Sinphaltimus

February 14, 2022

On 2/10/2022 at 9:50 AM, acadiel said:

Yep, it's what I originally used to transfer all my Adventure and TOD cassette games (as well as the protected ones) to disk from cassette BITD!

Well, I nver go around to it this weekend. I think it's going to be on hold until I get my basement work completed. But I'll report back once done.

February 10, 2022

On 2/5/2022 at 12:42 PM, acadiel said:

Hey, can you try dumping the last cassette program (speech editor) with DiskIt?

Sure. I'll give it a go this weekend. Thanks for letting me know about DiskIt. Sounds like a very useful program.

January 13, 2022

31 minutes ago, Igor said:

Keep an eye on those, if they haven't leaked yet, the chances of them leaking increases every year. It's about a 30-60min job to replace them if you have the right equipment (good soldering iron with a nice tip - I prefer to use a K type tip, the one that looks like a knife, and some 3mm de-solder braid).

I've published an interactive capacitor map here - https://atarigamer.com/pages/atari-lynx-capacitor-maps

Wow, this capacitor map is great. I will take your advice to heart and get the caps replaced by the end of the year. Yes, I'm pretty comfortable soldering. I have a decent kit for a life long hobbyist. I do have a newer kit on my list of things to upgrade this year.

Thank you Igor. From the Mod to the instructions and capacitor map, this is fantastic and so are you.

January 12, 2022

4 hours ago, 9640News said:

I followed the wiki at tipipeb installation · jedimatt42/tipi Wiki (github.com) when I last did anything, and that was with a 128 gb card. That was over a year ago, and everything worked back then. As I think he said, he had a new image, so don't know if something could have changed in the iterim.

My experience with re-using SD-cards has yielded a common practice for me. This is not specific to TIPI but I have ran into weird issues re-using imaged SD cards.

What I've found to eliminate these kinds of issues?

in Windows I run DISKPART from an administrative command prompt and do a clean function on the SD card. After that I image and the weirdness is gone. Thi is true for Amiga images, TiPi images and pi Images in general (I have 3 Pi 3b+ and one Pi 400. All of my "anomolies" went away as soon as I put diskpart cleaning into my process.

I hope it helps you. No harm in the practice.

January 12, 2022

On 1/11/2022 at 7:03 AM, Igor said:

Awesome! Glad you had a great experience, did you get the ribbon version or the soldered version?

Ribbon. I also verified my mainboard revision before ordering so i was happy to get the standard kit.

I also purchased the parts kit that comes with replacement capacitors. I don't need to replace any now but i thought it a good idea to keep the kit on hand.

January 11, 2022

It took a bit of time to get here but I just finished this mod a few days ago. It's great. Thank you much. Yes, I went through AtariGamer.com. *****5 Stars thru and thru.

December 8, 2021

On 12/5/2021 at 8:34 AM, dhe said:

If I get this thread, you can just use regular voltage regulator and they will work fine, if they have heat sinks?

I don't know. I was told that the clam shell case itself is the heat sink and i don't know that there is much room left to use an additional one. I just installed a couple of fans to draw the heat out ASAP and the operating temps are very good.

December 5, 2021

Musick I made. Visuals by MilkDrop via WinAmp.

December 5, 2021

I went PC power supply and never touched the vregs. My concern was cooling. I put temp sensors to watch and recently added a second PC fan. That's the abridged version. If interested, here is the rest of the story... The reason for the switch in PSU was due to how many cards and Disk drives. One is a GoTek, another is a 3.5" and the external is a 5 1/4". So there were concerns about the original PSU not being sufficient.

November 27, 2021

1 hour ago, jedimatt42 said:

CALL TIPI doesn't interact with the cart port address space. So if you end up running code there (the garbled fg99 menu) then the TIPICFG program was garbled during the load or after the load due to memory or bus issues, and running the corrupted code causes the crash.

So try to eliminate whatever you can, and make sure things are well powered. The side port sam's needs it's power. Maybe remove the fg99, then the crashes will be more likely to crash out to title screen. Then remove the speech synth...

Double check good connection on the TIPI to PI wiring.

Clean edge connections on the side port bus.

Will do tomorrow and report back when done with all of those steps.

November 27, 2021

Need some help.

I hosed my sdcard so I imaged it with the latest version (tipi-sdimage-buster-2.28).

I expanded the partition.

I change the default tipi password.

Upon first boot.

