Extended BASIC 3

[rocky007]

Hi,

 

I read on some forum that this basic exists. Just by curosity, was it finally released somewhere ? I'm curious to read the user manual.

Edited February 2, 2011 by rocky007

[+adamantyr]

Hi,

 

I read on some forum that this basic exists. Just by curosity, was it finally released somewhere ? I'm curious to read the user manual.

 

Yes, it was released. I have one of the few cartridges that Asgard produced. (Gary Bowser can tell you more about that, apparently only a handful were actually shipped.)

 

I put up a PDF scan of the manual on WHTech, you can find it here:

 

ftp://ftp.whtech.com/programming/Extended%20Basic/ExtendedBasic3.pdf

 

Adamantyr

[+retroclouds]

By the way: Did you know that a "new" Basic is currently being worked on. It's a port of the Powertran Cortex "Power Basic".

 

Check here.

 

I tried it with classic99, you load it from Editor/Assembler Option 3.

At this time there is no possibility to load/save programs. As said it's still in development.

 

Pretty cool anyway

[Opry99er]

From what I understand, less than 20 were ever in circulation. I saw one for sale online a few years ago and it sold for a hefty sum--- can't remember the exact price, but I remember that someone on the OLUG bought it. =)

 

This cart is virtually impossible to dump and re-create. It cannot work on a GK (from what I understand) and the chip layout is pretty intense. At the current moment, even with the bank switched carts available, it is not possible to re-make these carts. Perhaps with the GROM simulation that Tursi and others are working on, one day we might have the ability to use this. Until then, only the very few lucky owners can use this software. =)

[rocky007]

thanks for all answers...

 

@ adamantyr : thanks for the PDF... in fact this basic is less interesting than the Mechatronics one. I expected more powerfull functions

 

@ retroclouds : yes, this basic look very interesting, especially for the graphics functions. I really want to start some projetcs, but i'm too lazy for assembly...( or maybe using you Spectra 2 ). So, i'm waiting Turbo Forth. I dream of a compiler giving good speed, and use sprite functions.

 

@ opry99er : i didn't saw these card, but honneslty i doubt it's impossible to dump...especially old hardware like this.

Edited February 4, 2011 by rocky007

[+Ksarul]

Doing a bit of necromancy today--I am trying to get a good dump of the XB3 cartridge so that I can try to load it into one of the ÜberGROM cartridges. . .so if anyone has a good, functional copy of this one, please let me know.

[jacquesg]

There is a copy of XB3 on the Cyc disk.

 

Jacques

[hloberg]

I messed with it in PC99. It didn't seem to be much of an improvement over other exBASICs.

[+Ksarul]

True, but it does thoroughly squash several nasty bugs in the math routines that only show up when doing some intensive calculations. It also looks for the 32K card directly, avoiding loads to VDP completely. This is a bonus when trying to load extremely large cassette files. . .

 

Winfried rewrote a lot of the routines in TI Extended BASIC to make it work faster, it actually gains about 3-5% over a normal Extended BASIC cartridge, IIRC. I was one of his Beta Testers. . .long before the Asgard cartridge. I tested it on my Geneve, so that he could be sure it would work there too.

[+adamantyr]

I've been asked a few times about copying the ROM contents from my cartridge down... has anyone ever tried to do this with the XB3 Super-Cart?

 

Given the difficulty of setting back up my P.E. Box with a working old DOS PC to either transfer files via serial cable or a plethora of floppy disk swaps, I kind of want to know if it's even possible...

 

Adamantyr

[Gazoo]

I've been asked a few times about copying the ROM contents from my cartridge down... has anyone ever tried to do this with the XB3 Super-Cart?

 

Given the difficulty of setting back up my P.E. Box with a working old DOS PC to either transfer files via serial cable or a plethora of floppy disk swaps, I kind of want to know if it's even possible...

 

Adamantyr

 

Yes, it's possible and I can do it. Would you consider lending me your cartridge for me to dump it's contents? I promise not to harm it, I won't even need to take it apart.

 

I'll plug it into my TI, run my memory editor from ramdisk, save all found banks, give you back your cart. Everybody's happy!

 

Gazoo

[+adamantyr]

 

Yes, it's possible and I can do it. Would you consider lending me your cartridge for me to dump it's contents? I promise not to harm it, I won't even need to take it apart.

 

I'll plug it into my TI, run my memory editor from ramdisk, save all found banks, give you back your cart. Everybody's happy!

 

Gazoo

 

Hmm... I'll have to think about it. It's a VERY rare cartridge and I'll be honest, I'm afraid if I mail it off to any other 99'er I may not get it back. (No offense!) Or worse, it gets lost in the mail.

 

But, I do want everyone to be able to make use of the cartridge in emulators. It's pretty cool, although I wonder if it will play nice with emulation; it DOES override the master title screen with it's own custom menu. Super-cart indeed!

 

Adamantyr

[Gary from OPA]

 

Yes, it's possible and I can do it. Would you consider lending me your cartridge for me to dump it's contents? I promise not to harm it, I won't even need to take it apart.

