TI Calc Cartridge - getting past the main screen

[kl99]

Hi, i want to play with TI Calc but can't get past the green screen shown below. The documentation says FCTN+7 or 8 or 9 should do something but nothing seems to trigger anything. Any ideas?

 

 

And 2nd thing, how rare is this cartridge?

[+Lee Stewart]

Hi, i want to play with TI Calc but can't get past the green screen shown below. The documentation says FCTN+7 or 8 or 9 should do something but nothing seems to trigger anything. Any ideas?

 

ti-calc.png

 

And 2nd thing, how rare is this cartridge?

 

Are you using the actual cartridge or an image? If an image, what exactly are you doing (emulator, GROM/ROMs, ...)?

 

...lee

Edited December 1, 2014 by Lee Stewart

[atrax27407]

The cartridge is extremely rare and was only produced in Europe to the best of my memory. Unless you are using the cartridge, the only way it will run is from the HSGPL card which has enpough ROM/GROM to run it.

[+Lee Stewart]

If you actually have the binaries, it runs in Classic99, PC99 and probably MESS. It is one GROM (6KB) and 4 ROMs (32KB).

 

...lee

[+Ksarul]

The cartridge was only available for sale right at the end, and then only for a short while during the time leading into the Christmas season in 1983--and only in France. Pretty much every cartridge I've seen came is traceable to that end-of-year blow out, and there weren't a lot of them (a few hundred at most?). On real hardware, there are several ways to run the files without the cartridge: an HSGPL, a Mechatronics GRAM Karte, or a Wiesbaden Supermodul II. None of the other GRAM devices have sufficient ROM banks to run it.

 

Oddly enough, I've been able to obtain two of these over the years, although one is missing the manual. It is not the hardest French module to find--both Gestion Privee and the French version of Logo II are harder targets. . .

Edited December 2, 2014 by Ksarul

[kl99]

Well, i must be superlucky then, since this auction featured both cartridges: TI-Calc and Gestion Privee and those cartridges found a new home in Vienna:

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/281485415461?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2648

 

The Ti-Calc cartridge says 1/84 an on the back, so I don't know how that fits to your 1983 christmas season theory.

 

So I am trying it with the original cartridge, and I am trying it with PC99 Light with the original module files from C.a.d.d.

In both situations I am stuck on the green screen.

[+Ksarul]

The Number Magic label you got in that auction is also exceedingly rare. . .so you got three rare cartridges for a very good price I don't even have that one yet, although I've seen it a few times over the years.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Ksarul

[ti99iuc]

It's my Package for this cartridge

 

 

 

this is the link for download the Keyboard's Strips: LINK

 

 

 

[+OLD CS1]

That is beautiful!

[humeur]

you press a space bar for change the screen

 

 

Ti-Calc exist in platic box or paper box

 

 

Jean Louis

 

 

 

[humeur]

you press a space bar for change the screen

 

 

Ti-Calc exist in platic box or paper box

 

 

 

[humeur]

Another picture of Ti-Calc box and Home made Ti-Calc Module, also French module Gestion Privee.

 

 

Gestion Privée is disponible for exchange.

 

Jean Louis

Edited December 17, 2014 by humeur

[+acadiel]

Cool! GROM emulation circuitry

[Imperious]

deleted, making new topic.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Imperious

[ralphb]

So, what is the solution here? Pressing SPACE (or any other key) in my version using MESS doesn't do anything.

 

Bad image?

 

 

phm3213.rpk

[mizapf]

It has a 16K ROM part? This is certainly not correct, at least with this kind of PCB in the RPK. I can try to make it a proper cartridge.

[ralphb]

That would be great, as I don't find the ZIP on WHT.

[mizapf]

For some unknown reason, I completely missed that thread back in 2014.

[mizapf]

This seems to be a bit harder. The above RPK is definitely invalid, because it includes a ROM with 16K as a "standard" cartridge; at least it should be "paged" with two separate 8K ROMs.

 

The GROM is good when clipped to 6K; the CRC16 proves to be OK.

The ROM, however, is somewhat strange; I suspect that it is not correctly dumped. It consists of four areas with 4K each:

 

ROM = AAAA BBBB CCCC DDDD

 

In fact, the A, B, and C areas are identical: ROM = CCCC CCCC CCCC DDDD

The D area has a CRC16 at its end; with one A area, the CRC matches.

 

Thus, CCCC DDDD is a valid 8K dump, but CCCC CCCC is not. Still, this does not work; the computer writes to address 700x, maybe to switch banks, and the computer crashes.

 

Does someone have an authentic cartridge?

 

Here is a transcript of what I did (for those of you who know Linux, crc16 is my own CRC routine):

 

 

$ split -b6144 phm3213G.orig
$ crc16 xaa
xaa: crc16=0000
$ split -b4096 phm3213C.BIN
$ cmp xaa xab
$ cmp xaa xac
$ cmp xaa xad
xaa xad differ: byte 3, line 1
$ crc16 xac
xac: crc16=df31
$ cat xac xad > rom.bin
$ crc16 rom.bin
rom.bin: crc16=0000

[Flottmann1]

here the TI-CALC for the Classic99 and in PC99 Format

 

 

TI-CALC.rar

[ralphb]

here the TI-CALC for the Classic99 and in PC99 Format

 

Thanks, Bernhard, that's working -- meaning I can get past the title screen to a prompt where I can enter only invalid expressions. Guess I need to read the manual.

[mizapf]

Could someone give me the memory positions of these dumps so that I can create a proper RPK from it? Some of the files have header types (e.g. 0x29) that I don't know. As it seems to me, the GROM is OK.

[mizapf]

So far I found that the ROM consists of two 8K circuits; both have a correct CRC16, so the dump is authentic. Good.

 

ROM1: [AAAA BBBB]

ROM2: [CCCC DDDD]

 

The ROM dumps contained in the rar file are composed like this:

 

phm32131: [AAAA AAAA]

phm32132: [AAAA BBBB]

phm32133: [AAAA CCCC]

phm32134: [AAAA DDDD]

 

So the first 4K of ROM1 is always visible in 6000-6FFF, and by setting some mapper value, the 7000-7FFF area changes between the four 4K regions of the ROMs.

 

That way, this resembles the MBX scheme, but MBX has RAM in 6C00-6FFD and the mapper byte at 6FFE, and this may be different here. That means I'd need to know how these ROMs are switched.

 

So if it is not MBX, I'll have to design a new cartridge type for the TI emulation in MAME which will then be available with one of the next releases.

Edited June 23, 2017 by mizapf

[mizapf]

OK, got it. It seems as if the bank switching is done by writing to 7000, 7002, 7004, and 7006. I had to implement a new cartridge in MAME which I called "paged7" (which refers to the fact that the pages appear at 7000-7FFF) with TI-CALC as its only instance right now.

 

The ticalc.zip has been uploaded to WHTech (Cartridges/MAME/zip), and the all_carts.zip was also updated. I also created an RPK from it, but did not upload it, because this is not a homebrew cartridge, and so it should only be used by the ZIP format.

 

To make use of it, you either have to pull the update from Github and build your own binary, or you need to wait until next Wednesday when 0.187 will be released.

Edited June 24, 2017 by mizapf

[+acadiel]

Nice job figuring that out! Almost resembles the XB ROM bank switching, no?