9640News

The GenMod was not done by Bud Mills, only sold through Bud Mills. Ron G. Walters, of Dynamic Systems Research, did the GenMOD and Memex and licensed that technology to Bud for resale. Beery

Highly unlikely in this day and age you will find a mouse new in box that will work with the Geneve. There are some bus style mice available back in the 80's and early 90's, however, not sure what you will come across anymore. I had a Logitech bus mouse back early on in the 80's. There were two bus style mice back then by Logitech, one being a low resolution mouse and the other a high resolution mouse. Both had different pinouts than Myarc's mouse. I wrote an article on the high resolution mouse pinouts that should be available somewhere on whtech under the 9640News folders. There are very few programs at present that use the mouse and only if you plan on using MyArt, YAPP, or TI-Artist would I consider making a concerted effort to get a mouse. I would not do any 80 track upgrades on the TI FDC. In fact, I am not sure if the Geneve operating system would allow 80 track usage on a TI FDC. It is possible the SETDSK command may override the default track usage, but I can not say for sure anyone has done it with a TI FDC. The CorComp FDC, the Myarc FDC and Myarc HFDC were capable and MDOS looked for specific dip switch settings, but I do not recall that being possible with the TI FDC. Either way, if it were to work, I do not think the TI FDC would need to be eprom modified. Not sure what/if any hardware modifications would be needed. Minimally, I would add the 32K onboard high speed ram to the Geneve. That will get you to more memory and no issues using the later versions of the operating system. Adding the 64K Vram does offer some minor options as a second upgrade route. My 2 cents.

Unfortunately, it happens. Just this past Friday evening, I had a bunch of coworkers over for a cookout with one a former teacher we hired bringing her back into the chemical industry. The county where I work is one of the poorest relative to poverty in the state of Kentucky and continues to decline. Those that make decent money, live elsewhere as do I. The school system struggles with 68% of the high school students do not live with a parent. The area is recognized as the county to move to, because they give away all kinds of free stuff. The husband of one of my coworkers is on the business development council for the county. The county keeps trying to attract businesses for growth, but only put on "free events". So, the folks that are a bit more successful have no desire to attend these events and mix with the others that have a high incidence of addiction and other issues. Addiction issues is a big problem here. To put it into perspective for others, this county has about 10,000 residents with lots of housing to accommodate those with very little. I am sure in that 68% group there are some that have potential for great things, however, due to their socioeconomic situation and limitations will never reach their potential. Beery

We all have been blessed in many ways. I told John things I wasn't bragging, but I have been blessed of late and I am paying forward opportunities that were provided to me. If it had not been for another TI'er that had passed away and his daughter offering his equipment, I would not have the Geneve nor TI systems I have now. I was blessed when I got both a Geneve and TI with Myarc HFDC's. If that had not happened, I would have likely stayed with MESS/MAME and nothing more. Until I moved to Kentucky, I did not have the time or really the space to setup an appropriate office. Now, I have a decent office with built in book shelves that hold all my materials and three desks to hold a TI and Geneve system on one, my main PC running the BBS on another, and the third desk has another Windows PC and a Raspberry PI. The PI was just hooked back up last night, but I will need to get another keyboard and mouse for it since I gave John the one I had on it for his use. John is one of those kind souls with what I suspect was a very high IQ with a thirst for knowledge, but lacking the $college$ opportunity to fully realize his full potential. I am glad a number of us were able to come to John's assistance. Beery

Those following this thread, I was finally able to catch up with John on the phone Sunday evening and went over to his place today and had a very enjoyable 3 hour visit. John is about 200 miles from my place with a few back roads taking about 3.5 hours to reach his place. John lives at the end of a cul-de-sac that drops down slowly over a hill. The location was not as bad I had feared, but his place is surrounded by trees really restricting reception limiting reception. When I arrived, I found out the previous afternoon John's 80+ year old neighbor had dropped over dead while mowing grass that was the story for the day. John lives in a single wide mobile home and has a step son living on the next lot over. It's close enough for John to walk over to his place with the cane he uses. John is still mobile enough at 70 he can use his self propelled mower to mow his own lawn. It's a small lawn, but takes John a couple of afternoons to mow with his mobility issues. When I arrived, I went around back to John's home and announced I had arrived and John stepped outside. We sat on his back deck for about 3 hours. I brought his Windows 10 system that had been donated with a UPS, and kicked in a USB modem/mouse/keyboard along with a USB modem. The computer had been updated this past week with the latest updates for Windows 10 along with having both M.E.S.S. and MAME on the computer. I built a shortcut that launched his emulation to match my system here at the house. His SCART monitor that was contributed, I kicked in the cables to use SHIFT838's board and cables so he would be ready to go. I also brought over some food to help him out. Finally, and this is for Tim, I gave him the envelope you provided. John told me to tell you "He was going to make an offering!" He was hoping you would remember the last time he made that statement. I was not able to assist John in the setup in his home of the equipment. John will be setting things up as he can get things moved around. He REALLY REALLY has to move "stuff" around to make space available so he can use it. Let's just stay he has "stuff" stacked with no place to move stuff around. It will take time, and it is a priority. Right now, John's old computer is only useable when it is cool. The fan is apparently out so it apparently overheating and shutting down. He will be getting the new system setup, it will just take some time. John really appreciated everything. He just did not think he deserved the help. I passed on to him there were a number of TI'ers out there that John had made an impression over the years and we were just paying things forward ourselves. He wanted me to thank everyone. Even though John is 70, his mind is sharp as a tack. His body has just had a rough road. Beery

