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wierd_w

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Posts posted by wierd_w

  1. Posted · Edited by wierd_w

    Yeah, the hexbus HX1100 Video Interface 50-53.

     

    Emulating one would have synergy with the CC40.  However, we dont even know what the bytcode instructions to drive the sorry thing are! Somebody with such a rare beast needs to dump its innards for examination.

     

    Or do you mean this thing? (and it's sidecar version)?

    http://www.ti99.eu/?page_id=1223&lang=en

    • Like 1

  2. Posted

    The problem, is that people used to not be so hmm.. what's a good word...  They used to be more patient with their content.

     

     

    Lucas Arts's point click adventure games come immediately to mind; While very polished and interactive, they can be extremely frustrating without a walkthrough handy. You could spend WEEKS trying to figure out a single action, and timing sequence.  People these days... Lack the attention span to do that.  They would fling the game controller/keyboard across the room, angry german kid style.

     

    Similar with the harder puzzles in things like 7th guest.  If you don't already know about the Bishops and Queens puzzles, you are gonna spend a LOOOOOOOOOONG time solving them, for instance. Others, like the "canned goods" puzzle, use words in the english language that are cryptic/obscure, and not in many people's vocabulary these days.

     

     

    I remember people had similar complaints about some of Myst's puzzles, BITD.  Remember, this is the era of "Giant blazing quest markers" to guide people to a quest destination. No such "Blatantly obvious" guidance was given BITD.

     

     

  3. Posted · Edited by wierd_w

    Why reinvent the wheel?

     

    If you are going to use the Pi to function as a display, just make the TI speak X.

     

    We have "local telnet" data transport.

     

     

    X windowing system was initially intended to operate over a network transport.  We already have that.  The PI already has libraries to display content from a remote X source. The TI just needs to tell the Pi what to display.

     

     

     

    ALTERNATIVELY---

     

    If somebody has one of those very very rare hexbus video display systems, and wants to dump the graphics routines inside it, we could derive a suitable X library to handle hexbus video messages. This would have synergy with the CC40 and pals.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    Naw--  the TI is a pretty clever system, but it shows real signs of rushed work, and kludges.  (8 bit data on a 16 bit bus, with that many waitstates? Really?)

     

     

    Other systems have their own warts.

     

    I prefer to think about it in terms of what might have been, had "GET THERE FIRST!" had not been such an impetus, or, in the case of the Amiga, had "NO, its ONLY for THIS PURPOSE!!" not been the mindset of the american company's leadership. (Amiga could have gone somewhere, and somewhere BIG, had the US management not been idiots)

  10. Posted

    I don't know why my brain won't let this go, but here it goes anyway.  I am pretty sure, since this has never really been done before, that this won't work.  I will be up front about that. This is mainly a transparent plea to silence the bad ideas part of my head by giving me information needed to shut it up.

     

    That said, here is the idea that won't die.

     

    First, how GROM is SUPPOSED to work.

     

    A GROM is accessed first by GROM Select High enabling the GROM chip, setting the M line Low, and then MO pin High. This tells the GROM chip that you are wanting to write to it (Specifically), and that you are writing an address to the address counter. Then you write the 8 bit address you want, and then set M High, and MO Low. This tells the GROM that you are reading, and want the data bits.  Each subsequent read is auto incremented.

     

    One could also read the current address (even though it increments, I understand, once you do) by setting M High, and setting MO High, then getting the value from the chip register.

     

    This gives the following truth table, assuming Grom Select is high.

     

    M | MO
    ---------
    H  |  H  == Read Address
    L   |  H  == Write Address
    H   |  L  == Read Data

    L   |  L  == Write Data

     

    Since you cannot (normally) write to a GROM, we could use M=Low + MO=Low + GSelect=High to determine that a page switch is requested, then capture the 8bits written as the page number (0-255) to swap to.

     

    This could be caught with a latch, to drive a mapper chip.

     

    With a single "GROM chip" (either a real GROM abstracted with a latch, or clever "Latch + Rom" circuit), this would give us potentially 2Mbyte of memory in 8k pages that could be tracked and mapped in and out.

    (If you have a second GROM, and thus another grom select line, you could further expand this exponentially for each grom ID you use for this.)

     

    The caveat is that the write attempt will increment the GROM address register, so a bankswitch with this approach will be execution cycle expensive. (Burns at least 2 operation cycles-- One to do the bank-switch, and another to reset the GROM address register.) As long as you are not paging like crazy, this should not be a big deal though. 

     

    This COULD be avoided though, if having that combination of signal lines set causes the latch circuit to disable the GROM chip temporarily (only removes the data/address lines, does not detach GROM CLK), set GROM Ready High, catch the written byte, then re-enable the GROM chip. This would prevent the GROM chip actually noticing that any operation was done to it at all, and thus prevent the increment.

     

     

     

    Thoughts, criticisms, or other commentary?

     

     

     

  12. Posted

    I used to think the same thing, but since have learned the issue was the lack of quality tools and supplies.  Nearly all the irons out there (in the commodity goods sense) lack temperature control, and either get WAAAY too hot for electronics solder, or do not get hot enough (and thus do not flow the solder properly.) I suspect that the designs that have been cloned since forever, were initially designed for lead based solder, which is no longer really offered in real capacity in the US and EU markets.  A quality iron has a nice digital temperature gauge and control knob in the hot-work station.  Other commodities are noclean flux, and pals, which help to improve flow, prevent blobbing, etc.

