jedimatt42

How about 50hz or 60hz as the point is the interrupt rate.

Update 2.15 - 2020-12-24 - Fixed some name encoding issues with LVL2 IO - Added PI.CONFIG option 'DIR_SORT' where the value can be MIXED, FIRST, or LAST. default's to FIRST, which is a change in behavior from previous 'MIXED' This DIR_SORT option controls how files and directories are mixed in the CATALOG file that is returned. Apparently some original devices bringing directory support to the 4A world, produced the directories first before the files. Or was it the other way around... IDK... You get to choose how TIPI behaves... Listing directories first makes it more compatible with some assumptions made by legacy software on the Geneve, I am told. It also naturally changes the order for programs like DM2K, BASIC catalog code, and Force Command.

@BeeryMiller Ok, that was easier than I thought. So, update 2.15 is available. I changed the PI.CONFIG key to DIR_SORT instead of just DIRSORT, to fit my own coding pattern. Defaults to FIRST... But if you need to change it... 10 OPEN #1:"PI.CONFIG",APPEND 20 PRINT #1:"DIR_SORT=MIXED" 30 CLOSE #1 or something... Note: this does not fix the safepoint issue... I'll have to re-study that appropriately, that one gets issue #144 - https://github.com/jedimatt42/tipi/issues/144

There was still quite a bit if 'ascii' encoding of filenames in the python, that should have been latin1... we are just so conventional, that we aren't tripping on it. Most LVL3 IO would be happy with high characters, but none of the LVL2 routines would be... so you could create files in BASIC, that you can't COPY with a contemporary file manager. GOOD FIND! (thanks @BeeryMiller ) And another half dozen found just through code searching....

I plan to offer a DIRSORT option in PI.CONFIG with 3 values, MIXED, FIRST, LAST I'll set the default to FIRST, as that sounds most usable, and what we see so often on other platforms, and sounds like it matches the HFDC. I plan to work on it some tonight, might not take long, and then might be able to release an update Saturday morning.

I love you too!

TIPI uses a linux filesystem in UTF-8 encoding mode for filenames. In linux, I don't think there is such a thing as an illegal character for a filename. Some are just really hard to work with in a shell. 99% of the places in TIPI source that say 'ascii' are wrong, and I should fix this. They should be 'latin-1' so that 0-255 are all legal values. That is the actual intent. So this is an actual bug in TIPI from the python2 to python3 conversion effort. (My TI is working again, so once I get done with prep for tomorrow, I can work on some of these TIPI bugs/requests) When I fix this, writing an 0xFF as the first character is going to succeed to create a file with that as the first character. This sounds like a Myarc alternative to the un-implemented TI temporary file mechanism... is that true? TIPI does not implement either mechanism. So, if this is a request, is there more detail? I've never heard of this behavior before... maybe it was supposed to be handled entirely in the Geneve OS master DSR? As for unhandled exceptions, yes they are unhandled... handled exceptions return an error to the TI. Unhandled exceptions just crash, and cause you to have to reset the 4A, so that you get annoyed and report the issue. LOL.. At least that part seems to be working

Hmm... those both exercise SAMS, in that if Force Command see a SAMS, it maps page 0, and 1 into lower expansion, page 2 into 0xA000 for history, and leaves the rest of upper expansion unmapped. LOAD and XB reset the mapping so pages 2 & 3 go to lower expansion, and 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 go to upper expansion ( the same order as '612's pass through mode ) The mapper is left on. I didn't see a reason to set it back to pass through mode given that the layout is the same. If the 32k aspect works from other points of entry, then that seems like a '612 issue. Sounds like the SRAM is still functioning, and the '245, and the '244s, and the '138. Although, I thought my '688 was bad, but it turned out to be one of the '244s transitioning from partial to full failure mode. I don't feel like this was helpful.

Does my memtest detect it as a SAMS? I think on reset, the '612 is in pass-through mode. So non-SAMS software that doesn't go looking just functions. If the SAMS is detected, then Force Command will use it in NOT pass through mode... I have recently discovered some variable initialization issues in Force Command, where my C runtime fills 32k expansion RAM with zeroes... before loading static data, but that code isn't SAMS aware. So, I'm seeing history act messed up on startup. Paging in upper memory expansion for history, or swapping it for free banks to load executables (like the bundled FTP) seems to be fine. (for the record, I tried other unreleased programs that use the same mechanisms, not FTP) What symptom are you seeing in FC? Knowing what FC feature is failing, can map back to the SAMS functionality that is suspect...

