Turning old slow obsolete laptops into dedicated Classic 99 units

[Omega-TI]

6 hours ago, Tursi said:

Won't be anything new from me until it's at the top of the tasklist.

 

Well, since that'll never happen, I'll give up all hope for this project then.  Life is simply too short to wait for the impossible.  I'm sorry, I will not click a button everyday for 2.36 years in the hopes I'll get to the top of some list.

[Tursi]

17 hours ago, INVISIBLE said:

Well, since that'll never happen, I'll give up all hope for this project then.  Life is simply too short to wait for the impossible.  I'm sorry, I will not click a button everyday for 2.36 years in the hopes I'll get to the top of some list.

That's fine, because I won't drop everything I'm doing already just to give something to people who don't /really/ want it.  Those days are long over!

 

2 years... pfft. You optimist.

 

[wierd_w]

While I have so many mandatory training videos to slog through today... They are so unbearably horrible that I am feeling more and more compelled to mangle this linuxified chromebook I have sitting around, so that it can perform this function.

 

 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

1 hour ago, wierd_w said:

They are so unbearably horrible

Really?

 

[wierd_w]

While pretty bad, it does not hold a candle to the ones I am dealing with.

 

 

Imagine a narrated powerpoint presentation over the most obviously stupid thing-- like "When the switch is on, the lightbulb will glow."  EXCEPT---- You cannot advance the slide until the narrator stops talking-- AND-- the narrator graduated from the william shatner school of acting and has the slowest, most awful tempo you can have, while doing a lot of completely unneeded talking, and trying to ham up your "Emotional engagement" with overdone voice inflections.

 

I have like... 8 hours worth of that I have to slog through today.

[wierd_w]

I can now confirm that classic99 (latest release) *DOES* run under wine, as long as the prefix is 32bit.

 

It crashes hard almost instantly if the prefix is 64bit.  Go figure.

 

 

This tells me that I can set up a custom session on this hackified chromebook to start wine with the appropriate prefix, and start classic99, instead of starting a window manager.

I will set that up, and see how it goes.

[+Ksarul]

Actually, that sounds like it is light years better than some of the old Model 40 Teletype videos I had the dubious pleasure of sitting through. The narrator was an engineer--and it showed. "Please locate the 14 card cage case screws and remove each one of them by turning your #1 Phillips-Head screwdriver six turns in the counterclockwise direction. Once each of the 14 card cage case screws is loosened, place each of the card cage case screws in a secure location and gently pry the card cage cover upward about 1/4 inch." This is actually shorter than his description, as he described the identification and removal of each of those 14 screws somewhere in there. This was all in a low monotone drawl that was slower than playing a 45 RPM record at 33 1/3 RPM. Most folks listening to it fell dead asleep within the first ten minutes. . .which was seriously problematic in a military environment.

[wierd_w]

Well, I slogged through all of them regardless, and felt like I wanted to give myself a lobotomy with a hand mixer through the eyeball afterward, but all is well now.

 

It's clearly been too long since I have mucked about with custom Xwindow sessions in the chooser. Ran into snags trying to get wine to do its thing. Maybe I need to configure that prefix to emulate a desktop, and then it will work.  Unsure.  Will play with it more later.

[wierd_w]

SUCCESS!

 

I have xubuntu on this linuxified chromebook successfully autostarting classic99 inside a 32bit wine session, as a selectable desktop option on the chooser. It successfully picks it as a default. When you close classic99, it returns to the chooser.

 

Steps to replicate:

 

1) Create a new 32bit wine prefix

2) Install classic99 inside that prefix

3) Create a launch shellscript containing something like the following:

Quote

#! /bin/bash
sh -c "env WINEPREFIX='/home/chromebook/.wine32' wine '/home/chromebook/.wine32/drive_c/classic99/classic99.exe'"

I placed it in the /home/chromebook/.wine32/ folder and named it classic99.sh

 

4) create a new xsession desktop file for your custom session. These files are stored in /usr/share/xsessions
I named mine classic99.desktop  and it contains the following data.

Quote

 

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Classic99

Comment=Session to start classic 99

Exec=/home/chromebook/.wine32/classic99.sh
Icon=/home/chromebook/.local/share/icons/wlcreator/classic99.exe_14_103_1_32x32x4.png
Type=Application

 

 

5) configure wine so that it emulates a desktop, and does not permit the window manager to decorate or control windows. (Since no desktop manager is going to be running yo.)
Tell it the size of the virtual desktop to emulate, by setting it to the geometry of your display. This will make it fill the whole screen.

 

6) Make the launcher script, the xsession file, and classic99.exe executable with chmod.

 

 

 

Get me a bit, and I will attempt to grab video of the booting.

[wierd_w]

And-- Now video

 

Nevermind my terrible stuttering and dirty room.

 

 

 

 

This is an x86 based chromebook.

 

[Ed in SoDak]

I'm a new duckling in the PC pond. I snagged this Dell laptop mostly for the purpose of using Classic99. XP is the newest version of Windows it will support. I will keep Windows since I'm using notepad, Nitro for PDF files, TIdir and a few other programs. I don't plan to have it online much, I installed AVG for some baseline protection.

 

I like running Classic99 in a large window and just sleep the computer between sessions. Seems like the best of both worlds to me. I'm finally able to do some XB programming in emulation. Using Notepad and pasting XB into Classic99 is so much better than on the real iron's small screen. So far, the only thing I miss is Classic99 won't boot my Super Extended Basic, the XB I am most familiar with since I have an original Triton cart on my real iron TI, bought new when it was released.

