Geneve users on AtariAge

[+9640News]

I'm creating a poll, hopefully, to determine how many Geneve users using original hardware or an emulator, are on this Forum.

 

Beery

[+eebuckeye]

I have a Geneve but have not used it yet. got it from Ron Markus (how is he doing?) years ago. First thing I need is a video cable.

[Opry99er]

Have coveted one for years and years. There is always someone willing to pay more than I am when they come up for sale, so I continue to covet from afar.

 

There will come a day.....

Edited March 8, 2018 by Opry99er

[sparkdrummer]

As it stands right now - I'm a Geneve OWNER - Got 2 of them - Been trying to get some space in my cave to set one of them up again - Wishing an MFM hard drive emulator would come out that is cheap and functional with a Myarc HFDC. I've got 3 RAVE 512 ramdisks that I used to use in one of my systems so they'll probably come into play. I have a MEMEX card also - How costly is it to expand that thing to the max?

[ti99iuc]

I have a Geneve but have not used it yet. got it from Ron Markus (how is he doing?) years ago. First thing I need is a video cable.

Me too ! same situation purchased two Geneve in the past but i have to complete them into a PEB and connecting to a monitor. So understand how it works and create some floppy i will need.

[+Schmitzi]

I have one standard model and a PFM modded one with 384K 0-WS 192K Video & 128K Flash (Barry Boone´s)

....and I am learning by trying from time to time

 

Still have to tinker around with my HFDC and the DDCC-1/80track (also from Barry)

(Did I mention that I´m looking for a scusi ? )

[+9640News]

Are the folks that have a Geneve but are not using it, or the folks that are wanting one, using MAME/MESS for emulation?

 

The reason I put the poll up was just trying to get an idea if any software I write on the Geneve/MDOS side will see much use beyond myself.

[Opry99er]

Im not using MAME...

 

What kind of software are you planning to produce, Beery? Youve got me interested.

[+9640News]

Right now, just messing with the modifications to MyTerm to make it more Telnet friendly and useable with BBS's at these higher speeds. I've contemplated playing with some very simple text based web browser capability, but that is only a dream at the moment.

 

Another thing I have contemplated is, and it may be something Tim has already done, is to read a TI disk and create a .DSK file for uploading/downloading as well as a restore capability. I've got the core pieces of that software already in some stuff I wrote years ago. Seems like Tim may have done something along those lines, but I am not sure.

 

Right now, just trying to get a feel for what the active masses here are using to gauge if there will be any interest beyond myself for anything I do.

 

Beery

[Opry99er]

Interesting. Thanks for that.

[+mizapf]

Since you are interested in absolute numbers, the poll would have probably better been formulated as "(1) Real Geneve owner" vs. "(2) Emulation". Other people will just not cast any vote. Anyway, let's see.

 

Do you know about the disk utilities that I (and Gerd Wiesinger) wrote some time ago, to be run under Linux? They can be used to read a TI disk in a PC drive and produce a DSK from it. I used it to create image from all of my disks.

floppyti.zip

[RickyDean]

I have two Geneves, one modded by Tim, PFM+, and one original, 32k mod. also several Myarc 512's modded for memory. I also use Geneve emulation in Mess/Mame, and have contemplated doing a stand alone emulator comparable to V9T9 in Java or Js99er in Javascript. Also want to produce a floppy manager, based on C# or a web api model.

[+arcadeshopper]

I have a geneve it is the second one I've owned. I sold my first one in the 90s like an idiot because I figured I wasn't using it so someone else should enjoy it immediately regretted this and went looking for another one ended up purchasing one that had been killed in an electrical storm and send it to Richard Bell who resuscitated it back to life I have it set up and ready to try any software that you guys are going to the right and I may even mess around with writing some myself sometime if I can ever have more than one day off. I am on the lookout for memory cards as I just have the stock machine with the 32k added on so I can run the newer mdos

 

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

[+9640News]

Since you are interested in absolute numbers, the poll would have probably better been formulated as "(1) Real Geneve owner" vs. "(2) Emulation". Other people will just not cast any vote. Anyway, let's see.

