FarmerPotato
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Posts posted by FarmerPotato
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I agree with the Hilton Garden Inn, and calling it CTI Friday.
As for signage, I propose a really big Parsec ship with glowing EL wire around the edges. A rangefinder sensor triggers a recording of "Alien Craft Approaching", or some more welcoming message.
There will be no mistaking that you're in the right place.
Here's my prototype:
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I got to practice on a working Adam once. It was strange knowing it was a TMS9918, yet the BASIC command HPLOT matched AppleSoft.
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Making CHI Friday that much more real:
Opry99er contributed the sound track by playing Blasto, which is still running through my head.
Great game, the first I bought with my own money after reading a Saturday morning store ad.
Then OLD CS1 had the Munchman pause/reminder jingle on his phone ring tone. It's stuck in my head again
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before you make too much effort look at http://ftp.whtech.com/Cassettes
and make sure they aren't already there.. and I'm happy to upload anything new you come up with that's not there.
Greg
I never looked in the Cassettes directory before. Under Mini Memory it looks like it contains copies of the LINES demo?
I find myself in need of the Mini Memory Line by Line Assembler cassette. Recently I have been hand entering machine code into Easy Bug.
If someone could add the wav file I could really use it.
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A few days ago a friend of mine asked me about the PILOT programming language for the TI 99.
It's listed in one of the printed catalogs, but I've never seen any carts or disks or images. Was PILOT ever released?
I think 99'er Magazine October 1982 has an article about programming PILOT.
Subsequent issues had some coverage too.
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I love it when this happens... I was just saying... in a general sense, I do collect sound fx ...for my HOME AUTOMATION CONTROLLER design.
Thanks for all the efforts. I might not have gotten back to it.
From the name sndsrch.c I imagine this is written in C. For the life of me... I haven't been able to get a clue from looking C code over... how it operates. Is that C? I have been wanting to understand how a program called "talkie" operates. It can synthesize TI speech from the LPC data. I thought I might feed it streams of ROM data, so as to discover the start points and length of LPC strings. I imagine that rather than choke up or crash, it would hopefully just produce noise during gaps where foreign data exists. I have wanted to isolate these LPC strings some of which I believe are sound effects, from this ROM for many years now... but the point I am at in my project hasn't justified that yet. I would like to get talkie to run from my RPI(TIPI)... I hope I'm not diluting this topic too much... any ideas on sources of sound data for TI... or a good start point to learn C would be helpful to me.
I have a mind to do a search program for LPC codes, against the Gauntlet ROMs for starters (it had a TMS5220.)
I'll have to defer working on a TI sound survey for a bit. You can lift from games that have source code, and there is a SNDTEST collection that TI did (that's another story).
As for learning C, I started with Clint Pulley's c99 tutorial and a bunch of Dr Dobb's magazines, but I would not recommend that. I am grateful for the Brian Kernighan books:
The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan
The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike
The C Standard Library by P.J. Plauger
That was a long time ago, but, you would absorb more knowledge from that course than many others.
These days we have fancy stuff like https://www.learn-c.org
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Balls, that's clever.
I don't fully get the T=770 within the parenthesis multiplied by 64, but it works.
Care to break it down a bit for me?
From page 41 of the XB manual
RELATIONAL EXPRESSIONS Relational expressions are most often used in the IF-THEN-ELSE statement, but may be used anywhere that numeric expressions are allowed. A relational expression has a value of -1 if it is true and a value of 0 if it is false
Evaluate S=T-(T=770)*64
T T=770 *64 T-that === ===== === ===== 660 0 0 660 770 -1 -64 834 880 0 0 880
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I'm having a brain lapse right now... please assist!
This first piece of code fails with a syntax error. The second functions as expected.
Thanks!
10 CALL CLEAR :: FOR T=110 TO 880 STEP 110 :: IF T=770 THEN S=834 ELSE S=T :: CALL SOUND(200,220,1,440,1,S,1):: NEXT T :: GOTO 10 10 CALL CLEAR 20 FOR T=110 TO 880 STEP 110 30 IF T=770 THEN S=834 ELSE S=T 40 CALL SOUND(200,220,1,440,1,S,1) 50 NEXT T 60 GOTO 10
Everything after the ELSE is part of the ELSE statement2.
You would need to start a new line after S=T.
Or embed the comparison in a formula like this:
10 CALL CLEAR :: FOR T=110 TO 880 STEP 110 :: S=T-(T=770)*64 :: CALL SOUND(200,220,1,440,1,S,1):: NEXT T :: GOTO 10
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The sound lists are in there! For BEEP and HONK it takes the code from the console.
