Atari's Plato Cartridge question

[tschak909]

Yup, that's right. in author mode it's assumed you know where to go.

 

-Thom

[jmccorm]

There are some fairly complex programs and simulations. This is the first Lunar Lander that I've run into where you can overtemp and destroy your main thruster.

 

[tschak909]

Indeed. I will be making a video showing how to walk around the system soon... Isn't it amazing?

 

There are over 16,000 lessons on cyber1...

 

-Thom

[tschak909]

It's worth noting that ALL the programs you are using, were written in a language called TUTOR, not just by the systems people, but by ordinary PLATO students, teachers, and users.

 

You can ask for lesson space and make your own programs. (I want to make a multi player berzerk)

 

-Thom

[jmccorm]

It's worth noting that ALL the programs you are using, were written in a language called TUTOR, not just by the systems people, but by ordinary PLATO students, teachers, and users.

You can ask for lesson space and make your own programs. (I want to make a multi player berzerk)

-Thom

 

Competition is good, but all of these tempting retro technologies are appearing right now in my life where I'm at a point that I need to acquire the next set of technologies for me to use for the next fifteen years of employment.

 

I managed to come across a lab on writing programs for TUTOR, called 0csix and 0cseven, but it looks like I don't have permissions. I've tried other educational labs, and it looks like I don't have permission for those, too. Do they fine-grain permissions so you have to ask for each or is there some way to get blanket access to a wide breadth of educational material?

 

[tschak909]

you can bring this up in the public notes, and somebody from staff will respond.

-Thom

[tschak909]

https://www.cyber1.org/index.asp<-- click on TUTOR Hello World for more info... other videos are also helpful.

 

-Thom

[_The Doctor__]

another altirra fix this time in regard to rverter. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273633-altirra-300-released/?p=3955346

[tschak909]

I have recorded, a completely impromptu long-form video showing the patched PLATO cartridge:

 

If anybody has requests on videos to make regarding PLATO, drop them here or in the atarian notesfile. I'd love to see everyone jump on!

 

-Thom

 

p.s. I show the "touch" screen bits around 22:00.

Edited February 7, 2018 by tschak909

[16kRAM]

Kudos, Thom!

 

I'm so impressed how quickly you and Steve solved the issues.

 

Here's my personal hack.

 

 

[tschak909]

Kudos, Thom!

 

I'm so impressed how quickly you and Steve solved the issues.

 

Here's my personal hack.

 

 

 

Should we do a canonical disassembly, so we can start hacking on it? I do know we should crank up the baud rate, at least.

 

-Thom

[16kRAM]

 

Should we do a canonical disassembly, so we can start hacking on it? I do know we should crank up the baud rate, at least.

 

-Thom

 

 

I'll be happy help regarding a disassembly.

 

I had the same thought about increasing the baud rate. Hopefully the Atari is able maintain its rendering chores at speeds higher than 1200.

[+DrVenkman]

 

 

I'll be happy help regarding a disassembly.

 

I had the same thought about increasing the baud rate. Hopefully the Atari is able maintain its rendering chores at speeds higher than 1200.

ICE-T can handle 9600 baud with a software-rendered 80 column display.

[jmccorm]

ICE-T can handle 9600 baud with a software-rendered 80 column display.

 

Related, the Altirra serial port emulation (with TCP/IP connections) seems to pseudo-connect to Plato at 9600. Where the Atari bottlenecks is on actually drawing the screen data. I find myself often using the F1 key to accelerate the screen draws. I should probably go into System -> Speed Options and lock it at some multiple like 300%, but the only problem I've found is that while I have things accelerated, the key repeat engages too fast.

 

I seem to remember there is a memory location in the Atari somewhere to adjust the key repeat delay and the repeat speed? I also wonder if there is an Altirra option to slow down key repeats while the emulator is running faster than 100%?

[tschak909]

well, it only REPORTS connecting at 9600. This disparity is literally to deal with brain-dead telecom and BBS packages, and can be set when you're setting up the "modem" device in Altirra.

 

If you explicitly set rate throttling, then Altirra will throttle the connection to the baud rate asked of the R: device.

 

-Thom

Edited February 7, 2018 by tschak909

[+evilmoo]

I started disassembling here: https://github.com/jduerstock/tlp

 

You're welcome to add/use/steal and/or tell me you hate ca65.

[tschak909]

Fantastic. I've started a note on PLATO for it and let the cyber1 people know. Hopefully we can get some mileage out of this.

 

-Thom

[_The Doctor__]

 

Should we do a canonical disassembly, so we can start hacking on it? I do know we should crank up the baud rate, at least.

 

-Thom

I think that's a great idea, while this is IMHO, done very well, I bet some of the better tools and mathematical choices of today could improve things, faster baud rate and a wider variety of serial, pbi, ethercart choices might be made available. Currently this is bound to a limited scope of serial device modem choices.

[tschak909]

If we made an R: handler for the dragon cart, that would be sufficient, I think.

 

-Thom

[tschak909]

Good news:

 

Steve Cox was able to change BAUD rate.

 

Bad News:

 

The 850 and the terminal program can handle 2400 reliably, MAX.

 

The relative ROM offset $17EE is the operand of an LDX instruction that gives a target BAUD rate:

 

$0a = 1200 BPS

$0b = 1800 BPS

$0c = 2400 BPS

$0d = 4800 BPS

$0e = 9600 BPS

 

So with that, here's a patched ROM:

 

TheLearningPhone-patched.rom

 

-Thom

[MrFish]

Having a problem with both versions of the hacked ROM: when in the "Bigjump" and using the + key to scroll down the list, it always bails out at the point shown below, prints the text "OK" off to the left side of the list, and then Altirra's connection status changes to "(in command mode)". At that point I can do nothing but reboot and start over. I can type text, but nothing seem to have any effect on the mode I'm stuck in.

 

 

[tschak909]

hurfff... I haven't hit this problem, yet. I'm thinking the guard character needs to be disabled somehow.

[tschak909]

Probably don't use three +'s in a row for now.

[MrFish]

Yeah, I can get to the bottom of the list using a combination of +, +, - repeated enough times.

[tschak909]

The guard time is what's killing it. If we can set a new guard time, then we can prevent this from happening, dunno if we can do e.g. ATS12=255 or not... if we need it, need to ask phaeron to add it.

 

-Thom