Flashrom 99 + Nanopeb

[john_rm_1970]

Hi,

Will both the Flashrom and the nanopeb work together in a stock TI-99/4a ?

 

And more importantly, will the Flashrom see the 32k on the Nanopeb ?

 

The reason was to see if I could put roms on the Flashrom99 that require 32k, as at the moment I only have the Classic set from here.

 

Is it correct that there can only be a maximum amount of roms per sdcard on the Flashrom99 ?

 

Sorry for all the questions, I have only just started to get back into my TI and easily forget how to use it.

[+arcadeshopper]

yes

yes

of course why wouldn't it

theres 171 max in the docs on flashrom page just google flashrom99

[john_rm_1970]

Thanks for your answers. I did google flashrom99 just after posting and saw the 171 max.

 

I can't test the nanopeb myself yet because I don't have a spare 5v PSU lying around, hence the questions.

 

Cheers.

[Omega-TI]

yes

yes

of course why wouldn't it

theres 171 max in the docs on flashrom page just google flashrom99

 

I have this planned for a future video in a blog entry (in a couple of weeks as time allows), along with the F18A as a neat little gaming/starter package.

[+arcadeshopper]

Thanks for your answers. I did google flashrom99 just after posting and saw the 171 max.

 

I can't test the nanopeb myself yet because I don't have a spare 5v PSU lying around, hence the questions.

 

Cheers.

I sell a suitable power supply on arcadeshopper

 

Sent from my LG-H830 using Tapatalk

[john_rm_1970]

Well, I managed to find a USB to barrel power connector + USB 4-port wall charger and it worked.

All games wanting 32k worked a treat.

 

Sorry for the questions but I haven't touched my TI in 15 years and I am approaching it completely blind, as it were.

 

How do you list the contents of the CF card on the TI ?

 

Do I require a Extended Basic cart ? Or does it just help ?

 

Can I pop the CF card in my PC's card reader and then use a program to view it's contents ? (I know the PC cannot read it via windows file browser)

 

Do you just copy dsk files to the cf card ?

 

I have googled for a good few hours for the answers but all I get are often very technical PDFs, or docs that are beyond my understanding at the moment.

 

Thanks for any help.

[+Lee Stewart]

...

How do you ...?

 

Pretty much all of the information you want is available here on this forum. Presuming you are talking about the CF for the nanoPEB or CF7+, here is a first pass at answering your questions:

1. Fred Kaal's CF2K (“Projects” page of www.ti99-geek.nl) and Jaime Malilong's CFMGR (webpages.charter.net/nanopeb) will list all CF information.
2. For (1), you need the Editor/Assembler, Extended Basic (XB) or similar cartridge to load the program.
3. Fred Kaal's TI99Dir (“Projects” page of www.ti99-geek.nl) will do your bidding on your PC.
4. You can copy DSK images from a PC to the CF card with TI99Dir (noted above) and dsk2cf (webpages.charter.net/nanopeb).

...lee

[+mizapf]

John, if you care to try, you can use my TIImageTool to work with the CF7 cards in a (hopefully) easy way - since I don't have a CF reader, I'm still waiting for someone really making use of it. The only thing you need is a Java RE and DD for Windows (in case you use Windows; Linux already contains that tool).

 

Download link in the footer

[+arcadeshopper]

Well, I managed to find a USB to barrel power connector + USB 4-port wall charger and it worked.

All games wanting 32k worked a treat.

 

Sorry for the questions but I haven't touched my TI in 15 years and I am approaching it completely blind, as it were.

 

How do you list the contents of the CF card on the TI ?

 

Do I require a Extended Basic cart ? Or does it just help ?

 

Can I pop the CF card in my PC's card reader and then use a program to view it's contents ? (I know the PC cannot read it via windows file browser)

 

Do you just copy dsk files to the cf card ?

 

I have googled for a good few hours for the answers but all I get are often very technical PDFs, or docs that are beyond my understanding at the moment.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

on the cf card on the ti you can use the cfmgr program that came with the device it should be mounted on DSK1 or 2 by default if you haven't mounted something else there.. other people answered your pc question, my preference is tidir by fred kaal

 

Greg

[john_rm_1970]

Thanks for all the answers.

 

I know it's probably easy for some of you that grew up with the TI, but I only had one late it's life, early 90's. And I haven't touched it since then, so I am really starting again on it, and it's not as easy and straightforward as other computers of it's time. C64, Spectrum, Atari800XL, Amstrad CPC6128, all these are easy to use with modern SDcards, USB sticks, and can use FAT filing system. The TI isn't easy to use, and the lack of FAT support isn't helping.

 

Anyway, thanks again. I will plod onwards and upwards, hopefully.

[john_rm_1970]

Ok. Read every link provided by lee.

 

Googled every website I could find regarding the nanopeb.