BEEP EQU >0034
HONK EQU >0036
There is a lot of DATA at the end of the GROM which I haven't really done much with - I suspect sound may be around the area 7B98-7F07 ish, but it gets rather confusing.
Stephen
Sound lists? Here you go.The linked code, sndsrch.c, guesses at what portions of a file are sound lists. It found 8 potential sounds. See advertsnds.txt for source. (I did not test the sounds.)There are some variants in the output file, because some guesses overlap. The program prints alternatesin cases where a byte might be interpreted as either a count or a sound chip command. You will have to untangle them.It also prints 2-3 stray bytes in "holes" between almost contiguous sound lists. Several of these holesare >7E,>82. Is that GPL for play sound?Oh I think I get it.. this is at grom base 6000. S$1E82 is another list for silence then a tone.. 7E82 sure appears in there a lot. Hmm.Example:
S$1E16 BYTE 7,>8E,>12,>90,>A8,>16,>B0,>DF,40 BYTE 2,>9F,>BF,30 BYTE 6,>8E,>12,>90,>A8,>16,>B0,60 BYTE 4,>82,>13,>AD,>16,8 BYTE 6,>87,>13,>91,>A2,>17,>B1,8 BYTE 4,>8B,>13,>A7,>17,8 BYTE 6,>80,>14,>92,>AD,>17,>B2,8 BYTE 4,>85,>14,>A3,>18,8 BYTE 6,>89,>14,>94,>A9,>18,>B4,8 BYTE 4,>8E,>14,>AF,>18,8 BYTE 6,>83,>15,>96,>A4,>19,>B6,8 BYTE 4,>88,>15,>AA,>19,8 BYTE 6,>8D,>15,>99,>A0,>1A,>B9,8 BYTE 4,>82,>16,>A6,>1A,8 BYTE 6,>88,>16,>9C,>AC,>1A,>BC,8 BYTE 0 M$1E80 BYTE >7E,>82S$1E82 BYTE 3,>9F,>BF,>DF,0 BYTE 3,>86,>0D,>93,10 BYTE 0https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olsone/forti/master/sndsrch.c
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/olsone/forti/master/advertsnds.txt
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Too time consuming!
For example if I wanted to get anything off of a 5.25" floppy, I'd have to...
1) Disconnect my primary P-Box and unplug the 3.5" from it.
2) Hookup my secondary P-Box and plug the 3.5" into it.
3) Insert the diskette, copy the data to the 3.5" diskette.
4) Disconnect the secondary P-Box, remove the 3.5" drive.
5) Re-connect my primary P-Box and the 3.5" drive.
6) Copy the data from the 3.5" to the TIPI or Lotharek HxC.
Of course this after waiting who knows how long for the the U.S. Snail Mail to deliver the thing.
Now starting from a 3.5" would eliminate a bunch of steps, but it would be far easier, logical and practical to just download the thing and stuff it on the TIPI. That procedure would take less than a two minutes tops, and that would be if I was taking my sweet time, rather than a week or more futzing with a physical disk.
Sure, I know different people enjoy different aspects of the hobby, and I can understand the nostalgia of physical drives. While I like retro-computing with my TI, there are two things I PERSONALLY cannot abide:
1) Old, slow, clunky diskette drives.
2) Old fuzzy display technology.
YMMV
Speaking of old diskette drives,
Opry99 has the quietest Mitsumi half-height drive I have ever used. It was a D503. I thought it was quiet attached to the P-Box.
But when we had the P-Box turned off, and the drive was attached to a modern laboratory bench supply and Kryoflux, it became ninja-like in its stealth, silently sucking 223 mA of 12V and slurping DSSD floppies faster than I could put them back in their sleeves.
It's a pleasure to find the best of 1980s technology perfectly tuned.
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This would be a nice addition for a collector. Price seems steep, but then again I do not know how hard these are to find:
The TI acoustic phone coupler looks great at public events. I park it next to the 99/4 display. Now that I have an RS232 sidecar, it's usable with TE2. It can connect "over the air" to another acoustic modem.
What I don't have is an actual phone handset to show, which is almost as unknown to kids now.
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The store display existed for the 99/4 as well. I remember many of them at Texas Instruments Lubbock public open house day in December of 1980. It was my first exposure to the 99/4. The display shown here is just about the same configuration.
There must have been many more of the 99/4A store display in existence.
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I'm at the Hilton Garden Inn. Sitting at the table outside the conference room.
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Anyone going to be in town on Thursday night? We could get together at a local pub and catch up. I should be at the Hilton by late afternoon Thursday.
I will be at the Hilton by 5pm - taking bus from O'Hare. How about just meeting in the hotel bar area?