John went dark, presumably after we had another round of bad storms in the area this past week. He's not answering phone, so I do not know if it is just his phone that is down, or phone and power. I tried calling him the past 3 days without success, so without a hard confirmation on time, I am holding off until I reach him. ​If he gets phone restored today or Sunday, I have Monday off I can head over. Otherwise, it will be to wait another week. What I do not want to do is drive 180 miles one way to an address hoping he is there and discovering he is not home, etc. If his power and phone are both down, it would make setup of the two systems a bit difficult. Later, Beery

Thanks for the information. When I get some free time, I will explore it. I've marked this page to come back to it later. Beery

But how do you know which mode is which? Is it in the 7 byte header?

Fabrice, What is the status of this project? Will you be offering sales for interested individuals? Hopefully assembled? Thanks for any feedback. Beery

Bruce Hellstrom wrote I believe both serial and bus mouse drivers for MDOS for the Geneve. If you have one of my MESS HD images, check out the directory BRUCE the source code is there. That should at least get you somewhere. There are two sets of source files in that directory. There is MOUSE22A-S and MOUSE22B-S for the Geneve bus mouse. There are also three files for the serial mouse MOUSS22A-S, MOUSS22B-S, and MOUS22C-S. It is likely Bruce's Mouse Driver Package was uploaded as an ARK or disk image somewhere Not sure what is entailed with a USB mouse interfaced with the TIPI to know if the serial or bus mouse code would accelerate any design efforts. I've attached a DSK image I think contains all the files in question plus some extras not knowing if they are needed. If you need something more or are missing a file, let me know Beery Hellstrom.dsk

OK. Just out of curiosity and not pressing you, timetable? Beery

Greg, Did not realize the monitor had an SCART connector. Just checked it, and placed an order with Chris to replace my unit and got John a cable as well. Thanks for the head's up on that! Beery

The source code would be interesting to see and maybe there is something to be learned. However, I am not sure how likely someone would be to use it. I only say that because with the debugger for MAME, it is far more powerful than I think Explorer is. Beery

With no carts in, see if you can get to a viewable screen. If you can, I would start to think dirty cartridge port or bad connector(s).

I've not seen this before, but I might be able to offer a thought to guide you on further diagnosis if nobody has other ideas. Seems like there is a diagnostics module out there. Not sure how "smart" it is to do some testing with it. The other idea, assuming you can get a clean Extended basic screen, is to write a character, then increment that character by 1 until you have scanned all the characters. Then, display color blocks and see if you get what you are expecting. This may help rule out whether you have a 9918 issue, or if there is some broken or shorted trace to either the VRAM or from the 9918 the source of the problem. If you are writing a character pattern of "FFFFFFFF" and you see "FFxFFFFF" it may be able to guide you towards a particular trace at fault. You could also test out sprites as well and move them over to various areas of the screen. Might be simpler to use something like TI-Artist with a mouse pointer. You could also save colors to the screen as well for testing. Just an idea. Since you have replaced the VRAM, it is obviously a project you would like to solve, rather than adding it to the discard pile and pulling out another system. Beery

Matt, I've asked this before and you pointed me towards a direction with some C code. I'm more assembly, than C, so hopefully you can point/create an example piece of code. When the PEBox version of TIPI comes out, I am hoping to be able alter some existing RS232 code for the MDOS terminal program My-Term to use it. I know you have mentioned there are some ports for transferring characters. If you could show an example in assembly (TI-99/4A source is fine) where you turn on the card, execute any code for a telnet session, and to then be able to send/receive characters through ports however it is done, it would be appreciated, Is it possible to have an overflow on the port if you are not scanning often enough? At this point, I am trying to understand what is or is not possible. Obviously, a lot is possible, I just do not have a suitable code base I can easily follow the logic. Anyways, food for thought if you get the time. Thanks. Beery