I select 1. for TI BASIC

Type CALL TIPI and hit enter.

I get a garbled FinalGrom99 open menu screen.

EDIT: Connections - TI-SpechSynth-SideCartSAMS-TIPi

?? Where do I go from here?

Any TI + CRT users here? · November 26, 2021

Here's a few for ya..

November 9, 2021

15 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

@Sinphaltimus Is that the new one which was selling in Target? If so, I hope you will not be disappointed. The speech is all new and does not sound like the original at all. I bought one for the grandkid, but wound up giving it to Goodwill. I have picked up a handful of each of the "Speak &" devices with some modules, enough to build one good unit of each for Christmas. The prices on those are also relatively reasonable.

I'm not sure. The photo seems to be a little different than the original I recall. I'll compare against some other pics after a quick google...

I think you're right. I don't see a TI logo on it and Brand is listed as BASIC FUN. My mistake. I'll have to wait a couple weeks before I go and gerab a real one (about the same price) if it's in working condition.

November 9, 2021

Can you post a picture of the catalog on the disk you transferred the hfe image to?

This way we can see what kinds of files are on it and possibly tell you how to load and run one of the programs.

November 9, 2021

I had one of these as a kid. I searched years ago for one and the few I found were pretty expensive. On a whim, I searched today and wow they are reasonable.

There are several still listed from various sellers all around the $30 range including shipping.

I don't know why I had to have it, but I did.

I just got this one. That's price with shipping listed as "in good working condition" *used*.

Order total: $26.01 (Yes, shipping included)

Basic Fun Speak & Spell Electronic Game

You should get it by 22 Nov.

November 7, 2021

On 11/4/2021 at 1:01 PM, dabone said:

I've gotten my hands on a PEB with 32k and Disk controller + 2 drives installed, but I have NO idea how to use a disk drive on a TI.

I have a Flashrom99, and I've tested the drives with drivemanager 3, and I can write images to the disks using my greaseweazle.

But how do I load anything? Is there a tutorial on getting started with disks for the TI?

Thanks.

"I can write images to the disks using my greaseweazle."

Can you tell what format you are writing to?

I think you'll get the most out of Double Sided Single Density at 40 Tracks.

There is an 80 Track mod depending on what kind of floppy drive you have and success will depend on what kind of floppy Disk you are using.

October 26, 2021

I put two Quiet fans in mi my heavily modded PEB. One on the ATX power supply I installed and another in the middle between cards. As for disassembly, the response from arcadeshopper nails it.

October 23, 2021

EDIT: Nope, looking at ArcadeShopper.com seems this is a custom TIPI+32k on the pcb.

I just now stumbled upon this after being AFF for a while. Too many pages to read through everything. ~~So I have one, maybe two questions.~~

~~1. Is the 32k expansion fitted inside a standard model without modifications?~~

~~2. If yes, then couldn't one not just remvoe it and replace with the SAMS side port?~~

Either way, I'm hot for one of these now. I reserved my nanoPEB for the portability, this may just put my nanoPEB to bed for good.

October 22, 2021

1 hour ago, Tursi said:

So it's a PC99/track format disk image.

The debug log says:

No DSK marker, assuming PC99 track-based image...
Can't find PC99 start of sector indicator - corrupt dsk?
Can't read sector 0 on D:\new\ENLARGER.DSK.

So it detected that much correctly (although it was really guessing). That message comes up when it can't find the 0xfe byte that indicates start of sector. The byte appears to be there. I don't have many PC99 images to test from, but the ones I have also fail.

Had to dig into the code... I had a bug where it was loading the sector into a signed char, then searching for 0xfe. While technically wrong (0xfe doesn't fit into a signed char), that used to work. The new compiler appears not to do that as expected. Changing the buffer to unsigned char, like it should have been anyway, fixed PC99 disks. So no PC99 disks were working for anyone since whenever that changed.

I'll publish a new version with the fix in a few days.

Wow. I never suspected it being an issue with c99. I don't expect every emulator to support everything. I don't really use any others besides c99 except when running my retro pie. However, recently (my TI printer shenanigans) I found using Win994a to work with the print-ti994a printer emulator. it worked for testing prints before taking them to real iron but I could not figure it out in c99. I'm glad to have posted my question then. I'm humbled by your (and others here) expertise and skillsets. Who am I to inadvertently discover a bug? Glad to help make the improvement. Even if by accident.

EDIT: I guess what I mean is, I typically think I'm doing something wrong and not that it's the program.