The Force Command (TI-99/4A) equivalent is TYPE PI.STATUS and LOAD TIPI.TIPICFG So, hopefully, nobody actually is in need of hoping...

I think this only kind-of works. I'm seeing a less than stellar behavior in Force Command which uses the SAMS if available for enhanced features... I think this works

This WINCUPL code seems to be working as a replacement for the '688 ignoring that it is supposed to compare 2 sets of 8 bits... since in the SAMS, one of those sets is hardwired to 0x1E, I built that into the GAL. Mostly cause WINCUPL drives me crazy... Name 74LS688 ; PartNo 00 ; Date 12/23/2020 ; Revision 01 ; Designer Engineer ; Company jedimatt42 ; Assembly None ; Location ; Device G16V8MA; /* *************** INPUT PINS *********************/ PIN 1 = !EN ; /* */ PIN 2 = A0 ; /* */ PIN 4 = A1 ; /* */ PIN 6 = A2 ; /* */ PIN 8 = A3 ; /* */ PIN 11 = A4 ; /* */ PIN 13 = A5 ; /* */ PIN 15 = A6 ; /* */ PIN 17 = A7 ; /* */ /* *************** OUTPUT PINS *********************/ PIN 19 = !EQ ; /* */ EQ = EN & !A0 & !A1 & !A2 & A3 & A4 & A5 & A6 & !A7; One of my 74HCT244's seemed to be at fault. I'll have to put the '688 back in and see if it still works. Things degraded throughout the day. The behavior where simply removing the '688 allowed the 32K function to proceed, stopped working. The card was always driving the bus. So, I replaced the '688 with a pull-up resister in pin 19 of the '688 socket, which should also turn it into a 32K card... asserting that the crubase is never matched. But that made no change. So I started swapping other chips. Presently, it is passing my memory test with the GAL16V8 replacing the 74LS688, and all the 74HCT244's replaced.

