Just setup my TI after 30 years and need some Advice on Diagnostics Please

[TI-GAMER]

As the Ttitle says... I just setup my TI after 30 years - Yeah!!!

 

I would like to make sure it all runs as it should and forgot most of my TI knowledge over the past few decades.

I would really like to test the components in my PEB such as Disk Controller - RS232 - Memory Expansion - P-Code and etc.

Are there any good programs, commands or carts that I can use to give it a good overall diagnostics?

 

You guys have been incredibly helpful and I apologize for my lack of knowledge. I was a heavy programmer in the 80's and the TI is what I originally learned to program in Basic and then went to school for Pascal, Fortran and etc. Not using it anymore I completely forgot it all

Edited May 2, 2015 by TI-GAMER

[Opry99er]

Well, using XB from the command line, you can type "SIZE". This will indicate if your 32k memory is working by letting you know the amount of program space you have left.

 

You can type OLD "DSK1.TEST" and watch for the light on your drive to light up. This will tell you if you have solid connections to your Disk controller.

 

Similarly, you can type "OLD "RS232"" and watch the PEB light for your rs232 card.

 

In both of these cases, you will receive an error.

 

Your PCode should have a switch on ut (IIRC) and if in the ON position, it will engage on startup and you will be immediately sent to the PCode environment on startup.

 

Get some 5.25 floppies, type this into XB.

 

>100 CALL CLEAR

>110 PRINT "IT WORKS!"

>120 END

 

Then type SAVE "DSK1.TEST"

 

Then, once you have done that, type RUN "DSK1.TEST"

Edited May 2, 2015 by Opry99er

[Opry99er]

And in the "Development Resources" thread at the top of the "Development" subforum, there are downloadable pdfs of the Extended BASIC manual and TI-99 Reference Guide... That will greatly improve your experience.

[+Ksarul]

And on the p-System, it will look for your Editor Disk in drive 1--no problem if the drive has nothing, it will think about that for a while and eventually give you the p-System startup screen.

[TI-GAMER]

Perfect... I will try all of those commands.

To test that the Speech Synthesizer is working, if I remember correctly cant I just pop in the Game Parsec to verify that the Speech Synthesizer works?

[Opry99er]

^^Correct

[TI-GAMER]

Opry99er

 

Thanks for all of your suggestions

I tried all of the commands that you suggested and everything works perfect.

The only issue I had was with the RS232 card. After typing the command "OLD "RS232"" the light on the card immediately came on but stayed on solid and I never received an error message.

 

Ksarul

The P-Code card did exactly as you mentioned.

Thank You for the advice

 

I dont remember the PEB being so loud. It worked perfect and still looks like new but was quite loud due to the fan.

Edited May 3, 2015 by TI-GAMER

[Opry99er]

Ya know, the rs232 may not kick out an error... I was thinking about that earlier. I think it may just sit there, waiting for serial line input...

 

Glad it is all working!