October 21, 2021

7 minutes ago, Tursi said:

DO NOT DO THIS. You are likely to corrupt the file. Despite documentation I saw twenty years ago that says some V9T9 disk images were like that, I've never come across one. This option will be going away.

If you have a file Classic99 can't open, send it to me. Classic99 is not a dead product with no support. If it's not something I need to fix, thus improving the experience for everyone, then I can at least tell you why.

I've never used this until today to troubleshoot. But thanks for the heads up, I will never use that option again.

One of the DSK files I was having trouble with are attached. They came from whtech in some user group PC99 folder. I'm guessing pc99 files are different somehow.

EDIT: I wasn't blaming c99 because at least c99 was throwing disk i/o errors. Which pointed to an issue with the dsk file itself.

ENLARGER.DSK

October 21, 2021

1 minute ago, HOME AUTOMATION said:

I believe "Auto-load" is only an XB function.

Yeah, I was using XB but my issue actually came down to something about the DSK image format. I just edited my initial question with an update.

"edit: NEVERMIND - Not sure what the differences are between dsk files but I am finding some that do not work in c99 (even if I check the V9T9 Reverse option). My fix? Create a new dsk image using TIDIR and copy files from non-working dsk to new dsk and POOF - Load works as expected. I figured this out because to spite TIDIR being able to open the files, I could not index them in classic99. I'm guessing they were made for a specific emulator or something that TIDIR supports."

October 21, 2021

edit: NEVERMIND - Not sure what the differences are between dsk files but I am finding some that do not work in c99 (even if I check the V9T9 Reverse option). My fix? Create a new dsk image using TIDIR and copy files from non-working dsk to new dsk and POOF - Load works as expected. I figured this out because to spite TIDIR being able to open the files, I could not index them in classic99. I'm guessing they were made for a specific emulator or something that TIDIR supports.

Back to some disk I/O questions.

I was under the impression that a disk with a file on it called "load" would automatically load the main program on it. So far I've come across two disks that do not. So my assumption must be incorrect.

So my next question is, what's the difference between disks that actually do load straight into their program and disks that do not when "load" is listed in the cataloging?

I guess more to the point, how can I tell the difference ist my looking at the disk listings?

October 17, 2021

7 hours ago, Asmusr said:

Good that you solved it. I don't know what you did, but I was able to import the attached image as a map image and export a working XB program in just a few minutes.

I wish I knew each step and setting path you took. For me, to spite looking right on the screen, some of the Character sets would be inverted. Where the background color would be inverted with the foreground color. All kinds of weird little things. I have installed the latest version.

October 17, 2021

3 hours ago, Sinphaltimus said:

OK, one more issue I am having. This is only happening on this particular project.

BOBLM.TXT 3.68 kB · 2 downloads bOb_Largest_multi.mag 83.88 kB · 2 downloads

I think I know what's wrong, going to take some time to fix and test. i'll edit this when I know for sure...

EDIT:

Ok. Yes, I did hose those last two files but that wasn't the cause of the main issue.

To spite the padding, loading as map image continued to assign character codes below 32.

I have to copy the codes to available spots above 32 and then manually stamp them in place of the bad codes <32.

I also had to alter the code. For whatever reason, using transparency for character colors and the call screen caused a full black screen. This was from the Magellan code.

I replace transparency with cyan across the board.

And most importantly, I exported as xb. Basic produced illegal characters in the print statementd.

It took a long while statements. But I finally delivered on my goal.

October 17, 2021

OK, one more issue I am having. This is only happening on this particular project. When I export to basic program, I cannot open it in classic 99. I also cannot open it in a text editor and when I use TI99DIR to copy to dsk, I convert to PROGRAM and it gets errors loading. I also cannot paste the text into Classic 99 as it throws errors on the same print statements.

There are pretty wierd characters in some of the print statements. The Quotes go missing etc...

Example:

1140 PRINT
1150
1160
1170
1180
1190 PRINT "BCDEFG@ABCDEFG@ABCDEFG@ABCDE IJKLMNHIJKLMNHIJKLMNHIJKL"
1200 PRINT " #$%&! #$%&! #$%&! #$%QRSTUOPQRSTUOPQRSTUOPQRST)*+,'()*+,'()*+,'()*+,"

I'll attach the txt that comes out of Magellan as well as the map project.

Any ideas why this is happening to this project?

BOBLM.TXT bOb_Largest_multi.mag