 

Do you know about the disk utilities that I (and Gerd Wiesinger) wrote some time ago, to be run under Linux? They can be used to read a TI disk in a PC drive and produce a DSK from it. I used it to create image from all of my disks.

 

I was not aware of that software. I just looked over the c source, and it looks like it is capturing the whole track of information? Along the lines of the HFE format?

 

I guess what I was thinking was just something that captured the sectors, and then wrote them back out into a file as a straight sector dump. That would allow movement of information/disks back and forth between real hardware and BBS's a bit easier.

 

One of my focuses has been on being able to backup files on my HFDC with some kind of dependability so I do not lose any source code, etc. I did explore Tim's Ymodem batch protocol in Port uploading to private file areas on my BBS, however I had some source files with similar names (SUB1, SUB2, SUB3) that created some issues in filename and file overwrites on the BBS side of things. I could have easily renamed them to get around that hurdle, just haven't proceeded down that road yet.

 

I just do not want to be caught in a situation where something I have spent considerable time on being lost to a crashed hard drive. Been down that road "enough times". Right now, with the telnet client of MyTerm, I am backing up the code to an emulated drive on a SD card.

 

Beery

[FDOS]

Berry, I still have my 2MB GenMod Geneve, and a PFM512K+, also with 2MB Memex (only 512K accessible), both have 192K VDP and I use to do all development using MESS. I won't get back to this until after I complete TI BASIC Plus (TIB+). Which appears that I have to do all by myself, as no volunteers to assist have responded. This means it will take a lot longer than I was hopping it would. Even though it was easier to develop software for using MDOS XOPs, there are not many users to assist, so on my back burner.

[+mizapf]

I was not aware of that software. I just looked over the c source, and it looks like it is capturing the whole track of information? Along the lines of the HFE format?

 

No, it only reads the sectors. You cannot get more from a PC floppy controller. That said, its task is indeed to read every sector of the disk in sequence and to copy its contents to an output file, which means it produces a DSK (sector dump) file.

 

The "loadtrack" function that you probably saw is just used to read all sectors of the track in one go, to make it faster.

 

The writer tool can then write a DSK file back to a floppy disk.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

 

Another thing I have contemplated is, and it may be something Tim has already done, is to read a TI disk and create a .DSK file for uploading/downloading as well as a restore capability. I've got the core pieces of that software already in some stuff I wrote years ago. Seems like Tim may have done something along those lines, but I am not sure.

 

 

 

You might be thinking of the emulate file creation, used with the HFDC to emulate a floppy via disk image. EMULCREAT was the program name, if I recall correctly. I think Tom Freeman wrote the original program. I contemplated writing a program to convert the raw DSK images into that same format but never went down that path. The second layer of DSR conversion/abstraction just meant I could lose files more easily with data corruption, so I got away from disk emulation for all but a few things (like Infocom games) on the real hardware. I use a PC to back up my platters - takes 2 minutes for 130MB - so now the only challenge is remembering to perform the backup. for example, I typically take Heatwave down once a month for maintenance and backup.

[ndp630]

I bought and used a Geneve back in the day(bought it from Asgard when they were first released) but sold it and my Memex to finance other computer purchases after several years. I would really like to start using Mame for emulation but it looks a little complicated to get started.

 

Doug

[+9640News]

 

I use a PC to back up my platters - takes 2 minutes for 130MB - so now the only challenge is remembering to perform the backup. for example, I typically take Heatwave down once a month for maintenance and backup.

 

That's with a SCSI system, right? No SCSI here.

 

I did inquire about some group offering an emulated MFM drive. I do not recall the last number I heard, but it was north of $1500 so not practical. Must be market targeted more for specialty medical needs or ancient manufacturing hardware running under older systems nobody supports anymore.

 

I forgot about Tom's EMULCREAT program. Not sure if he released the source code to it or not. If he did, that would be a quick/easy utility then to modify for our/my needs. I would love to do something like that with my hard drive as well, but bringing a sector copy of the hard drive into a MAME/MESS HD image would involve coding efforts I am not sure I could do. Seems like the format with the later versions got to be more complicated in the file header. I'm not sure on that, but I think that was the case.

