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jedimatt42

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Posts posted by jedimatt42

  2. Posted

    I'm used to starting with WinCUPL... 

     

    I managed to desolder one of the TI chips from the board... man those are tight against the PCB... resorted to hot air after the de-soldering tool wasn't good enough... Sadly I only have one socket on hand... but I did find a stock pile of ATF16V8...  :)  

     

    JED2EQN sounds interesting... gonna have to take a look at that. ( except you need a retro computer to run it )

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    Have the people saying 'yes' actually looked at the cost and effort of building one of these? The PCB is the cheap part.

     

    and effort.. 3d printed parts, paint, finishing. if you don't have a 3d printer, people charge a ton to do that for you cause it is amazingly fiddly... can fail 90% through a 2 day print. 

     

    finding appropriate key-caps, time for relabeling key-caps cause you can't find appropriate ones.  cost of the key-caps, switches... 

     

    And then the part where there is almost no reason to use more than a handful of keys on the keyboard...  

     

    Just saying, as this thread is extremely light on substance. 

     

    But... if you are Tomy Tutoring, you have disposable income. So.. whatever... 

     

    Some substance... at JCLPCB.com, I paid about $25 dollars for a set of 5 pcbs. And about $30 to ship them DHL.  It is basically the same price for a reorder of 10 pcbs. 

     

    The manufacturing details: 

    Gerber file: TutorKeyboard_Y2

Build Time: 2-3 days
Layers: 2
Dimension: 297 mm* 127 mm
PCB Qty: 5
Different Design: 1
Delivery Fomat: Single PCB
PCB Thickness: 1.6
Impedance:
PCB Color: Green
Surface Finish: HASL(with lead)
Copper Weight: 1
Gold Fingers: No

    ( Yep, with lead. You can pay more to be poison free ) 

  4. Posted

    3 hours ago, Omega-TI said:

    ...  I recorded the first two at 1920 X 1080 and then decided to take a break.  I've been sick as a dog for the past few days so gotta go lay down for a while.

     

    When you feel better, the direct link posted at the top of this thread has the entire video, so no need to record them. You can select to play the live chat back as well.

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    5 hours ago, mizapf said:

    @jedimatt42: What happens on the 4A when you say the screen is turned off? Does it become empty (with some color) or black? Could it be that the 9918 mistakes register 15 as register 7 (ignoring the leftmost bit) so your writing of 00 gets loaded into register 7?

     

    Yep, it goes black, so reading the datasheet, that is most likely what happened.   I didn't explore this morning :)  

    In Force Command, I have a color command... so I can just type COLOR 15 and all my text becomes white again :)

     

    All as designed... my intention is to use before the screen is setup, so everything will be healed and the VDP type will be held. 

  7. Posted

    4 hours ago, BeeryMiller said:

     

     

    Implementing 80 column text mode would be great!!! 

     

    Who knows, you may want to add 80 column text to your telnet client as well <wink>. On the MDOS side of things, ANSI color has been implemented with PORT and MyTERM as I am sure you are aware.  Color was implemented, however it was done using the MDOS Video XOP calls in graphics mode 6.  If you can pull off color mode on a 9938, I suspect that would be some significant code.  It could probably be done as the MDOS Video XOP source is all out there to minimize some coding, but incorporating it into a FinalGrom configuration would be a major undertaking.  As it is, people calling ANSI BBS's with telnet clients are very few and doubtful the effort justify the time and effort.

     

    Beery

     

    My plan is to rewrite my TELNET as an extension of Force Command. 

    Existing TELNET client will stand as is, as delivered with TIPI - it isn't for BBS'ing, it is for TIPI management. 

     

    I'm totally unaware of MyTERM and PORT. I'm not a BBS'er, so I haven't explored terminal emulators that exist on 4A and 4A adjacent platforms. 

     

    I'd be more interested in supporting the color attributes for programs I write as extensions of ForceCommand.   Force Command's API supports sending ANSI codes to the display, but presently, color is ignored for 40x24 mode, and the F18A is utilized for 80x30 mode. 

     

    I managed to get mame setup as a EVPC 4A. So I can test... but I can't read a status register to save my life... (spoiler, I figured it out by explaining it to you all) I have C code that reproduces the algorithm @InsaneMultitasker suggested. Worked great. But trying to implement @mizapf suggesting, which I like as it doesn't write, and just seems simpler... But this code, generated from gcc just isn't doing it:

      

    detect_vdp
        ; wrong port number ---  li   r2, >8C00    ; load up VDPWA port
        li   r2, >8C02    ; load up VDPWA port
        li   r4, >48F     ; select status register 0x04
        movb r4, *r2      ; -- push the 0x04 to VDP
        swpb r4
        movb r4, *r2      ; -- push the 0x8F (write to register 15) to VDP
        movb @>8802, r1   ; Read from status register port
        li   r3, >8F      ; select status register 0x00 to restore prior state
        movb r3, *r2      ; -- push 0x00 to VDP
        swpb r3     
        movb r3, *r2      ; -- push write to register 15 to VDP
        srl  r1, 8        ; convert the byte in top of r1 to an int for C.
        b    *r11

     

    On the evpc, I get 0x0084, on the normal 4A I get 0x009F  both in mame.   I'm in 40 column mode already, so there are no sprites.. I would have expected the 4A to return nothing greater than 0x1F. And as was said, the 9938 should have returned 0xFF or 0xFE

    limi 0 is the state of affairs, and garbage ends up on the display.. so I feel like I'm using the wrong port to write to the register... 00ops, yep, that is it... Ok, now I get 0xFE on the EVPC, but on the 4A, I can't read what I get cause the screen gets turned off... Probably not a problem if I detect prior to setting up the screen.