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I have a MBX with 10 cartridges. It is a little flaky. When you press the membrane keyboard, sometimes it power cycles. Midwest Gaming Classic has it in their storage space so I only play with it once per year. I'm Hiding and Terry Turtle's Adventure are classics, just for the speech.
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i am looking forward to the snow. My good snow/ice boots have been sitting unused for a couple of years.
I left all my winter gear in Wisconsin when I moved back to Texas.
Looks like I will be getting my winter coat out of the garage.
I am not getting a rental car, so rides in a warm SUV will be much appreciated.
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My offer to bring gear still stands. Whatever we need, I can bring it if I've got it.
I have PEB gear with 3.5 drives and 5.25 drives, a CF7, GRAM Kracker (if we want to do any old school cart-ripping or messing with graphics), cassette interface, consoles, a decent monitor, etc etc...
I have cables galore and whatever else we may need. No TIPI, no FG99, no F18A (installed in a working console), but for old school sh**, I can hook us up.
Hey, I will be bringing your SID Master back. I'm sorry I didn't mention that I still had it.
Can you bring some more MATIUG floppies! I can bring the Kryoflux and folks can plug away at floppy scanning. It needs an external drive too. (I used my Corcomp drive enclosure, but any DSSD drive enclosure would work.)
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I am bringing a 4A with F18A, NanoPEB, FlashROM99, 32k + TIPI, and FORTI-2. I think I will bring a cheap VGA monitor in my suitcase.
Non-TI equipment:
MacBookPro (Mac OS X, maybe maybe Win10),
VB-8012 scope and logic analyzer.
Kroflux floppy controller
I can provide wireless via my phone HotSpot.
I will use a loaner Windows laptop for Classic99 and the VB-8012 software.
My Classic99 environment will travel on a USB stick unless I go nuts and install a Windows VM.
Not bringing any soldering equipment or eprom programmer.
Things I would like help with:
setting up TIPI for the first time,
getting my fbForth 32k cartridge to have a working eprom (It's got Kippy's Nightmare in it currently.)
moving all my stuff from TI FORTH to fbForth
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When it comes to a winter project, I have to admit, I'm drawing a blank this year. I'm hoping a certain someone releases the item shown below sooner than later this year. I have non-TI related ideas that I could do with it, but honestly, I'd like to do something TI related with it if/when it comes out.
So, do any of you hardware guys have any ideas? Is so, please post them!
My spare time continues to be for FORTH and music programming.
I got all the bugs out of code/hardware that I started 4 winters ago.
I'll let the cat out of the bag at CHI Friday.
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this probably belongs on a separate thread...
You are more than welcome.
Besides straight-up Graphics2 mode, fbForth 2.0 (and TI Forth before it) has two hybrid modes that have bitmap graphics for part of the screen and text for the remainder:
- Split mode has bitmap graphics in the top 2/3 of the screen and 8 lines of text in the bottom 1/3. This is used for the 64-column editor.
- Split2 mode has 4 lines of text in the top 1/6 of the screen and bitmap graphics in the bottom 5/6.
The split modes are ideal for testing bitmap graphics coding.
...lee
I don't remember split2! split was fascinating and caused me to ponder all the ways bitmap mode could be exploited.
I put a lot of effort into implementing a split mode with 18 rows of graphics and 6 rows of proportionally spaced bitmapped text (A/L library, not FORTH.) It squeezed about 42 characters on each line.
It computed a width table for patterns after loading CHARA1. It kept a 2 char (16 byte) working pattern buffer in ram, and each character to emit would be bit shifted and ORed with the buffer, which would be then be sent to VDP. When the right bytes were touched, the buffer would move the right char into the left and refresh.
It will be in my bag o stuff to show at CHI Friday.
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What is your favorite text editor on the TI-99/4a and what features does make it stand out the most?
Also what feature would one appreciate most in 2018 ? For me it would be 80 columns and SAMS
I used TI-Writer, Funlweb, and MyWord into the 90s to do programming, schoolwork and writing.
I used Clint Pulley's QDE the most at the end for coding under MDOS.
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I'm not sure what you mean by "open up possibilities", but I am providing the F18A v1.8 (soon to be v1.9) core for that project.
If they are taking out an HDMI license, would it be possible to have Collectorvision manufacture some Mk2s for you?
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Matthew, if the Collectorvision project funds, will that open up possibilities for the F18A MK2?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1408938247/collectorvision-phoenix-an-fpga-colecovision-conso
I'm a backer.
-Erik
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Well, al least it's not just me then
.I should also point out that using ints instead of chars does yield the correct result, even with volatile variables.
It looks like the uint8 are not being promoted to int before multiplication, as they should, or conversion back to uint8 is not correct.
Can you find the assembly source for this case?
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