bandits".
Aha, found it, Toucan has preserved The Attack theme here.
https://www.videogamehouse.net/theattack.html
It sounds like there is a beating effect near the end (as in CALL SOUND(1000,330,0,331,0).
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18 hours ago, pixelpedant said:Since folks liked this so much, I will put together a "part 2" to this, featuring categories left out here. Namely,
- In-game music (even if interruption by extraneous in-game sounds is difficult to avoid)
- Music which most people probably wouldn’t find as pleasant, but is undeniably TI-99 game music nonetheless.
- Fanfares and short, non-repeating compositions.
I’ll try to avoid or edit out non-music sound effects where possible.
When I made my original in-game music list, I rated each track (subjectively) with a score of 1 to 10 (reflecting how listenable, interesting and appealing I found it). I only included 8s, 9s and 10s in the original, and did not include in-game music or fanfares regardless of how appealing I found them. So there’s still a pile more to work with.
Some areas I don't see represented:
Education titles
MBX cartridges (tougher to get, I know)
Music that didn't make it. Like the disk-version of Arcturus that had something close to the Star Wars theme. And the creepy early version of The Attack song.
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I've not heard of this til now.
Here's some info I googled
https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/640383-Found-Ti-VPU-200-any-info
I think it would be more interesting on its own, than parted out. (It's easy to get chips by themselves.)
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Did I understand rightly how to make a list of lists? but, CSP! and CSP don't support that, do they?
How would you do it?
'( '( ." GOAT" ( ." EATS-EVERYTHING" ." SAYS-EHEHEH" )' )' '( ." GUINEAPIG" ( ." EATS-HAY" ." SAYS-WHEEK" )' )' '( ." DOG" ( ." EATS-SHOES" ." SAYS-WOOF" )' )' '( ." MOUSE" ( ." EATS-DOGFOOD" ." SAYS-EEK" )' )' )' CONSTANT ANIMALSIs "(" there just to escape the parenthesis as a string? Or does it have some meaning inside a list?
Not Dorian, Durian
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IDE card components (hard to find items found)
in TI-99/4A Computers
Posted
Is that a 220 ohm array? I’m looking at Mouser now. Does it match pinout with a new one?
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Bourns/4608X-101-221LF?qs=%2Fha2pyFadujGrwpxGSma51gvPokZCwAar6UktZ%2FCb%2Fnq5CFgv9kryg%3D%3D
I was in need of the 220-330 ohm dual terminator. They’re very cheap new.