     

    Oh, well... now I'm late for the day job... at least there is no commute. 

     

    Thanks!

     

     

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    44 minutes ago, BeeryMiller said:

    I thought years ago, Jeff White may have written some code to detect the difference between a 9918 and a 9938.  Not sure about detecting a 9958.  @InsaneMultitasker might know if there is a test routine somewhere. 


    Thinking out loud here...... Would testing testing some route for RAM above 16K be a route?  Not sure how the 9938 and the F18A may or may not use/access RAM above 16K if there are any differences.

     

     

    I don't need smooth horizontal scrolling, so I don't need to know 9958 vs 9938... - and I already detect F18A, so just detect for that first... use best mode if detected... then detect Yamaha, use that if detected, or fall back on 9918. 

     

    The yamaha chips will set a status bit if there is a 9th sprite on the same line as 8 others. A 9918 will set that bit at the 5th sprite. Probably have to wait for vertical blank interrupt to know that the VDP has observed the situation.

  11. Posted

    5 hours ago, atrax27407 said:

    Since there are no details about the Faire (which is supposed to be in a couple of days), I must assume that it ISN'T happening. I'll be there for ZOOM in Sunday.

     

    We got these details... recently.

     

    I've changed my mind, and Sunday is back on for the regularly scheduled Zoom from my point of view. 

     

    There is never too much TI time. 

     

     

     

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    4 hours ago, BeeryMiller said:

    Matt,

     

    Quick question.  What video mode(s) will Force Command recognize if a TI-99/4A has a configuration with a 9938 chip such as the EVPC card?

     

    Beery

     

    3 hours ago, dhe said:

    Matt,

     Another quick question, arcadeshopper said this program no longer needs tipi. What's the requirements for a non-tipi, no Finalgrom system?

    Thanks!

     

    |

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                                   v

     

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

    I created a couple issues about this in the github repo... silence... 

     

    The readme is worthless. I'm pretty sure most of what is in there has nothing to do with what is actually available on the MiSTer implementation. 

     

    I enjoy the MiSTer for platforms where my retro hardware isn't as good as the FPGA version... not the case with my 4A. 

     

     

  20. Posted

    surely there exists the keyboard matrix diagram for the tutor, and the keyboard matrix diagram for a coco, and the 2 photos to build a mapping between them. A simple paper exercise should be able to answer the question. 

     

    This is the matrix for the US Tutor: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13M2gNuDQY2LgcgtXt4RwmUT4cyrAZYNVGBDHmFdoqfs/edit?usp=sharing

     

    Idk if the coco matrix varies from machine to machine: coco-keyboard-matrix-after-paint-experim

     

     

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    15 minutes ago, dhe said:

    So there are many different level's of 'build it yourself' difficulty levels.

    There are heathkits that have instructions, all the parts, etc..  you apply solder and check connections and done.

     

    With the keyboard, getting a printed circuit board made - easy (after it's been designed of course!)

    The keys don't looks like standard cherry key/switches that can be ordered.

    The connection from the keyboard to the tomy - is that a standard part, or does something have to be McGiver'ed?

    Then at the end, does the keyboard screw in or clamp in to the same place, and the same way as the original, or does the case need to be modified?

     

     

    Yep, it is subjective. My experience involved learning to design a keyboard matrix pcb, and mapping out the existing - I am resistant to sharing my judgement of ease as most of the retro community thinks what I do is too much work. Follow the link I posted and you can judge for yourself.

  22. Posted

    1 hour ago, dhe said:

    Jeddimatt42,

      Is the keyboard pretty much a drop in replacement - or does it require a lot of work?

    You have to build it. IDK, is that "a lot of work" ?

     

    I know of 1 other person who has built one. And I gave my pcbs away. 

     

    If you just want to throw money at a broken keyboard problem, I saw last week that a vendor in Japan has new mylars for the rubber keyboard. I did not bookmark that so you would have to Google it. 

  24. Posted

    9 hours ago, arcadeshopper said:

    it's likely a filename rule on the linux computer that renamed the file to be "allowed" but the tifiles header shouldn't have changed

     

    ':' is a perfectly legal linux file name character... never seen a linux system rename anything automatically. TIPI will populate the name in the TIFILES header, but never consumes it. 

     

    On 10/16/2020 at 9:12 AM, Keneg said:

    Ok it works and only has to be done once.  Once the file “LT:SC” is in the directory, it will auto load from extended BASIC if the directory is set as DSK1.  Now I just have to figure out how to survive more than 30 seconds.  LOL. I wonder if this was somehow a hidden file on the original disk that doesn’t copy correctly as a form of copy protection.  I think this file should be added to the packages at the sites this can be downloaded from.

    I don't think the DSK on gameshelf should be modified. The game works fine with that disk image, if a regular floppy controller is available. It even works from TIPI if a regular floppy controller is available to error correctly. It comes to a design decision in TIPI that is incompatible with this software's expectations of original hardware. This is the first problem with this decision that the community has reported. 

     

    I could probably set a config flag in TIPI to respond differently for systems that have no other storage devices, but it would have to be manually set. I will keep an eye on the value of that.

    • Like 2
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