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FALCOR4

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Posts posted by FALCOR4

  1. Posted

    Another test board!  It's missing the switch, just need to dig though my stash and look for something that will work.  These are nice boards, very well done! Can't wait to give it a spin!

    132603014_HRD4000B4304.thumb.jpg.65149ecb2bae86c66675fcc8ffb9b2fc.jpg

     

    • Like 5
    • Thanks 1

  4. Posted

    5 hours ago, HOME AUTOMATION said:

    I believe that is the switching regulator type board...
    more efficient(cold coffee). More to go wrong??? 

    Yep, that's what it is, the new switcher power supply.  I've never seen a silver v2.2 console so that's different!  I read somewhere that TI did a lot of mixing-and-matching the last year of production with consoles? We've seen beige QI consoles that were both v2.2 and not, non-QI beige consoles which were both v2.2 and not. It looks like you have a rare one with a silver console!  And, a nice acquisition!

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    On 9/12/2019 at 8:31 AM, helocast said:

    This pinned forum post is regularly updated:

    I'm glad you found a solution to get you running on the FG99. I ONLY have QI models because that's what I specifically look for in eBay/Goodwill sources.

    I was disappointed I've never been able to use my FG99 because I bought it early/before the community decided it won't support QI motherboards.

    I have yet to see that point specifically mentioned in the FAQ/user homepage, but at least everyone agrees it doesn't work.

     

    Doug

    Doug, why do you only collect QIs?  Just curious. 

     

    Doug

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    Just now, FALCOR4 said:

    Yes!  We do have several missing pages!  We are very interested in what you have.  I will go back and locate which pages are missing and post them.  It would be great if you had them. I'll be back........

    Here's what is missing:

    GROM0 is missing >0C46 - >0C6A

    GROM0 is missing the keyboard/joystick tables at the end of the GROM

    GROM2 is missing the first page of equates

    GROM2 is missing two pages >5156 - 51A2

     

    I would like to get all of these if you have them.  Thx!

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    15 hours ago, Ksarul said:

    That is the cassette routine from GROM 0 of the console. There is a lot more to those. I scanned all of the data from GROM 0 in using a set of docs I received from Doug Warren last year, but as he noted, there were several missing pages in the set he had, so we might be lucky and find out the ones you have contain one or more of those missing pages. That said, your set may go beyond the routines in GROM 0 and into the rest of the BASIC interpreter in GROMs 1 and 2. We do not have original TI vommented source code for those. The pieces we do have are attached here.

    console source.zip 9.18 MB · 14 downloads

    Yes!  We do have several missing pages!  We are very interested in what you have.  I will go back and locate which pages are missing and post them.  It would be great if you had them. I'll be back........

  10. Posted

    Enjoying a relaxing day, browsing through some of my archives and saw the old 99/4A keyboard scanning routine that I coded a long time ago.  Nothing special but, it really helped me to understand what that goofy keyboard was doing sometimes.  For example, the "phantom key" that Thierry talks about really gave me fits when coding the mg explorer.  You can easily see it with this tool, just press FCTN SHIFT D for the right arrow and you'll see that a fourth "phantom" key appears.  That was a key sequence in the explorer memory editor for dragging the window around.  That fourth key had to be trapped in the software and ignored.  Hook up the joysticks and play with the dreaded alpha lock/up stick to see what happens.

     

    Anyway, enjoy.  The code may have appeared in one of the Smart Programmer issues but I didn't look to see.  Again, nothing special, very simple, just came in handy sometimes.  Loads with the E/A (uncompressed tagged object file) and named, "keybrd."  QUIT is disabled so you have to cycle power to get out of it.

     

    KSCAN.dsk

    • Like 6

  11. Posted

    1 hour ago, Arnuphis said:

    Hey everyone. The seller was me on this one. I had to sell a few items to cover some legal costs for a younger family member who went and did something stupid that 20 somethings sometimes like to do. Lets just say she was charged with three letters and leave it at that 😉. I was very reluctant to let this one go but together with a few other sales and some savings I was able to cover her bail money and atty fees. A very nice guy from SF drove up and got the TI. I chatted to him for a bit and he said he knew all about them so I assume it all went to a good home. Meanwhile the daughter has to deal with the guilt of making her dad part with his prized hobby items.

     

    Thanks again for all the support in the past from the wonderful TI community. I'll be with you still in emulated spirit.

     

    Really sorry to hear that and I can totally relate having raised four boys.  Hope you will be ok and you're always welcome you here.

    • Thanks 1

  12. Posted

    On 8/9/2019 at 9:30 AM, ironnerd said:

    NOT SO DEAD!

     

    I've been away a bit because I had no progress to report.

     

    So my TI-99/4A is working. The Mitsumi keyboard is working quite nicely. Here is what I found:

    I figured it had a bad trace, so I pulled the keyboard and disassembled it. The entire Mylar was stuck to the circuit board. So basically, nearly all the keys were being pressed at once. I slid a piece of card-stock between the Mylar and the circuit board. I put it back together and half the keys worked. In fact all the keys on the left worked.

     

    So I took it apart again and shone a light on the Mylar form the back. I found two contact pads on the Mylar had a gap (where the Mylar makes electrical contact with the circuit board). I touched them up with some silver paste (not my favorite part of the job - got a little messy and I had to do some re-cleaning). I also noticed that most of key contacts were black with surface oxidation. I cleaned them up with a soft pencil eraser.

