jbdigriz

Board pics and rom dumps now on bitsavers.org http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/technico/TEC-9900-SS/ Thanks Al!

As this question came up on another venue recently, I meant to post this link earlier but somehow got distracted, so you've probably already run across Dave Pitts' modified gcc-3.4.6 than compiles to a TI 990 or TMS9900 target: https://www.cozx.com/dpitts/tigccinst.html You'll also find there his 990/9900 cross-assembler, linker, and libc, and I believe you'll find they apply to the 99105 as well as the 99110A and /12. HTH, jbdigriz

Seller has a (WIP) page documenting the systems these are used in. Suprisingly enough, while they're being phased out and decommissioned by next year, there are some of these DNOS systems still in actual production use. http://rknorman.co.uk/DART and TI990 Documents.html jbdigriz

That is essentially my recollection as well although I recall more of an emphasis in the 4A community on moral suasion rather than strict licensing terms, which in the case of shareware in general led to registration requirements, license keys, trialware, crippleware, etc. Apparently someone out there is attempting some kind of treatise on the history of *ware. Thanks for the input!

This came up in another venue: >Question from a friend: >[9:31 PM] > I appear to have run across the term 'fairware' in my travels. I haven't previously heard this term before. It appears to be yet another form of shareware that was current in the early >1980s. As far as I can tell it seems to occur only among TI-99 users. Have any of you heard this term before? If so, can you recall it being used by any other than TI-99 users? I answered best I could, but wondered if there is a canonical accepted definition. Input appreciated, jbdigriz

Operative word being "complaints". One wonders if it had any actual effect on the activity. Could have made it worse. No way to tell, really. Ebay bidding policies: How to sow discord, anxiety, and jealousy, engage paranoia, confound collaboration, fracture communities, inflate prices on dismembered machines, blackhole history yet claim credit for salvaging it, thwart archival and emulation progress, and squander long-term markets, all in one fell swoop. Syllabus listing, Entropy 101 Used to be Ebay let you use your email for your ID. They stopped that because of "bidder collusion", side deals, and "depriving Ebay of fees". Instead of doing the sensible thing and incorporating a broker's/finder's non-refundable fee or deposit into the billing for the listings, they broke a useful feature and pretended to sellers and buyers that they were helping them. Hey, it's for business. Nobody ever said it had to make sense.

Ebay's enlightened, consumer-friendly bidder masking at work. Honestly, I'm going to start using forum marketplaces and such more, and get cracking on my blog like I should have long ago. Need to do that anyway.

Just think, if it WAS someone here, or anywhere else, and they posted a copy here, or on whtech or some other repository, they might, just possibly, get a few people to help out with what seems to be a rather extravagant expense. Of course, that might impinge on the ability of the selfless and noble Ebay seller to garner bids on his new listing of another copy of the emulator. So, no, by all means, don't do that! Please!

OK, I think I'm getting how it worked now, to have a 911 mode it would have to go through a terminal/channel controller on the other end of the line, probably RTS installed on the 990. Had to put my thinking cap on for a minute. You can see I was coming at it with my second option above. BTW, this is similar to other minis and mainframes of the day. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Thanks, jbdigriz

Furthermore, I'm wondering how there wouldn't have been additional hardware needed to interface the emulation. The 911 VDT is kind of a strange duck. It is almost purely a CRT display, plus an attached keyboard. Most of the circuitry is purely analog. The encoded keyboard output is serialized by a UART in the VDT and passed on to a controller board in the host 990. The VDT controller generates a composite video signal displayed by the CRT, and the audio as well. The 911 itself performs none of the terminal logic or display generation functions. The most obvious 4A implementation would be a small interface on the expansion bus. You could keep it simple by using the PEB or standalone RS232's UARTs. All you'd need then would be an interface for video and modem audio signals. There are also audio oscillator and terminal ready lines. You'd need some custom cabling, of course. The block diagram on pp. 1-25/1-26 of the 911 VDT Depot Maintenance Manual shows this maybe a little better. I'd post it here but it's a 2M+ jpeg and very slow to load, so I'll just give the link to the whole manual: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/terminal/crt/945424-9701_911_Terminal_Depot_Maintenance_Manual_Feb79.pdf Possibly you could fake this with a purely serial interface and use the 4A's capabilities to generate the screen and sound, but that would take modifying the 911 DSR's on the 990, rather heavily. Add a software emulation passthrough layer in place of the VDT controller board, and redirect to a serial port, basically. Not too appealing if you ask me, feels like a kluge, but doable. Not hard to figure out why TI would have kept this "internal", though. Probably netted a lot more for a 911 than a 4A. 🙂 But if I'm right, there should be some hardware to go with this software. Now that I think about it, you might be able to talk the Video Controller interface into thinking it was talking to a VCR instead of a 990. Have to look into that. I dunno, gotta be something, though.

Not I. Real 911 here. No 820 yet. It's interesting to speculate what 911 terminal emulation looks like on a 4A, though. And the keyboard layout.

Semi-OT but from the same seller from the same haul of Wilson's stuff: https://www.ebay.com/itm/VTG-3-Toshiba-TC571001D-EPROM-Chip-Integrated-Texas-Instruments-CB-Wilson-Estate/193901363127?hash=item2d256bffb7:g:uysAAOSw6phgLwTU Any guesses what's on these 1M EPROMS from '88?

Um, I was just explaining my vote. No need for a recording, here. I would assume significant developments would show up here in due course. I'm not totally averse to live presentations and conferencing, either. YT is tolerable for example. I just don't zoom. Don't expect anyone to make any accomodation for it, though. HOME AUTOMATION, I was refering to serial port bridging (to telnet, in this case) with the MAME 9640 emulator, if that was the area of your confusion. The VICE emulator of course is for a non-TI machine, but the -v switch in tcpser works with the geneve emulation as well. Cheers, jbdigriz

Sorry, I just don't ZOOM. Don't post on FB or twitter, either. I do some Discords. With reservations. Not real happy with AA because it's scraped by search engines and I make too many typos. 🙂 I've got MAME 9640 emulation working on Fedora half-a** with tcpser (FOZZTEXX fork) using that prog's VICE switch. No hardware flow control for file transfers, as of yet, tho. When I get that done I plan to put a 9640 BBS up. Is 9640News down? I'm using 9640news.ddns.net but it doesn't resolve.

But again, DO NOT mix VPU and TM990 hardware!!! In either chassis. Do not put VPU boards in a TM990 or vice versa. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! Some TM990 software should work on a VPU with some hacking, though. Basic, Forth, assemblers, etc.