It is a tale of Christmas... sort of. When Texas Instruments decided to orphan everyone, I was still 10 years old. I wasn't really a part of the immediate story. I have memory of the thing being revealed to myself and my 3 siblings at Christmas 1983. But, being the youngest, I was last in line to be able to try it. I have distinct memories of my brother trying to figure out Adventure, and how to load the tape. But there is a story before that has been shared with me several times. When TI dropped the price, and announced they were leaving the business, my mother worked at the local JCPenny's department store. The story my Father tells, is that when she found out the computer would be extremely cheap after $50 and her employee discount, she called to check if she should buy one or not. They had already been talking about getting a home computer, largely because my older brother was headed down the wrong road in life, and his best influence was a friend that talked about his Commodore quite a bit. He even lent it to my brother for a weekend once to show off to my father, to help try and convince him to get one. So, my mother knew they wanted something and this was a good deal. My father knew support from TI was going away. So he told my mother "If you bring that computer home, I'm going right back to the store, and buying all the accessories". So what was unveiled that Christmas was the console, expansion box, with 32k, SSSD floppy, a generic brand cassette recorder, dozens of cartridges, cassette tapes, books... basically everything anyone would need to get completely engrossed in the system. The rest of that Christmas holiday, my siblings fiddled with it... if I was lucky my brother would invite me to try a game after he got it working. I mostly sat at the Atari 2600 playing asteroids and combat. My father was organized. So you plug a cartridge in, but if you aren't my father, you have no idea that there is a manual for the cartridge as it would be on the other side of the room in a bookshelf or something. The computer didn't succeed in distracting my brother from drugs, girls, and drugs. So it became an appliance. My oldest sister would use it for school work, TI-Writer, figuring out how to 'bold' something... mostly just papers. My father would use it for Multiplan, and dabbled at other things. But I didn't really notice until a summer of '84. My siblings were all teenagers at this stage, mostly responding to their hormones. Now it's my turn... I was alone that summer. My best friend was spending the summer in eastern Washington at his Uncle's farm. So I had a lot of time on my hands. My gifts that Christmas '83 was a collection of Kenner Star Wars action figures, speeder-bikes. So, after starting the summer of '84 making (what I remember as 100, but no way did I have patience for that.. maybe 10) cardboard TIE-Fighters, I started poking around that computer desk. I was completely un-supervised. Part of me probably thought I'd get in trouble for touching the computer. But... I found books for kids, that taught programming in TI-BASIC. One of the books said something like "you can't break it, just turn it off and back on", this was a permission slip. I worked through the paper exercises on math in binary and hex. I learned how to use the CALL SOUND, and so I'd take the church hymns and program in the sheet music. I showed that to my mother. I mostly used it during the day while my father was at work. Eventually I tried typing in a program from a magazine ( cause he ordered all the back issues of all the magazines he could too ) and really got stuck. Finally I explained that to him after about a week of trying to figure out what I typed in wrong. And boy did he have a laugh. The computer desk had a locked cabinet. He showed me where the key was, dangling in the other cabinet under the desk, and what looked like hundreds of disks. He digs up the companion disk for the specific magazine, and loads up the working version of the game I tried to type in. The rest of the summer was exploring all those disks. Now I knew something about the computer, and one of my friends older brother had a TI also... and we both wanted to learn more programming. My father started taking us to the user's group. And I started hanging out with a mentor. Transformers were a popular toy at the time, so we decided we'd learn how and write a Transformers database. Programmed in the Decepticon and Autobot insignias, and created an XB program that had all the stats on each robot we could get. We'd bicycle down to the store with notepads, and write down all the info on the back of the product boxes, and then back to computer to put them in. You enter a name and it would bring up the screen with that robot's team insignia, and the stats. Somewhere right around there, I found some stuff in the storage closet. Not only had my father gone back to JCPenny's and bought all the expansions, he picked up a spare of the main computer. I set it up in front of the family TV, and when my father came home, there was some begging. "What is that doing out?" he said... I asked astounded, "why is it just sitting in the closet?"... some story about being a backup for the investment he had made in accessories.. After some effort, my mother donated her kitchen 11" black-n-white TV (she received a color upgrade recently through a JCPenny employee Christmas employee family shopping night door prize), and cassette player, and I was allowed to set up the spare in my room. I'm pretty sure I didn't go outside summer of '85 unless forced to. I'd find my neighborhood friends, and then get bored, and go back in to work on the computer. Every year, I'd seem to find a new friend that had a TI, and we'd try and do some project. Tried planning out an Adventure for the Adventure editor in middle school. Building out my own system was pretty much all that mattered for quite a while. Birthdays and Christmas became negotiations, if I can come up with half, or whatever of the money for this or that, will you get me an expansion box? or better/more floppies. I eventually negotiated my way every 6 months into a system with 3 floppy drives, a Corcomp controller, peb, 32k, Mechatronics Gram Karte... Eventually that color TV my mother won, became my monitor. I started taking a keyboarding(typing) class in high school.. ( instead of biology ) so my father got me a kit version of the Rave99 keyboard adapter. He taught me how to solder, and left me too it. My father picked up a Geneve. We each had our killer TI setups, and would shout through the wall between his office and my bedroom as we were usually up too late learning something. Most school nights, my mother wouldn't tell me to go to bed, she'd shout something like "That kid needs to go to bed!" as instruction to my father. My father kept the 4A user's group alive through my community college days. But shortly after I moved off to university, it folded. I'm pretty sure my father orchestrated the club surviving years passed due in order to feed my interest. If you dig around whtech newsletter archives you can find my parent's current address listed with the contact points for other user-groups. So we lost contact with the TI community around 1992. We probably didn't have good contact with other 4A user groups at that stage. The internet had made it to my community college. I found a PC TI Emulator around then on an FTP server in Australia ( that's what I recall ) I remember seeing it one minute on some other ftp site, and then it disappearing. I traced through the mirror information to get eventually get to that Australia's server, and download the emulator. I think it wasn't supposed to be released, and was being removed. I don't remember what it was called, but that was my first exposure to the idea of emulating an old computer. I finished up college, relocated, our TI gear stayed behind and went in my father's attic. My father had finally gotten a PC for himself when the internet became a household thing. The gear all eventually got donated to a small private school. Every so often after that, I'd search the internet for some sign of TI life... but people seem to be well hidden from mainstream search tools. I remember the PSOne emulation on the Dreamcast triggering another weekend of searching, and wondering what if... I think EBay was around or just budding, but there wasn't old TI stuff there to be had... So my TI days remained paused until 2015, and I stubbled on Shift838's newletters. They pointed here to Atariage. And I've been pestering you guys ever since.