 

Ti99Dir, worked well. Popped in my CF card, read it, it had one disk called Vol1.dsk installed. Copied a couple of others across to the 2nd,3rd, and 4th slots.

Clicked mount and mounted the first 3.

Put the Cf card in the nanopeb, switch on the TI. Press 1 for TIBasic, and then typed the following

 

call unmount(1)

 

I read on one forum that the nanopeb keeps a record of the last disk you mounted, so it's good practice to unmount first.

 

Then typed

 

call mount(1,1)

 

Then

 

old dsk1.catalog

 

And I get "I/O Error 50" and nothing else.

 

The list of Vol1.dsk in Ti99Dir is as follows

 

CFMGR

CFMGR/O

CATALOG

CFMGS

EXAMPLE

LOAD

SLOAD

VCATALOG

 

I just want to play a few games like Pitfall, some homebrew, and some that are not available in rom format. I didn't realise it was so damn difficult just to do something that should be relatively straight forward. Most of the sites linked talk as if you already are a Ti99 expert user. I'm not, and I'm regretting getting back into it.

I thought my Oric Atmos can be frustrating at times, but the TI takes it to another level.

[Stuart]

old dsk1.catalog

 

 

I think it has to be OLD "DSK1.CATALOG" - uppercase and with quotes.

[+arcadeshopper]

 

I think it has to be OLD "DSK1.CATALOG" - uppercase and with quotes.

 

YES all device names must be yelled "DSK1." the filenames are optionally yelled as well

 

Greg

[+Lee Stewart]

...

I read on one forum that the nanopeb keeps a record of the last disk you mounted, so it's good practice to unmount first ...

 

I am not sure why unmounting nanoPEB disks would be good practice. That is only a matter of personal preference, as far as I can tell. The nanoPEB certainly maintains in the CF card the volumes that were last mounted in DSK1, DSK2 and DSK3 because every CALL MOUNT() and CALL UNMOUNT() saves that information immediately to the CF and, because the CF is nonvolatile storage, it persists past powering off the nanoPEB. All unmounting does is to remount whichever of the first three volumes has the same number as the unmounted disk, i.e., CALL UNMOUNT(1) unmounts the volume in DSK1 and mounts volume #1 in DSK1. It is virtually the same as CALL MOUNT(1,1). The disk metaphor breaks down with the nanoPEB when you compare it to a real disk drive with no disk inserted because there is always a volume mounted in each of the three virtual disks in the nanoPEB.

 

As an aside, my fbForth 2.0 word, CFMOUNT , actually is volatile, i.e., it does not change the power-up state of DSK1, DSK2 and DSK3, but that is because I have not yet had the energy to program the permanent option to save what CFMOUNT temporarily does to the CF—but, I digress...

 

...lee

[john_rm_1970]

Thanks Lee. That makes sense.

 

It was the quotes that did it. Not the capital letters, although they also work.

 

So,

 

old "dsk1.catalog"

 

Followed by, run, did the trick and catalog finally ran.

Nothing else on the disk volume ran, though, and I got the I/O Error 50, again.

 

Just wondering if I either wipe the CF card and start again ? Or, try a different CF card ?

Would it be best to use the PC and a specific program to wipe the Cf card ? Perhaps TI99Dir can wipe it ? I didn't see the option to do this.

[+Lee Stewart]

Thanks Lee. That makes sense.

 

It was the quotes that did it. Not the capital letters, although they also work. So,

 

old "dsk1.catalog"

Followed by, run, did the trick and catalog finally ran.

Nothing else on the disk volume ran, though, and I got the I/O Error 50, again.

Just wondering if I either wipe the CF card and start again ? Or, try a different CF card ?

Would it be best to use the PC and a specific program to wipe the Cf card ? Perhaps TI99Dir can wipe it ? I didn't see the option to do this.

 

You are most welcome.

 

I am guessing you are trying to run all of these programs from TI Basic. Not all of the programs on VOL1.DSK are TI-Basic compatible. The fact that nothing but CATALOG loads and runs indicates that is the only TI-Basic-compatible program on the disk. The rest of the programs, some not even Extended Basic (XB), require XB (or similar) or Editor/Assembler (E/A) to load and run. I do not want to confuse you further if you do not have either the XB cartridge, E/A cartridge or a ROM-image equivalent loaded in the FlashROM99. Later today I can walk you through how to get them running, but I am sure that someone else here will beat me to it.

 

...lee

[+mizapf]

 

It was the quotes that did it. Not the capital letters, although they also work.

 

So,

 

old "dsk1.catalog"

 

Followed by, run, did the trick and catalog finally ran.

Nothing else on the disk volume ran, though, and I got the I/O Error 50, again.

 

 

Does the CF7 really define a device called lowercase "dsk1"? That would be really silly, since the device names are all case-sensitive, in particular those in the common disk controllers. If you check the existing DSR routines you can see that the device name is searched by direct string comparison without trying lower/uppercase.

