9640News

Good news, the DREM is working now with a single 20 MB hard drive image. I tried to add a second hard drive image at 16 heads, 32 sectors per track, and 1024 cylinders and hit what looks to be a buffer issue with the software. Issue reported and the developer, Oleksandr, has been very responsive. (BTW, I thought I would be out of town today. The storms from the hurricane are blowing through the area, and not good to fly in rain...………). So, I am back home. Beery

Thanks for the follow-up. Good to know and understand what is involved. Beery

Ksarul, Things are getting closer. Oleksandr sent me another update and rather than using the WDC format, there is now a new format he has added. I've been able to format, and the first file copied appears to copy fine. Problem is, copying the second file copied in a batch has an error and aborts the process. Real close. About to generate another log file and send to him before I turn in. Beery

But does the driver create a link between the program and the DSR? Or does it interface directly with the hardware? If directly with the hardware, then you are talking about individual drivers for each TI, Myarc, or CorComp peripheral. That is all I was trying to understand in his original notes back in the first message. Beery

Just trying to understand things a bit here. Are your drivers for floppy drive access based upon the DSR code of the device, or have you created something new from scratch and are pretty much just using the ports on the devices? Just curious is all. Beery

Ksarul (and others), The DREM does not presently have a configuration option that works for the TI-99/4A. Last night, Oleksandr and I were sending one another files back and forth. The Western Digital Controller implementation is close to the implementation in the 9234 chip, but not identical. Oleksandr resolved some of the issues, but we are not there yet. Oleksandr was pretty much on the fly adding extra code into BIN file controlling the DREM as each log file was sent his way. I am going to send Oleksandry my HFDC as he already has a TI system but no HFDC for testing. Hopefully, it is anticipated this will expedite the process. Beery

Ksarul, I have submitted a debug file of MDM5 attempting to format a hard drive to Oleksandr at Portaone following some communication I have had with him. He has checked the datasheet for the HDC9234 and it is very close to the WDC, but programmable and may have some minor deviations. He's looking at the debug file now. Hopefully, something to report soon. Beery

Nope, wasn't aware. At the moment, I do not have MAME setup where I could do a build. Another day maybe...….. Beery

I got those gaps from the MDM5 formatting code. Beery

I want to confirm a few things to make sure I am not mistaken about anything. With a MFM hard drive, the hard drive is formatted as 256 byte sectors? I recall the SCSI may have had the ability to go to 512 bytes. Just want to make sure I am not thinking of something different. I have Gap 0 as >F0, Gap 1 as >F0, Gap 2 as >F0, Gap 3 as >EA, and the Gap Byte as >F2. Thanks. Beery

Matt, I thought I read somewhere you had MAME with the TI or Geneve emulation working with the HFDC and using MDM5 for formatting. Does that create a full image with all in-between sector information? If it doesn't, is there any way to write out a file that would capture all that information for the DREM emulator device? I believe, not 100% sure, I need a formatted image to work from and the examples DREM provides just doesn't match up with our HFDC formats. Right now, just wondering what our potential is for capturing a raw formatted image file without headers, etc. It is not obvious to me the capabilities are there, but if they are buried somewhere, it would be nice to know. Thanks. Beery

Ksarul, I got my unit connected last night and fought with some MDM5 issues running from a Horizon Ramdisk before I discovered loading MDM5 from the ramdisk was the source of some initial issues. The SD card had a lot of files on it for the various platforms preconfigured, but nothing at present for the TI/Geneve as one would expect to be the case. You definitely want to connect a monitor to the emulator card with a keyboard so you can see if you are getting error messages, etc. After I got my MDM5 issues resolved, it was getting late and I started to edit a 'defaulta.cfg' file from the WDC/MFM directory. It was setup with a 512 bytes/sec configuration. I edited it to 256 bytes/sec and change it from 17 sectors/track to 32 sectors/track. I loaded MDM5, but MDM5 did not think a hard drive was connected. I need to confirm some cabling to make sure I do not have the 20 pin cable inverted as I gave up due to the time and needing to get up early. I will not be able to do anything more until either Sunday evening or Monday evening after I return from a trip. If you have any success, please let me know. If I can not get MDM5 to identify a hard drive presence, I will switch over to CFORM on a Geneve setup and see where things go from there. Beery

There is another thread I started about 6 months ago asking these same questions. Someone posted some answers then.

Mine arrived today as well. Beery

My two have not arrived yet. I will have a small window of time today should it arrive in this evening's mail. Otherwise, it will be either Sunday evening or Monday before I have a chance to look at it because I will be out of town. If you learn anything in the next 6 hours, let me know as my first attempts will be using MDM5 on a TI-99/4A system. My intent is to create a 120 MB image, and have 2 hard drive images of that size on each system. If you take the approach to start from a clean image rather than trying to port over a MAME hard drive image, it should zip up really small. If it could then be uploaded here, it would save a number of people that go that route the hassle of formatting, etc. For the most part, I will want to bring over my MAME Geneve HD image for the Geneve system and copy a few other source files onto it. For the TI system, I will still have a 120 MB image, but seriously doubt I will use more than 10 MB. Beery

I have two options. If I am at home, I use My-Term on a Geneve 9640. If I am elsewhere, then I go to the website http://9640news.ddns.net:8080and select either the 9640News BBS, Fusion BBS, or Heatwave BBS and access those BBS's through a web interface using a web browser. Beery

Gotcha Matt!

I logged in as a TIPI user, and typed the sudo apt-get install rz into the command line and I get "Unable to locate package rz" sudo ap

Matt, Been thinking about the use of Telnet for the Sendmsg and Recmsg routines and have some questions. First, I scan for the TIPI to get the correct CRU. Done. I then do an Open command to establish the connection. Done. This message has been edited: Scratch everything else. i have seen some of my logic faults after digging back into the Telnet client again. Then, looking at my code, I saw some issues as well. Beery

Looks like you are going to need to do some string searching in the string. To get a month, you will need to look for the Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr/May/Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec text to set a numeric value (01/02/03..../12) at string position 5,6, and 7. Then, look for the date at string position 9 and 10 assuming it uses dates of 01/02....31. Then repeat for character positions for the time, and year. I think the MID statement, unless I am thinking of another language, allows you to grab specific text ranges in a string. Then, concatenate, etc. to whatever the CorComp requires. Beery

Along the lines of questioning here about telnetting into the PI. I was on my Geneve, running MyTerm with the WiModem232. I established a connection with the PI (connected to TIPI), however, about 5 to 10 seconds later, it disconnected. It appears one can use PuTTy to get in from the above comments. Is there something different, or a keypress or command the PI is expecting to get a login prompt, etc? Was curious along the lines that if a connection could be established from another TI or Geneve computer to the PI, if I could then find a tool that would run on the PI I could launch that would initiate a file transfer. Thus, moving files from the Geneve in my example over into a directory preferably under the TIPI framework. Beery

The MENU that was in the 7.3 archive gave a version mismatch with the 8.34 ROS. I'll look on Heatwave and see if by chance you had it on your BBS. Beery

I did not find V7.39, but I did find V7.3. I installed it on the Ramdisk, and the Menu program that came with it works. I can load TIPI.NET.TELNET from the Horizon menu option. If there is a complete V8.3 or higher version available for release, let me know where. Otherwise, I guess V7.3 is it for me. Beery

Greg, What version of Boot are you using? Is it compatible with the version 8 series of ROS? Beery

What I am looking for is John Johnson's 40 column Menu program that works with this version of ROS 8.34. It wasn't part of the package, and yes, I got the card and it is working well. Beery