FALCOR4
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Posts posted by FALCOR4
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On 5/26/2020 at 6:00 AM, atrax27407 said:Since I have published the source, anyone who wants to do it - go ahead. At the present time, however, there is no 4 MB SAMS card available to test it on.
I have a proto 4M SAMS from Ksarul that I'm working on which is the extension of the 1M board. Once we find and fix a peculiar issue with it I'm sure he'll begin making them available if interested. The one I have in my possession, in particular, has battery backed RAM just for fun. 🙂
It would be nice to have a routine to test it, if that's doable. or else I have to slog my way through it in other ways.
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4 hours ago, Shift838 said:I have been thinking for a while to re-order some of these PCB's since we have the files readily available.
I know the clock chip was the culprit that there were limited availability and it was not pursued a couple of years ago. However....I have found a supplier that has quite a bit of backstock for othe RTC-65271, which is the original chip Thierry used to prove out the board and it allows for the batteries to be replaced.
Would anyone be wanting one of these boards? I'm just talking about the boards + components needed to assemble. If you want an assembled board that's something that we can discuss as 99% of all the components are surface mount.
Does Fred's DSR have a module that can be assembled for the RTC-65271 chip?
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20 hours ago, Regulus said:About 30 years ago, I purchase a TI Pascal Card from the classified ad. For the same price of the Pascal card, I got several TI-99/4A computers, PEB, cartridges, disks, EEProm and books.
99/4 Assembler
99/4A Plotting Utility Ver. 2.0 4/83Plot Assembler Source File
Oh my, my! This is code for a TI plotting routine that I still have on cassette. Thank you so much for sharing this. I've never seen the source code before, quite a find.
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Yes, thank you very much for these! This completes my binder that I've had for almost 35 years with those missing pages!
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I would have to go back and look for the specifics but, CC used two different FDC ICs which may account for the differences you're seeing in the two cards? Take a look at the IC numbers to verify. In fact, I have two boards with the daughter boards the plug into the controller socket, which is another configuration. Evidently they changed to a different IC but the batch was bad so they backtracked on the later board by installing the daughterboard with the previous controller IC.
Somebody fact check me!
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Thanks for all the work that you're putting into this and, don't rush if you're not comfortable. I, too, would be willing to pre-pay if that will help. Hang in there!
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31 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:Success! 4000B installed at CRU 1200 and it is playing nicely with it's 3000 series neighbor
The available RAMBO RAM page map should max out at just under 2k (2040K). Time to dig into the allocation and paging code!
Very exciting!!! 😄
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I'm looking for help identifying contributors to the Horizon ramdisk hardware (not software) for some documentation purposes. Here's what I think I know: Ron Gries did the original HRDs, Bud Mills laid out the HRD2000, HRD3000, HRD3000B, and HRD4000 (?), Ron Walters may have designed the PHOENIX mod (?), Gary Bowser may have designed the RAMBO mod (? and the circuitry that "unhides" the upper 2K of ROS or was that someone else?), John Guion may have designed the 32K expansion mod (?), and I've also seen mention of Dave Romer, John Culow and the 99'er users group?
Please correct any/all of this if you know the history and certainly if I'm missing someone.
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1 hour ago, Ksarul said:I have now gotten all three of my initial test boards fully operational (that makes a total of four new HRD4000Bs, counting the first one that @FALCOR4 built), and the design is now frozen. All necessary layout changes based on our testing have been incorporated, the schematics just need a few more tweaks to match the layout, and the manual updates are nearly complete. I've also been working on building an editable copy of the ROS 8.14 manual so that we can update it to the current 8.4x version of ROS.
We're still looking at the possibility of extending functionality to 16M, but that would require a ROS update to allow many more disks or using the split function originally used for the Phoenix mod to make the board into a logical pair of 8M Horizons. The hardware won't need modification to expand a Horizon this way, but it is not actively supported in the software.
Thanks for all the hard work on this! The board is absolutely beautiful and very well laid out. The expand-ability will extend it's life and maintaining features such as RAMBO and PHOENIX offer even more programming options for those of us who like to "tinker".
That along with Tim's hard work on the ROS is really making this a great production! Can't wait to see them ship, getting close!😊
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On 11/24/2019 at 3:57 AM, dhe said:The only program I can remember was maybe a demo program on the ROS 8.14 disk. Had the RAMBO development package been released, we would have seen more better usage.
Dan, the only other use of RAMBO that I've run across since your post is RECALLIT 2001 by OPA. I agree with you, if the development package ever saw the light of day there might be more apps.
RECALLIT, was originally a simple Name
& Address lister, but is fast becoming a
powerful database. Using the RAMBO PRO-
GRAM SPACE from 8K to 512K it can store
up to 4000 records, each with 10 defined
fields. Searching for strings can be done
in any field combination. A variety of
printouts from labels to two-column are
supported. Re-indexing by any field is
possible.Like other 2001 software it has
easy-to-learn menus, all contained in a
100% Assembly program. An amazing thing
about RECALLIT combined with RAMBO is the
XERO-TIME sorter, you will never have to
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56 minutes ago, InsaneMultitasker said:Are you referring to an option to display the simple version/date on the title screen? If so, that seems reasonable and would only require a 'flag' byte and associate code in ROS. My next piece to tackle will be CFG; I've made a notation in the source about your idea so that I can investigate.