     

    Since getting better kit, I have found my "I cant solder to save my ass" problems nearly vanished overnight.  (the only remaining ones seem to be related to my early stages of carpal tunnel issues, and can be mitigated with a tool rest, and some good part holding gizmos)

     

    I don't really do enough soldering to justify the kit I have purchased, but I am not unhappy that I did; I am able to do that hot-work as needed now, and not have really terrible solder junctions.

     

    In this case, all you have to do is look inside the PSU, write down all the values on the caps inside, and their quantities, then go through with the sharpie, write the values and the +/- orientation of the caps on the back of the board, then order replacements.  When they arrive, hold the HV board in a holding gizmo, use some solder braid to suck off all the old solder from the joins, and then gently tug on the old caps as you apply heat to the legs. Once they are all out, insert the new caps' legs into the holes, matching the values and orientations you wrote on the bottom of the board, then gently heat and kiss the legs with the solder and iron.  Once they are all soldered down, go in with a wire cutters and clip the extra leg length off.

  15. Posted · Edited by wierd_w

    "The 7th guest" was a PC title of about the same era; A DOS title, so it did not get smuggled into schools like Myst did.  However, it was vastly more challenging and engaging, with a somewhat more interesting (if significantly more dark) subject matter.

     

    It too blended FMV with a pre-rendered CGI environment, and used the CDROM for that purpose. (Unlike the makers of Myst though, who heavily abused .mov quicktime format, the people who made The 7th Guest invented their own video compressor, Groovie. It does alpha blended transparency effects to blend it over the top of the rendered scenes.)

     

    I would actually recommend The 7th Guest to people that like brain teasers and puzzles, looking for a fun and challenging retro title.  Myst? Glamorous, but not satisfying, IMO.

     

    EDIT:

     

    This is a longplay of the whole game; It will spoil it if you have not played it before. However, I can't think of a better way to showcase it.  Just watch a bit in the beginning, decide if you want to play or not.

     

     

    • Like 2

  17. Posted

    The bottom half (that accepts the RF shield and the speech board) finished printing.  The RF Shield installs WAAY easier now. Just drops right in. Very nice.

     

    Another 2 days or so will be required to print the new top with the deeper lettering.

     

    This brings up an interesting question:

    I have a "Very tight fit, and with not so pretty lettering, but otherwise fully functional" beige enclosure.  Given the fastidiousness @hloberg has for matching the color, I would presume he is just as fastidious about lettering and such-- so I do not want to send him this enclosure. (I will wait until I have one that I am perfectly satisfied is of high quality in its make and build for that.)  Does anyone else want this beige enclosure?  I have a black and silver TI, and the original shell is perfectly fine for my needs. If I were to do the "Tipi +32k in speech enclosure" thing, I would use the models I have made, but print them in black, so really-- this enclosure is just gonna sit around collecting dust in some drawer some place.  I would like to send it someone who will give it a home instead. 

     

     

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  21. Posted

    SCSI ID is called LUN, Logical Unit Number.  It's the jargon term.

     

    If the enclosure is handling the ID, then I would make sure the drive itself is declaring itself as unit 0.

    What model number is this drive? I will see if I can find it in the tularc documentation.

  23. Posted

    I ordered more M3 stand offs. (Since I have kinda run out in my screw bin, after this many prototypes along the road..)  While I wait for them in the mail, I have looked into possible reasons for the "not great" print quality I experienced.

     

    Looked like my screw gear Z axis, and the linear bearings for all 3 axes, had gotten a bit "dry".  I applied lots of machine oil and ran it through its paces. 

     

    I am now in the middle of printing a 2-toned instance of this enclosure, that has the enlarged bay for better shield installation, and which has the really deep lettering.  Currently printing the "wood" colored PLA for the bottom. Looks like it is printing OK. We will find out in about a day.

     

     

    • Like 2

  24. Posted · Edited by wierd_w

    I have the socket 7 fully up and playing games now.

     

    Has an SD->IDE drive hosting the main system, running win98se (which is configured to boot to DOS first. The board has USB on it, and I have a 6-in-1 card reader in the 3.5" bay in the front. Win98 gives access to that, which allows me to easily bring files over without digging inside the case.), with 128mb of RAM, a now fully functional PS/2 mouse port (had to order a connector bracket from Amazon, then fiddle with the pins inside the dupont connector so they were in the right order, but works fine now!), serial ports, and an LPT port, along with a soundblaster 16 PnP.

     

     

    So.

     

    Now, I have an unneeded socket 7 board.  I don't have any more RAM or another CPU to throw in, but the board does work, and has an HX chipset. (I am rocking the VX chipset that has the dropped in inductor, as it is working just fine. The older chipset boards are slower, but they have much less crap in the adapter rom region, which means better hardware UMB availability with UMBPCI.)

     

    I know for a fact that the "brand new" EDO RAM you can get for KORG synthesizers works just fine in it.

     

    Anyone need or want it?

  25. Posted

    2 hours ago, mr_me said:

    I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.  Arcades were dark with lots of people, so it seems like a good place to make a deal.  Might be a case of unless you're looking for it, it won't find you.  But I don't remember parents complaining or having concerns about it.  I do remember the schools having a problem with dungeons & dragons, something about being evil I think, but that's not video games.

    I dunno.. I just distinctly remember there being brouhaha on daytime television about it, including on the Geraldo show and pals.  It was one of the major "reasons" my mom always insisted I could not go to the local arcade, even with my siblings who were ~10 years older.

     

     

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