I'll check it out if I have time tonight. I've also got my old monitor I just pulled off my Geneve as a backup option as well. John is apparently REALLY REALLY pressed for space and was questioning that if the PC I was bringing would be too big. I think this is going to be an interesting visit. It will be good to see John. Beery

I have done some massaging of the spreadsheet and added some VBA code in the excel file that will write out text files. Dates are now in a consistent format. For the high volume posters on the comp.sys.ti group, where names were obvious and I had the time, I changed the incomplete email address to the individual's name. The text files and a special INI file are for a utility my BBS uses so they can be imported. As the messages were gathered from a web interface, they have the same issue I had to deal with on YahooGroups when I dumped the TI and Geneve groups. Formatting is not perfect, however the content is there. Here is the file in zip format. Keep in mind it has a macro for the special routine I wrote, so you will get a caution on whether to open the file, etc. CompSysTI - Copy.zip

I can't wait either. Will be ordering two, one for the Geneve and one for the TI system. Beery

Thanks for the Listserv messages. I will begin work on those messages after I complete the comp.sys.ti spreadsheet of messages. I was able to do some tweaking and replacing of date strings to further minimize manual intervention, but still have some work to do. Should take about an another hours worth of work. Seems some of the headaches I caused myself when I was cross posting TI-ECHO to comp.sys.ti through GEnie. Somewhere/somehow, the process of using an email to post to comp.sys.ti through GEnie's servers resulted in an atypical date string after all the processing. I wasn't the only one, so there were other systems doing things a bit differently as well. Before I post the messages on my BBS since I already have an interface to comp.sys.ti, I have got to ensure when I do post, all those messages do not get reposted on the group as "new". Beery

Thanks for the files. I'm working on the Excel spreadsheet now. First thing is to manipulate all the dates into a consistent date string as it looks like the dates were handled in multiple formats. Beery

I just checked my email, and there were no messages with files attached. I checked both my inbox and spam folders. As I have seen things like this happen before, make sure you spelled my first name correctly as Beery so the email address would be Beery_Asst at msn dot com. The other email address if you want to cc: another one on a resend would be Beery at USWingNuts dot com. I can't count the number of times people have misspelled my name as Berry when it should have been Beery. I am a one and only Beery <grin>. Hope this helps. ​Beery

The excel spreadsheet will be sufficient. I did notice one thing, and it is likely something you can not control, but I am guessing a CR/LF or maybe just a CR is not being captured properly as I see words with no spaces appearing at intervals of what would be an End-Of-Line spot. If it is nothing obvious to resolve, then do not worry about it as it will still be easy to interpret the contents of the messages which is more than what we have. ​Otherwise, you have made a giant step towards reclaiming some historical messages. Thanks. Beery

I've got backups of the TI and Geneve groups already posted. I do not have the SWPB group and was never aware there was a Texas Instruments group. What kind of format is that content in? Beery

Just a FYI for everyone following this thread. My intention barring any unforeseen problems, will be to head over to John's place this coming Saturday. I spoke with John this afternoon, and it turns out his Windows 98 computer has apparently died as a few days ago. Not sure if it was a power supply or motherboard/hardware issue at this point in time. So, not sure how much, if anything, I will be able to recover from his old hard drive. Likely, nothing at this point in time. The Windows 10 system that was donated along with a Geneve monitor, UPS and the cash that was contributed will go a long way to helping John out. I've got some food, and other computer incidentals to be adding to the setup as well to make sure the transition goes as smoothly as possible. I've already loaded the system up with both MAME and MESS and all the Geneve and TI files I have on my BBS system to get him pointed in the right direction. Anyways, if anyone wants to contribute anything to further help John out, I have a PayPal account at Beery_Asst at msn dot com if you want to send something monetarily and I will make sure John gets it. Just do something before Friday as it is my intent to be at his place Saturday and I am not sure when I would be able to get back over there again in the near term. I do want to thank those that have contributed. John mentioned the "shakes" ended yesterday from the frustration as his computer was one of his last lines of access to the outside world. He would turn his computer on in the morning to get his emails, and then would check back hourly. Without that, I think he was pretty depressed with the situation. The computer contributions I know will mean a lot to him more than some people can imagine. Take care, and thank you everyone. Beery