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peterfleeman

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Posts posted by peterfleeman

  1. Actually, that box looks like a perfectly standard EGROM box. I have two different variants of it, along with the cabling and the cartridge boards (also two different variants). The box has a console power supply in it in the lower section and a circuit card on top that has 10 sockets for TMS2532 chips (two per GROM). These were later replaced by the GSIM boxes (pizza-box GRAM simulator) or the CEC9914 boxes (a box with space for EPROMs to simulate multiple cartridges simultaneously and generally used for demonstrations of the TI's capabilities). I have both of these types of GROM simulator as well.

     

    I found a picture of an example EGROM box here:

    https://aug.99er.net/images/Unreleased/EGROMbox.JPG

     

    And here's the GSIM (I think):

    https://aug.99er.net/images/Unreleased/ROMSIM.JPG

     

    I have an EGROM very similar to this, but it is a raw board without a box or power supply. I'll take a picture of mine and post it as soon as I can. I would love to see more of the GSIM boxes!

    • Like 2
  2. This is actually one of my favorite books. It’s a nice introduction to assembly in general. I have had about 5 copies of the soft cover over the years, but only one hard cover. If I were selling it, I would probably try to charge $20. I sold the extra soft covers for $10. Just sold one a couple days ago, actually. Does your hard cover copy have a dust jacket? Mine has a very plain white cover, so I have always assumed it is missing a jacket.

  3. I don't remember where I've found the document, so here is a link to my hosting space : www.ti99.com/misc/Myarc512K-MODIF.pdf

     

    Thanks Fabrice! I read through most of the instructions, and I am confident I can handle it. The instructions are very thorough! I think I will go ahead and attempt it with the extra card that I have. If all goes well, I would happily trade it for your unmodified card, Beery. This way, between Ksarul or myself, you should be all set in a month or so.

    • Like 1
  4. Well, I wouldn’t want to make any promises, but i have Marc Hull’s already modified card as an example. And I have an unmodified card to experiment on. I will study the instructions and see if anything in there scares me off. I don’t claim to have tons of skill or experience, but I have some. And I’m loaded with patience. The trouble with me is time. I’m traveling for work until Friday. Then it’s just a couple weeks until traveling again for the holidays. So it might be a month before I get the job done. But if you’re ok with all that, I’m happy to try!

    • Like 3
  5. Hey there. That Xeno battery is definitely perfectly fine for an HRD 2000. I have worked with 4 or 5 of them with exactly that. It doesn't mean that yours isn't the problem, since it might be old and need replaced.

    I think it boils down to the 8K memory chip which stores the ROS is failing. Which could either be due to the battery not providing the right power, or because the chip itself has gone bad. In my experience, I always need to replace the chip.

     

    It's good practice to replace the battery as well if you don't know how old it is, but you have to be careful. It's true that the lithium battery is not rechargeable. But it is designed to have a 10 year life span. You can't swap it out with a rechargeable battery because the card itself would need different resistors installed to provide the extra voltage from the PEB for recharging. If you put a normal rechargeable in, it will die quickly, and you might suppose it's not the battery's fault since it's new.

     

    In the reverse case, if you put a regular battery in an HRD configured for a rechargeable, you'll likely overheat the regular battery and cause an acid leak.

     

    In the HRD 2000 manual, there is discussion of recovering from your blank screen issue by turning on the console with E/A inserted, followed by turning on the PEB box. So you skip interference from the corrupted HRD. Then you can apparently run the configuration tool and you will still be able to re-install the ROS without pulling your chip or battery out. It might be an interesting experiment to see if the contents of the ramdisk are preserved, despite the ROS going bad. It's not definitive, but it would suggest that the problem is with the chip over the battery.

    • Like 2
  6. I made it clear I want a discount for his negligent packaging for a 30 year-old item which is now in an unknown disposition or I want to return it exactly as I received it.

     

    Sooooooo angry.

     

    A tragic waste! Unfortunately I won't know how my CorComp board fared until Saturday when I get home from a work trip. I received a TI disk controller once with the card edge connector cracked right off. The internal connector worked fine, though.

  7. I understand they are trying to use that screen to suggest alternative items. But it's funny that it always shows me items absolutely unrelated to whatever I was looking for.

     

    Years ago when they let you search much deeper through historical listings, it was a sort of accidental resource for pictures of even the most obscure components. You could learn a lot. Now you can only go back a couple weeks. I guess that was a waste of bandwidth for them. I hope it is all archived somewhere and will one day come back, perhaps without bidder and money info, but maintaining the pictures and descriptions.

    • Like 1
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