     

    Now everything works! Booyah! It was actually a really easy fix, and it's not a terrible keyboard (I would rather have the mechanical switches, but I'll take it).

     

    So... Now what do I do?

    Thanks for sharing that!  I used your card-stock trick and some gentle tugging and the Mylar came off cleanly on my Mitsumi keyboard.  One more TI working again!

    • Like 4

  13. Posted

    On 8/27/2019 at 5:15 PM, RXB said:

    Thank you I have long term plans to put my entire TI with wireless keyboard into my old G5 MAC PRO Tower.

     

     

     

    That would be cool.  I thought about that as well, I still have several ASUS gaming cases sitting around just begging for a TI mod!

     

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    21 hours ago, --- Ω --- said:

    I guess.  I'm wondering how much faster it is than the TIPI or the stuff I have stored on the FinalGROM.  Both those device are pretty dang fast, so I'm not sure if I'd gain much for my specific setup.   Are there any programs that are specifically designed to use it or have much improved specs when running out of it?

    Certainly true.  I have a TIPI and a few mega carts but it's nice to have some of the older hardware when you need to test/build software for compatibility.  Also, echoing Shift838, it's just plain cool and it's encouraging that there are still so many folks out there in TI land that continue to be creative.  It's all good!

    • Like 3

  18. Posted

    3 hours ago, ti99iuc said:

    It has been my solution for a PEB with a flamed powersupply.
    1558099490_ModificaAlimentatoreCabinatiArcadeinthePEB-2.thumb.jpg.fea87e7a814adaa4eac2c72dcbd5ed87.jpg
     

    The Black one on the left is a common Powersupply from an arcade 

    https://www.arcadewinkel.nl/en/min-dong-md-9916a-arcade-power-supply-12v-5v-5v

     

     

    The other one grey,  on the right,  is a +5 +12 for just the Floppy Drives.
    i preferred to have two different power supply to be sure i had enought power for the drives internal and external.

     

    What part burned up on your original p/s?

     

  19. Posted

    All valid; you could use DC-DC converters, replace the whole thing with a switcher (but you may have to bypass the regulators on the cards, depending).  I just used stuff I had (except for the fan) so it was cheap, does the trick and keeps it simple.  BTW, I did replace the huge linear p/s in my WDS100 MFM drive box from Myarc with a small pc switching p/s and that works great, once I got all the grounds properly placed.  The p/s came out of an old pc that was junked. 

     

    Please continue to be creative, it's what makes this hobby fun!  Thanks guys!

     

     

     

    WDS100 MFM drive ps replacement.jpg

    • Like 5

  20. Posted

    On 8/15/2019 at 5:29 PM, Ksarul said:

    I've been working on this mostly in the background, but it has finally reached the point where I need to order some test boards to make sure I have the final layout right. These boards will be capable of between 2M and 8M without chip stacking. Assuming that effort works out without too many issues, I have some community questions. Is there a preference for bare boards, for fully assembled boards, or both? The second question is about interest: what is the level of community interest in a new run of Horizon boards? Interest levels expressed here will let me know about how many to order once I've completed initial testing. The "B" designation mostly identifies boards as belonging to the current run, as there are only a few minor layout changes (in the battery pack area) and some better component identification on the board to help simplify assembly. 

    As a matter of interest, I would be good for three bare boards.  Thanks for considering this!

    • Like 3

  21. Posted

    14 hours ago, Ksarul said:

    I am just getting ready to order a pair of test boards to verify that I did the layout correctly. It isn't ready for sale yet--but if no problems arise, it will be generally available before the Chicago Faire. . .

    Thanks Jim!  Really looking forward to the boards.  Pls keep us posted.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  22. Posted

    Decided to do a refresh on the PEBs I have and the first one turned out great. 

    After replacing the caps:

     

    I removed the 12v and 5v regulators off the PCB and put replacements on the PEB floor with heatsinks:

     

    20190816_163116.thumb.jpg.4cc25b9a53fc3aebe9965768068decaa.jpg

     

    Then replaced the four diodes with 2 amp subs:

     

     

    20190816_161743.thumb.jpg.b7820d78276a613202b62a5e5bbb1161.jpg

     

    Last was to replace the "vacuum cleaner fan" with a new 115V fan:

     

    20190816_161721.thumb.jpg.3e3c2a9e5a60f7b10e9f520a76fb9f1e.jpg

     

    An old warrior ready for new battles!

    • Like 10

  23. Posted

    9 hours ago, mizapf said:

    I seem to remember that we once discussed a problem in the GROM design that would appear when we had GRAMs, possibly concerning the prefetch. There is an assumption that all GROM address counters are updated in parallel, and in case of GRAMs, things would go wrong somehow.

    The GramKracker got around this by just using the console GROM address registers.  That's why you'll see "synchronize GROM addresses" code written into the GramKracker built-in software to assure that all three of the registers are sync'd to the same and expected address that was then used by the GK.  Also, the GK utility disk had a routine that allowed the user to re-configure the MG Explorer for two different architectures of GRAM simulators.  One selection forces the EXP to do a DECrement before GRAM address write and the other selection does not perform the DEC.  Back in the 80's this could be a problem depending on which simulator you happened to have.  So, that might be the problem you're referencing?

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