 

I'll plug it into my TI, run my memory editor from ramdisk, save all found banks, give you back your cart. Everybody's happy!

 

Gazoo

 

The XB3 uses more then two banks of rom, it bank switchs similar to the MB carts.

 

 

Hmm... I'll have to think about it. It's a VERY rare cartridge and I'll be honest, I'm afraid if I mail it off to any other 99'er I may not get it back. (No offense!) Or worse, it gets lost in the mail.

 

But, I do want everyone to be able to make use of the cartridge in emulators. It's pretty cool, although I wonder if it will play nice with emulation; it DOES override the master title screen with it's own custom menu. Super-cart indeed!

 

Adamantyr

 

Does the 'custom menu' contain any mention of OPA or Micro-Manager, if so it is one of custom POP-Carts we produced under license for Asgard containing the XB3 along with other programs.

 

I have one of these left in my collection, and plan soon to dump the original rom and grom chips, and release the POP-Cart design and info on 3 PAL's inside at somepoint this year on my site O-P-A.biz

 

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the original one I have that was produced for Asgard, and see if this matches your version.

[+adamantyr]

Does the 'custom menu' contain any mention of OPA or Micro-Manager, if so it is one of custom POP-Carts we produced under license for Asgard containing the XB3 along with other programs.

 

I have one of these left in my collection, and plan soon to dump the original rom and grom chips, and release the POP-Cart design and info on 3 PAL's inside at somepoint this year on my site O-P-A.biz

 

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the original one I have that was produced for Asgard, and see if this matches your version.

 

Thanks, Gary! I will check tonight and post here with my findings. I believe it did have an OPA menu on it. I pre-ordered it from Asgard directly. Do you know how many of these exist?

 

Adamantyr

[+adamantyr]

Okay, it says OPA on the screens.. here is a pic of the master title screen and main menu, and the cartridge itself:

 

 

 

 

Adamantyr

[Gary from OPA]

Okay, it says OPA on the screens.. here is a pic of the master title screen and main menu, and the cartridge itself:

 

WP_20140522_005.jpg

 

WP_20140522_001.jpg

 

WP_20140522_003.jpg

 

Adamantyr

 

Yep, that is for sure one of rare babies that we shipped to Asgard in the first production lot, to cover their pre-orders.

 

I think about 150 if my memory serves me right they got, but not sure if they sold them all or not.

 

Sadly in total 500 pop-carts were produced, with another set of 250 populated but never shipped as payments stop arriving from them.

 

And these unsold pop-carts, and pcboards also were sadly left behind in warehouse along with alot of other stuff after I had business problems with a partner of mine in early '2000s over our chain of Internet cafes.

 

I have lucky one of original babies here that is socketed, so I will post pictures of it later on today here, and will removed the two eproms and read them on my universal programmer on my old pc later on this weekend.

 

The pop-cart overrides the original 3 groms in the console, but that is not needed to make XB3 work, you also don't need the second grom bank containing the teii cartridge, that was only added to give 'text-to-speech',

 

If yours is socketed you can removed the chips and replace them with larger ones and get more cartridges in it, as the pop-cart custom pals can handle up to 8 banks of groms along with matching roms, there is even

a option to enable 8k of super cart ram, if you solder in ram chip on the bottom, you will see from the pictures when i post them later.

[Gary from OPA]

As promised here is what the insides look like in the XB3 Super Module (basically) a POP-Cart with smaller eeprom's installed.

 

 

On the back of this one is also 8K of RAM that can be enabled via Function-Key on the OPA Micro-Manager title screen, or by software via a CRU bit command.

 

This was NOT normal, some of the shipped XB3 modules were just plain banks of ROM and GROM with no super-cart ram, but it was optional feature that POP-Cart pal's could perform if need be, but it looks like from the title screen you posted earlier you had the option available using the BEGIN key to 'toggle the RAM'.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Gary from OPA

[+Ksarul]

Nice! I'll be really happy to see the contents of these, as the final version put into the cartridges was done after the last version that I tested for Winfried Winkler in Germany. Many thanks, Gary!

[jacquesg]

The Extended Basic 3 Cartridge manual included on page 2 of this topic lists more modules than the screen shot shown on page 15. The manual includes TI-Writer v5.0, DM-1000 6.1, Archiver 3.03, Mass-Transfer and Remind-Me! There must have been many configurations of XB3.

 

Jacques

[Ed in SoDak]

XB3 was reviewed in the June, 1993 issue of Micropendium. It had a good rundown of the commands and mentioned using the space key at the main menu to bring up a second menu for TI-Writer, etc.

 

The May and July issues had an article and a review of RXB. By the time these new XBs were released, I had long since upgraded to SXB and had already begun transitioning over to Mac. I for sure would have been a potential buyer had they been available a few years earlier. SXB is still my XB of choice due to my familiarity with it.

[Gazoo]

Is there a dump of this available yet? I'm just interested in the Extended Basic 3 files, not all the other things on the cart. Although I'm sure I can extract them if only the full dump of the cartridge is available.

 

Gazoo

[+RXB]

I do believe I looked at the manual and stole a couple of options it used in RXB.

 

Of course without the source had to write my own versions.