The Powertran Cortex kit-computer

[Retrospect]

I hope I've put this thread in the right place on the forum - not sure really, but here goes.

 

The Powertran Cortex - I understand it has TI chips pretty much all over it's board

 

What I wanted to know:

 

1... does it have direct memory access to it's 9900-family CPU?

 

2... does it have 'bitmap' mode

 

3.... sprites can be assigned in Cortex Basic, but can it do coincidences and automotion?

 

4 ... why the heck does this not work in Cortex Basic?

100 A=RND*100 : A=INT(A)

110 B=RND*100 : B=INT(B)
120 IF A=B THEN 1000

130 PRINT "NUMBERS DO NOT MATCH" : STOP

 

1000 PRINT "NUMBERS MATCH" : STOP

Thanks in advance for any help with my curiosities.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Retrospect

[Opry99er]

Don't know much about Cortex BASIC, but Im guessing it does not require a double colon for statement separation..

 

Have you tried putting A=INT(A) and B=INT(B) on their own lines?

[Retrospect]

Don't know much about Cortex BASIC, but Im guessing it does not require a double colon for statement separation..

 

Have you tried putting A=INT(A) and B=INT(B) on their own lines?

I'll try that ..... I downloaded the Cortex emulator when curiosity got the better of me. Now I have cortex problems lol

[Retrospect]

It worked. In fact the line I was suspicious of , was actually line 120 on the code shown above - for some reason , earlier, I did something LIKE that and it spat out an error of some kind .... I'm using the wrong example with my code really 'cos I think I fluffed some arrays up.

 

It is the arrays .... we can't assign arrays and dims like TI basic. This Cortex basic seems much more like Atari Basic

 

Dim A$(4) does not work at all

 

Dim $A(4) works but not as we would expect it to. Sorry for the confusion. lol

[Stuart]

I hope I've put this thread in the right place on the forum - not sure really, but here goes.

 

The Powertran Cortex - I understand it has TI chips pretty much all over it's board

 

What I wanted to know:

 

1... does it have direct memory access to it's 9900-family CPU?

 

2... does it have 'bitmap' mode

 

3.... sprites can be assigned in Cortex Basic, but can it do coincidences and automotion?

 

4 ... why the heck does this not work in Cortex Basic?

100 A=RND*100 : A=INT(A)

110 B=RND*100 : B=INT(B)

120 IF A=B THEN 1000

130 PRINT "NUMBERS DO NOT MATCH" : STOP

 

1000 PRINT "NUMBERS MATCH" : STOP

Thanks in advance for any help with my curiosities.

(1) If you mean "does it use Direct Memory Access?" then yes. In as much as the floppy controller chip uses DMA to read/write direct to memory, without the involvement of the processor.

 

(2) Bitmap mode - yes. It uses the same family of VDP as the TI-99. Plus bitmap mode support direct in BASIC.

 

(3) Sprite coincidence and automotion. Functionality not built into BASIC, from what I remember. But from BASIC you can access the VDP directly and check for sprite coincidence and do sprite movement in a loop.

 

10 COLOUR 1,0

20 GRAPH

30 COLOUR

40 A=01038H

50 B=0547CH

60 C=09244H

70 D=04482H

80 NME=42

90 SHAPE NME,A,B,C,D

100 MAG 1,0

110 C=90

120 D=80

130 FOR X=0 TO 8*3.1 STEP 0.1

140 SPRITE 0,X*10,C+D*SIN[X],NME,6

150 SPRITE 1,X*10+16,C+D*COS[X],NME,4

160 SPRITE 2,X*10+32,C+D*SIN[X],NME,10

170 SPRITE 3,X*10+48,C+D*COS[X],NME,12

180 NEXT X

 

Your later post - string arrays. Completely different to TI BASIC. More like how arrays are handled in C, I believe. All explained in the Cortex User Guide.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Stuart

[Retrospect]

Thanks Stuart.

So it will output machine code to cassette maybe?

 

Looks a nice machine from what I've seen of it, big and quirky.

[Stuart]

You can save and load memory images to cassette. As well as BASIC programs.

[Retrospect]

I typed the code in, that is good
Love the bobbing sprites. I might try and get my head around how to address the chars to create different things.

Btw:-
does cortex basic have a CHR$ equivelant? ... for example I tried this little speed benchmark thing, and it wouldn't work for me.

 

10 A=RND*26

20 A=A+64

30 PRINT CHR$(A);

40 GOTO 10

Edited March 19, 2015 by Retrospect

[Stuart]

does cortex basic have a CHR$ equivelant? ... for example I tried this little speed benchmark thing, and it wouldn't work for me.

 

10 A=RND*26

20 A=A+64

30 PRINT CHR$(A);

40 GOTO 10

 

Use the % operator. But you can't use it directly in a PRINT statement. So in your code above you'd need something like:

30 $B=%A

35 PRINT $B

[Retrospect]

That worked!

 

Obviously , I put an extra line of code in to tell the computer that A=INT(A) as well, and it's now spitting out random letters pretty quickly .... including the @ symbol strangely.

 

EDIT:

 

My line 20 should have said A=A+65. So Z will be missing unless I tell the computer that A=RND*27 ?

Edited March 19, 2015 by Retrospect

[kl99]

try this manual:

http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/TMS9900/tm990-100/MP308_TM990_POWER_BASIC_Reference_Manual_1979.pdf

[+Ksarul]

Or you can try the restored Cortex BASIC manual I did for the Cortex a few years ago.

[mister35mm]

Let me get this right. Is there, or will there be a set of ROMs or CARTRIDGE for with CORTEX BASIC for the Ti99/4 ?

 

Stephen

[Stuart]

mister35mm, on 16 Dec 2015 - 1:14 PM, said:

Let me get this right. Is there, or will there be a set of ROMs or CARTRIDGE for with CORTEX BASIC for the Ti99/4 ?

 

Stephen

 

Yes. See [http://www.avjd51.dsl.pipex.com/ti/ti.htm#programs]. You can either load it as a disk image (load using the Editor/Assembler cartridge) but that doesn't leave much RAM available for your program, or program it into a cartridge.

[Omega-TI]

Let me get this right. Is there, or will there be a set of ROMs or CARTRIDGE for with CORTEX BASIC for the Ti99/4 ?

 

Stephen

 

Oh yeah! It's available NOW!

Just follow that great link Stuart gave you and you'll see everything there is on Cortex BASIC. I would suggest you look around on the rest of the page too because he has some really cool stuff there!

 

A totally "Shameless Plug" to my You Tube Video on making a Cortex BASIC cartridge.

 

Oh yeah... there 'just might' be an incredibly and totally awesome application coming out for this down the road a bit that will blow your mind.

[Megatron1999]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that someone is design/making a NEW Powertran Cortex with a TMS99105 CPU ... or was I just dreaming it.

[+mizapf]

I once loudly thought about designing a new TMS99105 computer based on emulation, but quickly remembered my growing todo list.

[pnr]

You may have been thinking about this board:

http://ruizendp.websites.xs4all.nl/IMAG0266.jpg

 

It is a Cortex on a eurocard. It runs Cortex software, and my port of version 6 Unix. It supports the F18A. It does not have a joystick interface and is not primarily designed for gaming, so I always assumed that it was not interesting to this thread. However, it supports a good C compiler, so writing games for it should not be too difficult.

 

I'm planning to do a version 2 of this board early in the next year. I'm also thinking about a 99105 system on a double eurocard (20x16cm), but that is something for 2017. No promises though.

 

Paul

[mister35mm]

sounds impressive.