I really like the simple version, very clean. Nice job on that and all the other fixes you've accomplished! This all gives an old card new life and I'm looking forward to putting the new hardware and software together.
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3 hours ago, dhe said:Just a few questions for anyone that has worked through this board.Has anyone created a digikey BOM?Is there a preferred or non-preferred vendor for 99110/99105's - as they are all pretty much $35 from China.... I'm guessing some type of pulls.Can someone point me to a power supply?Anyone put in ZIF sockets?Anyone that has built this, any tips to share?Thanks,DanoHas someone actually produced the 99110? I haven't seen any on the market, just 99105s. The '110 has the math routines in it, correct?
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On 1/10/2020 at 8:14 AM, apersson850 said:The best internal modification I've done to my console is adding 64 K 16-bit wide RAM. But you can't honestly call that a simple modification.
I've seen a couple different ways to do that, which one did you do? Any pics?
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On 1/1/2020 at 9:14 AM, GDMike said:Yeah..so it's looking like March could be a rollout!
Jim is doing an incredible job on these boards, for sure. Not just the boards but going back to update the schematics and the construction manual! Tim has taken another look at the ROS to close the loop on some lingering issues, that will be a great compliment to the new board (no pressure, Tim 😁).
It's all worth it, I use my test board almost every day now and love it! It has been playing well with the other cards in one of my PEBs. Here's a video of an assembly running from the SAMS using the RamDisk, the IDE drive, the HDX RS232/PC connection and the CorComp FDC.
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Standard "stack'em high" setup. I use Jim Fetzner's extender board in the top one to check out and troubleshoot boards often. The bottom unit is my original purchase back in the early 80's; I've collected four more of these over the years and am in the process of rebuilding them all (caps, regulators, diodes, fan). Fun stuff!
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11 hours ago, dhe said:Do you have plans for that mod sounds like one I would like to do.
Here's what I ordered from Digikey, also in a 5V version. I'm sure they are available from other sources as well:
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A bit more involved perhaps than what you're looking for but, replacing the linear regulators in the older console power boards with direct replacement switching regulators. Cuts down a lot on heat. Of course, you'd probably want to replace the caps as well.
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It had to be Extended Basic for me. That got me into programming and I still use it today to write "quick get it done" routines when I'm working on projects. Then it was the E/A and I was hooked with assembly. The GramKracker eventually put them together for me; still use the GK today.
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1 hour ago, gpaJeb said:Thank you all for helping me. I am slowly trying to rebuild my system, again thanks!
I attached a picture of my system about 1987.
Still have the GK?
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Still having a great time exploring the HRD 4000B board. I modded this one to extend the DSR from 8k to 16k. With the Phoenix configuration, both logical drives get 16k of DSR so that makes complete use of the 32k ROS memory. I wrote some very simple assembly routines to exercise the memory and id them and then used the Explorer to look around, making sure that all memory was accessible and working properly. It's a little bit embarrassing how long our wonderful little TI 99 takes to fill 8M of memory! But, that's also the beauty of it, too!
The RAMBO configuration is very interesting. Did anyone actually write software to take advantage of it? Also, can someone tell me how the >6000->7FFF cartridge ROM space is disabled so that the RAMBO memory can reside there? I found that to be very interesting.
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19 hours ago, FarmerPotato said:Show us the other side of the perfboard!
Like I said, a work in progress that I never finished. Kind of wish I did......
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I started a Z80 PEB card back in 1986 but abandoned the effort. I was thinking CP/M but moved on to other things. Sadly, I've been robbing the card (still have it) for parts.
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6 hours ago, atrax27407 said:Tony Knerr used regular Alkaline batteries in his (after putting a diode in the charging circuit to disable it). He said the Alkalines lasted about five years - which isn't bad. The Lithium in my HRD16 lasted 16 years!!
That's how this board is configured right now. I just stuck some alkalines in there with a diode for now. When I'm finished I'll probably put some good lithium batteries in it.
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One of the test boards is now populated and humming away! We're continuing to make tweaks for reliability that Jim is considering for the final boards. Having a lot of fun with this one. It's running one of Tim's later ROS versions, 800k disks, and things are looking good! Thank you, Tim, for your work on the software! It has a long lineage with great programmers.
Jim is testing the other configurations to make sure everything is covered so, more to come I'm sure. All I have to say it, it's pretty cool and I'm glad I have the chance to finally own one.
And, yes, before someone catches me. I know you're not supposed to mix batteries but that's all I had. 🙂
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Here you go. Looks like the 1M card with a couple extra ICs. The two memory ICs contain the batteries for backup if you choose to use those instead of conventional SRAMs. You can get 512K versions of those for the existing 1M card as well (fact check me Ksarul). This version card is configurable as 1M or 4M.