 

Beery

[+InsaneMultitasker]

Yes, SCSI. As for the source code, yes, he released it. If you cannot find it, I am sure I can find what he released or my updated source.

On

Michael would know best regarding the images. I can tell you that the raw dumps I use can be converted into usable HD images. Once upon a time I used a bastardized version of my BBS to transfer my hard drive on a sector-by-sector basis to the PC. I used the bitmap to identify the used sectors and transmitted empty sectors for all others. Once I got to the point all used sectors had been transferred, I completed the file transfer, then proceeded to use winhex (or some other pc based sector editor) to copy that transferred file into an existing, larger raw image.

 

As usual, many ways to skin the cat. Just be careful when using BREAD/BWRITE on your hard drive devices. It is very easy to overwrite sector 0-63 if you encode the PAB incorrectly. I often check the device length (after parsing from an alias) for anything 5 or fewer characters, to avoid the mistake of writing to HDSx. or SCSx. without a filename...

Edited March 8, 2018 by InsaneMultitasker

[+9640News]

Yes, SCSI. As for the source code, yes, he released it. If you cannot find it, I am sure I can find what he released or my updated source.

On

Michael would know best regarding the images. I can tell you that the raw dumps I use can be converted into usable HD images. Once upon a time I used a bastardized version of my BBS to transfer my hard drive on a sector-by-sector basis to the PC. I used the bitmap to identify the used sectors and transmitted empty sectors for all others. Once I got to the point all used sectors had been transferred, I completed the file transfer, then proceeded to use winhex (or some other pc based sector editor) to copy that transferred file into an existing, larger raw image.

 

As usual, many ways to skin the cat. Just be careful when using BREAD/BWRITE on your hard drive devices. It is very easy to overwrite sector 0-63 if you encode the PAB incorrectly. I often check the device length (after parsing from an alias) for anything 5 or fewer characters, to avoid the mistake of writing to HDSx. or SCSx. without a filename...

 

I'm fairly sure I should have Tom's code back from the day it was put on the 9640News / GEnie CD.

 

One of the earlier HD images in MESS was not much more than a header and then the balance of the file was a sector by sector dump. There were newer versions of the CHD image which complicated things. I remember at one time, I had to hex edit one of the HD images to disable a byte. I do not recall if that was to keep the file in an uncompressed format, or if there was some kind of error checking on the sectors in the file. I think my MAME image is the latest format version after updating it through TIIMAGETOOL. Just not sure what is involved with the latest format change, etc.

 

Beery

[+mizapf]

The MAME CHD format remained unchanged with v5 since 2012, and I do not know of any pending changes in future.

 

I know that every change of format is painful, but if you take into account how long MAME (MESS) already exist (since 1997!), this is comparably rare. I think MS Office users had more changes in the meantime. :-)

 

Remember, concerning MAME, you are in the comfortable situation that I am here to answer your questions.

[+mizapf]

As usual, many ways to skin the cat. Just be careful when using BREAD/BWRITE on your hard drive devices. It is very easy to overwrite sector 0-63 if you encode the PAB incorrectly. I often check the device length (after parsing from an alias) for anything 5 or fewer characters, to avoid the mistake of writing to HDSx. or SCSx. without a filename...

 

My nightmare, as I had to learn with my MDOS XModem tool. An unexpected behavior of the "parse name" syscall left me with an empty path ("SCS1."), and then came the BWRITE...

[Swim]

I have a PFM+ mini tower Geneve with "Windows" installed, a "work" Geneve I use for repairs upgrades and a few Geneves in various stages of broken that I plan to bring back from the dead if I ever get TI/Geneve time on the weekends again. Looking forward to taking your version of "My Term" for a spin when you get around releasing it.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

 

One of the earlier HD images in MESS was not much more than a header and then the balance of the file was a sector by sector dump. There were newer versions of the CHD image which complicated things. I remember at one time, I had to hex edit one of the HD images to disable a byte.

 

Once the raw image is prepared, I have to go through whatever the conversion process is. I think I use TI Image Tool(?) for that step? I don't think you can use a raw image directly. For the older MESS images there was a utility to convert from raw to compressed and back again.