 

I'll take my Mac's GUI any day over Windows XP, but I get around alright. I can run Classic99 on my old PPC Macs, using Virtual PC to emulate a Windows 98SE or Millenium system, but it's a total sloth. It's been a real treat using it on the platform it was created on. Thanks Tursi!

-Ed

[Tursi]

Hmm, Super XB seems to lock up for me, too. Interesting, I've never run it before. Anything unusual about it compared to standard XB (on the hardware side?) Still 2 banks, 40k GROM? I wonder if I just have a bad dump...

 

 

[Ed in SoDak]

Heck, I dunno. I have it from three or four cart collections found over the years. None of them reach the prompt in Classic99, they freeze on a blank light-blue screen. V9T9Mac and V9T9dos both run it fine.

 

There's similar carts such as XB2.4, XB2.7suite and RXB2015 but there's often some little difference in commands or syntax or keyboard editing enhancements. I have SXB mesmerized into my head after all these beers of using primarily it.

 

SXB has Draw n Plot patched in as a CALL, that might make it different enough. I never use that added function.

-Ed

[Tursi]

Interesting. It gets past looking for DSK1.LOAD, so it starts at least. I wonder what it's hanging on...

 

The module I have crashes under Classic99, JS99er and Win994A. I don't have a way to test it under MAME. However, confirmed it works under V9T9 DOS.

 

The crash is weird - it is an XML call from GPL that passes through to the middle of a function in ROM, as if the bank was incorrect during the jump.

 

In fact, by forcing the bank, that confirms it to be the case. It runs fine after that single bad call. So why is the ROM bank wrong, I wonder...

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Tursi

[Ed in SoDak]

You already know far more than I. An undocumented "feature" since released that somehow passes muster on real iron and V9T9. Makes me think it would run under MAME.

 

Looks like most, if not all, of the added commands were lifted from MG's Gram Kracker with Drawnplot from Quality99.

 

EDIT: Pressing the space bar aborts LOAD. That made no difference in Classic99, it still hung.

[Tursi]

And again with the "MAME is perfect". Even when I'm trying to help.

 

That said, of course, it does.

 

Can't edit the old post anymore... probably time to give up for a bit.

 

My lead guess is a CPU bug, though damned if I can guess what's left that writes to memory but doesn't work. JS99er's CPU is derived from mine, and Win994A seems to have been developed with a similar mindset as most of my critical CPU bugs over the years have been shared with it. I wonder if the MAME debugger can let me get a log of bank switches so I can see where the last one is triggered from...

 

The entry point for the fatal call is >7ADA, it enters from the XML function in ROM. On entry the bank should be 0, but in Classic99 it's still 1. This lands it in the middle of a copy loop with the count set to 0 (so, 65536), which wraps around memory and kills the program. (Win994A crashes on top of it )

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Tursi

[Ed in SoDak]

Der, whoops! I wouldn't know, I don't run MAME, even the old MIME version that my old Mac can actually load and run. I haven't put MAME on this Dell either. I like the Classic99 environment just fine. Right after installing it, I went to your site and bought you a coffee. And I'll be doing that again!

-Ed

[Ed in SoDak]

16 minutes ago, Tursi said:

The entry point for the fatal call is >7ADA, it enters from the XML function in ROM. On entry the bank should be 0, but in Classic99 it's still 1. This lands it in the middle of a copy loop with the count set to 0 (so, 65536), which wraps around memory and kills the program. (Win994A crashes on top of it )

 

Wow, you're way over my head. Here, I was suspecting a fault in the SXB cart coding, thinking an edit to it would allow it to work.

I was loathe to even mention it, though I did do a search and scanned the manual for any reference to using SXB in your TI emulator. I was frankly surprised to see you take it up so quickly. I would be back in oh-so-familiar territory if the glitch can be located. And appreciative as well! Thanks for even looking at it.

[Keatah]

Great to see old laptops being repurposed into dedicated emulation setups.

[Ed in SoDak]

It's been on my mind quite awhile, but it was this thread that kinda kicked me into gear on it. Most TI emulation efforts have skipped by my old Macs. For some things, it got to where I was using DOSbox to run V9T9dos, a double emulation where both apps have their quirks and limitations. Or VPC to give Classic99 a try. It just seemed to make sense to sidestep the Mac and get a PC just for this purpose. So far, it's a "Win."

[+Torrax]

Bumped an old topic from 2011 in the Development thread on SXB & Classic 99.  Included a 7-zip file.

[Tursi]

2 hours ago, Ed in SoDak said:

Wow, you're way over my head. Here, I was suspecting a fault in the SXB cart coding, thinking an edit to it would allow it to work.

I was loathe to even mention it, though I did do a search and scanned the manual for any reference to using SXB in your TI emulator. I was frankly surprised to see you take it up so quickly. I would be back in oh-so-familiar territory if the glitch can be located. And appreciative as well! Thanks for even looking at it.

hehe, sorry. Mostly just saving my notes to pick it up again later. Whatever the bug is, it's genuine, so fixing it helps everyone.

 

[Ed in SoDak]

30 minutes ago, Torrax said:

Bumped an old topic from 2011 in the Development thread on SXB & Classic 99.  Included a 7-zip file.

I'll be checking that out directly!

11 minutes ago, Tursi said:

hehe, sorry. Mostly just saving my notes to pick it up again later. Whatever the bug is, it's genuine, so fixing it helps everyone.

 

When I found no mention of it, I figured it was another instance of me belonging to a loyal user group of one member. My mainstays of MacV9T9 and SXB don't get much press, as us old newsboys say it.

[Tursi]

And it's fixed now.

[Ed in SoDak]

Christmas comes early! Man, you're good. Glad it was an apparently easy fix! I feel somehow completed in my quest. Can't wait to check it out tomorrow.