 

(This case indifference is, in my opinion, one of the more ugly plagues that we have to blame Bill Gates for since old DOS times. Thanks for nothing, Bill.)

Edited February 19, 2017 by mizapf

[john_rm_1970]

Yeah it's a bit silly.

 

I found no difference between any of the following

 

old "dsk1.catalog"

 

or

 

OLD "DSK1.CATALOG"

 

 

 

ROM-image equivalent loaded in the FlashROM99

 

That would be most welcome of you if you could find time to explain how to do this, and perhaps links to required roms. I have spent a few hours googling this and found a few sites that said it couldn't be done because of GROM problems.

 

 

 

Later today I can walk you through how to get them running,

 

Thanks. I appreciate your time.

Am I right in thinking that if I want to play gameXYZ, and I have the game(s) in, for example, slots 5 and 6 using TI99Dir. I then type the following in TI-Basic.

 

CALL MOUNT(5,6)

 

disk 1 still has catalog on it so I can look what is on disk 5 and 6.

 

OR

 

Do I type

 

CALL MOUNT(2,3)

 

because it is only 5 and 6 in the Ti99Dir program, NOT on a real TI99.

[Asmusr]

CALL MOUNT(2,3) means mount slot 3 to DSK2.

 

CALL MOUNT(5,6) is invalid since there's no DSK5.

[+mizapf]

old "dsk1.catalog"

 

or

 

OLD "DSK1.CATALOG"

 

 

Well, anyway, you should definitely stay with uppercase device names. Uppercase is the standard case in the TI world.

[+Lee Stewart]

...

Am I right in thinking that if I want to play gameXYZ, and I have the game(s) in, for example, slots 5 and 6 using TI99Dir. I then type the following in TI-Basic.

 

CALL MOUNT(5,6)

 

disk 1 still has catalog on it so I can look what is on disk 5 and 6.

 

OR

 

Do I type

 

CALL MOUNT(2,3)

 

because it is only 5 and 6 in the Ti99Dir program, NOT on a real TI99.

 

CALL MOUNT(d,v) wants the virtual drive d (1=DSK1, 2=DSK2, 3=DSK3) followed by the volume number v. You can think of it as saying, “Mount in DSKd volume #v.” Mounting each volume takes a separate statement:

 

CALL MOUNT(2,5) <---mounts volume #5 in DSK2

CALL MOUNT(3,6) <---mounts volume #6 in DSK3

 

DSK1 is unchanged.

 

[EDIT: Rasmus beat me to it. I was taking too long to compose my answer while distracted by other things.]

 

...lee

[+Lee Stewart]

 

 

Well, anyway, you should definitely stay with uppercase device names. Uppercase is the standard case in the TI world.

 

Agreed.

 

Perhaps TI Basic, XB and/or the nanoPEB's DSR are/is forcing upper case before the search of the DSR device list.

 

...lee

[+Lee Stewart]

Here is the promised walk-through—

The files in VOL1.DSK and their functions follow:

CFMGR <--E/A5 CF Manager program (1st memory image file)

CFMGR/O <--E/A3 CF Manager program (object file)

CATALOG <--TIB/XB program to catalog a disk

CFMGS <--2nd memory image file for E/A5 program CFMGR

EXAMPLE <--TIB example program

LOAD <--XB autoload file to load SLOAD, which loads CFMGR

SLOAD <--E/A5 load utility(?) loaded by LOAD

VCATALOG <--TIB/XB program to catalog a volume

As you can see, CATALOG, VCATALOG and EXAMPLE should all have loaded successfully in TI Basic (TIB).

LOAD will autoload and start with the Extended Basic (XB) cartridge present. It may also run in TIB, but you would need the Editor/Assembler cartridge (see below) and you would need to load it by hand because it will not autoload with TIB. (I am actually not sure it will run in TIB, but I cannot check until I get home in a few weeks.)

If you have loaded the available startup program pack into the FlashROM99, you should have Editor/Assembler II (E/AII), which is functionally the same as the E/A cartridge but written in TMS9900 Assembly Language by Fred Kaal instead of the GPL of the E/A cartridge, the binary for which will not run in the FlashROM99. You should be able to find E/AII in the FlashROM99 menu. Once selected, you can choose Option 5 (“RUN PROGRAM FILE”) to start CFMGR by supplying “DSK1.CFMGR” (without the quotes) at the “FILE NAME?” prompt.

CFMGR/O is the same program as CFMGR but is an object file rather than a memory image. If you really want to go to the trouble of loading and running it, you can choose Option 3 (“LOAD AND RUN”) to load CFMGR/O by supplying “DSK1.CFMGR/O” (without the quotes) at the “FILE NAME?” prompt, <Enter> (with no name) at the next “FILE NAME?” prompt and “SLOAD” (no quotes) at the “PROGRAM NAME?” prompt.

...lee

[john_rm_1970]

Thankyou, Lee.

 

Much appreciated.