JCCyC

I have a Japanese MSX computer with a busted VDP to be a loving home for a Mk2. It's with a friend who fixes retro computers, he's having some difficulty procuring the VDP. I'll have to check the pinout, I think there are variants with different pinouts, is that right?

Precisely. To my continued astonishment, they managed to invent a web community format that's unlike anything that existed previously. Its usefulness doesn't mirror that of anything else, really. And it case that sounded like shilling (yeah... it does, I admit it) I have no relation whatsoever to the people responsible (Joel Spolsky and his business). I just think they're ridiculously awesome.

(Not sure if this is the correct forum for this topic; if not, please advise.) http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/74814/retrocomputing I'll bet lots of people reading this have used Stack Overflow or one of its sister sites. It's a network of communities in a Q&A format, divided by subject. It's incredibly useful, and its power to retain useful information and Darwinianly separate it from fluff is astounding. When a subject proposal gains critical mass (measured by followers and a cache of meaningful questions) it gains its own site. Let me assure you beforehand that this is a unique format that is in no way a competition to web forums like this, mailing list, newsgroups, social networks etc. The retrocomputing proposal is there (see link above), but until a few days ago it was spinning wheels. This state of affairs greatly disappointed me. I ask you to log in there and help it happen. You can login with your Google or FB account. And, if mamory doesn't fail me, Yahoo!. As of now, what I need is a pool of meaningful questions, with 10 or more upvotes. Each login can upvote 5 questions at most. Cheers, Juan

Yeah, I'm the guy in white. Repair (had a busted cap that was shorting the +12V line): https://plus.google.com/photos/+DanielCampos/albums/6105297657130285409 So, looks like a fun machine, but finding information about it has been a PITA. I can't even find the cassette pinout. Is it that DIN-8 at the back? I found a bunch of pages about it but only in Japanese. It'd be nice to find a mailing list or web forum, then even if it was in Japanese I could communicate via Google Translator. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

It may be fun, but it isn't Man-Fun. (Disclaimer: yes, I know, there's plenty of women who enjoy Man-Fun.)

Ahhh, the dreaded, hyper-sentitive Man-Fun Remote Detector. (Children have that installed too.)

I like it that you call things what they are. A subversive habit, that.

...said Xenu.

When I got my TI and started dabbling in its BASIC, I wondered why the **** they called the LOAD command "OLD". Then I learned about Dartmouth BASIC...

The same thing applies to the Z80 TRS-80's (not the CoCos, those only had float), CP/M's MBASIC and probably quite a few others.

I can help you if I can clone myself. I'll leave my clone doing all the drudgery and just fudge with retro stuff all day.

Exactly, people, chill out! I was bummed because I lost the first batch, so I simply logged here, followed the topic and kept an eye to my e-mail. And if snafu happens, RELAX! IT'S JUST A HOBBY!

But wait, will that mod work on a CoCo 2 or only a CoCo 1? Their video circuits are very different.

Welcome to the Blind Club. There are TWO groups, one has a hyphen between TI and 99, the other doesn't. That's why I missed the first batch. But don't worry, there will be a third batch. (See above.)

Geez, HOW many Brazilians are in here?

This guy lives two blocks away from me. How convenient is that?

Gazoo, I have a friend in Maryland who can receive them for me and resend them here. When this batch closes, tell me how many Brazilians ordered, we pay you and you can send them all to this person.

Blame it on Brazil! https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputaria/permalink/752114758179563/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputaria/permalink/755832567807782/

Ah... yeah. That was the guy I was talking about. And there's probably a third one who'll post here shortly. We hang around at Facebook here (in Portuguese): https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputaria/

Three two for me, please! (two one for me and one for a friend) If not admissible, just one, but I'd like to pass at least another cartridge to a friend of mine who doesn't post here.

I'll say! I got epically burned by that when developing a DOS device driver in 1990! Everything worked OK in PCXTs and crashed badly in PCATs. And when we debugged step-by-step... ta-da, worked again! 16-byte prefetch queue. (8088 has only four.) To be fair, the LWPI idea could avoid that by constructing it somewhere other than the next instructions and reaching it with a branch/jump.

Ooooo, self-modifying code. Naughty! I like it!

Yep. Alas, there seems to be no easy way to load the WP with a calculated value other than BLWP, and for that I have to make up a memory structure with the new WP and the new PC. And now that you mention it, increase-on-push and decrease-on-push stacks are equally doable -- but with the decrease-on-push stack you can do the overlap trick without trashing critical registers.

Probably lots of people had this idea already, and I've been reading about TMS9900 assembly only sporadically. Let CALLEE be the address of a subroutine like this: CALLEE (instruction) (instruction) (instruction) ... RTWP And my idea for a "reentrant call": STWP R8 S 36,R8 MOV R8, @32(R8) MOV CALLEE, @34(R8) BLWP @32(R8) Could be turned into a macro, and the trashed register cound be any one that doesn't have a special use (R12-R15). I did this on paper only, so it may have a few holes. Also, this is NOT for hardware interrupts! And, of course, for machines with a respectable amount of RAM -- definitely not a base 99/4A! So, makes sense? Is it horribly slow and wasteful and a much better method exists? EDIT: No, wait, wait. I don't need that additional space for the transfer vector. It can be located in the middle of the new workspace. STWP R8 S 32,R8 MOV R8, @8(R8) MOV CALLEE, @10(R8) BLWP @8(R8) EDIT II, THE SEQUEL: And if I didn't mind trashing the first few registers of my current WP I could even make them overlap! What do you think?

Know of a good listing of the differences between the instruction sets of the TMS9900 and TMS9995?