It is a 2016 pcb from Jim, but assembled by myself. I also have a 256k AMS that had failed before I bought it in 2015. All the chips on that have been swapped or tested, but that uncovered nothing. The impatient child in me, thinks he can program a gal to replace the comparator, while he waits for USPS.

I was just saying, I don't see an error... I think you indicated that encountering a file after encountering a directory causes an error... but I list things fine in a mixed type order... I am open to splitting it.. If that was the convention. Making it something that can be turned off appeals to me. But we have to clarify... If files come after directories, you get an error with legacy software...? Legacy controllers HFDC and SCSI list directories after all the files? But you'd like the directories listed first, before the files?

Maybe interestingly... My SAMS decided to hate me yesterday, for cheating on it with my sideport 32k... Now it just won't stay off the databus... However, if I pull the '688 chip out, the mapper can't be activated, and it behaves like a healthy 32K card. I think, this indicates the '688 is faulty. That or the recipient of the comparator output.

Ah, K is just the max record length for record based file types. Hmm... This just still works for me... Made the adjustment to line 300, which looks like padding for right justification of the record length. 100 CALL CLEAR 110 DIM TYPE$(6) 120 TYPE$(1)="DIS/FIX" 130 TYPE$(2)="DIS/VAR" 140 TYPE$(3)="INT/FIX" 150 TYPE$(4)="INT/VAR" 160 TYPE$(5)="PROGRAM" 165 TYPE$(6)="<DIR> " 210 OPEN #1:"TIPI.",INPUT ,RELATIVE,INTERNAL 220 INPUT #1:A$,J,J,K 230 DISPLAY "TIP1";" - DISKNAME = ";A$:"AVAILABLE = ";K;"USED = ";J-K 240 DISPLAY :"FILENAME SIZE TYPE P":"---------------------------" 250 FOR LOOP=1 TO 127 260 INPUT #1:A$,A,J,K 270 IF LEN(A$)=0 THEN 350 280 DISPLAY :A$;TAB(12);J;TAB(17);TYPE$(ABS(A)); 290 IF ABS(A)=6 THEN 320 300 B$=" "&STR$(K) 310 DISPLAY SEG$(B$,LEN(B$)-2,3); 320 IF A>0 THEN 340 330 DISPLAY TAB(28);"Y"; 340 NEXT LOOP 350 CLOSE #1 Maybe it is specific to the file that you have following the directory... if you ssh to linux, and go into the tipi_disk folder, and then ls -l you should see them in the same order TIPI will present.

My real system is down for the count right now... The SAMS card failed yesterday - hopefully the same issue can be reproduced under the emulation... but so far, files after directories is not a problem...

@Beery, IDK, your catalog program errors for me after the first file... What is the expected value of K on line 300?

Was this normal that directories were only listed at the end by _all_ devices that support directories? ( I agree it should be irrelevant. )

Yes, DIR not erroring is something I just haven't gotten around to fixing. This error is not limited to floppy controllers.

Thanks for the TIP... I knew 9918 was a little wrong if PAL, but wasn't confident I could assert the 9929A. Then there is the NTSC 9928A, ( I think, and I don't believe that is detectable.. or matters, custom one-off mods ) 9938 and 9958 can be switched PAL or NTSC, but the chip is detectable directly. --- I'd like to get to '>' output redirect, probably not ever going to get to '|' pipe or '<' stdin in redirection. But I'd prefer to have a tiny embedded editor, and solve that problem in a better than minimal way.

so, I'm more of a defaults kind of user... or the defaults are what I use.. LOL.. so when I switched the script file closing to be only approved commands, any variable assignment fell into the unapproved commands... ( they don't have well known names, since users can set their own for their own purposes. ) Anyway, setting variables still closes the script... I'll try to prevent that in a later update. But now it resumes properly. Note: because it closes the script, and then to resume has to sequentially read from the beginning of the file to the next line, setting environment variables will be most efficient if they are up front (for now)

@wolhess, @dgrissom, @Vorticon Update 1.12 - fixes this mess.

Looks like I totally broke scripting... part compiler not behaving like I expect, and part me missing an increment command. We'll see. 1.11 is a dud.