Next Steps

[Bill Smith]

Hey all. I just pulled my TI out of my parents attic and got it up and running with a home built composite cable.  A couple of years ago ,  I did the lavarand project using an RPi. I thought it would be really cool to actually do it on retro hardware. To do it, I have a couple of hurdles to overcome.

 

1) be able to calculate a cryptographic hash, preferably SHA-256. 

2) be able to turn on and off the lava lamps with an IO board

3) read in a raw stream (camera image of the lamps) to calculate the hash

 

I want to try and stay as authentic as possible but recognize that things like the camera image and the io board will probably have to be done on some external microcontoller like an arduino. 

 

My questions for this group.

1) I basically only have the base machine. Should I invest in a nanopeb? That would give me the serial io, I think.

2) Should I get a finalgrom99 for loading/running the final app?

3) Looking at programming options, I'm assuming straight assembly or one of the c cross compilers. Thoughts?

 

Any general thoughts? I obviously need to baby step my way in to this, but am excited for this side project.

 

 Bill

[GDMike]

Hey Bill, great stuff.

I've never been happier since getting my TIpi, S.A.M.S. memory and a finalgrom. I can store files on my shared laptop and run desktop on my pi as well.

 

[+FarmerPotato]

16 hours ago, Bill Smith said:

Hey all. I just pulled my TI out of my parents attic and got it up and running with a home built composite cable.  A couple of years ago ,  I did the lavarand project using an RPi. I thought it would be really cool to actually do it on retro hardware. To do it, I have a couple of hurdles to overcome.

 

1) be able to calculate a cryptographic hash, preferably SHA-256. 

2) be able to turn on and off the lava lamps with an IO board

3) read in a raw stream (camera image of the lamps) to calculate the hash

 

I want to try and stay as authentic as possible but recognize that things like the camera image and the io board will probably have to be done on some external microcontoller like an arduino. 

 

My questions for this group.

1) I basically only have the base machine. Should I invest in a nanopeb? That would give me the serial io, I think.

2) Should I get a finalgrom99 for loading/running the final app?

3) Looking at programming options, I'm assuming straight assembly or one of the c cross compilers. Thoughts?

 

Any general thoughts? I obviously need to baby step my way in to this, but am excited for this side project.

 

 Bill

 

FinalGROM will be a nice way to run on a standalone console-- but you will need the 32K sidecar anyway unless your code executes out of ROM and doesn't need that 32K of RAM.

 

I think that a 32K/TiPi will be the easiest way to develop. You can use the xdt99 assembler, or gcc, on the Pi. The TI-99/4A will see the output file in a directory.

Developing on the 4A console with a Nano is quite authentic, but it is so slow. Serial transfer is ok to a Nano, but I end up just moving the Nano's physical CF card back and forth to a PC.

 

If you meant serial data from the camera? practical baud rates top out at 9600, what rate do you need to grab the frame buffer (or part of it)? (My experience is with the CMUCam and an FTDI interface.. that was 115200)

 

There is also the UberGrom, which provides a  UART (on an AtMega.. you might find that useful itself)

 

 

Some baby steps in interfacing:

 

The cassette port and joystick ports can be exploited. The cassette motor control pin is good for turning a relay on or off. The audio in gate is another - I once sampled this to get entropy in.

 

You can make a serial interface using the joystick port, known as JoyTalk / JoyPrint 

 

[Bill Smith]

Thanks for the feedback. Trying to make my initial shopping list.

 

I already have 2 speech synthesizers so I have no concerns modding one for the 5v pass thru.

 

If I understand what I need for starters is a 32k sidecare like this? https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/32k-sidecar-memory-expansion/p/73789245/category=28272181

 

I think I'd also like a finalgrom: https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/Brewing-Academy-finalgrom99-with-label-case-and-manual/p/161892072/category=24438345

 

Where I'm getting confused is what TIPI component to plug in to the sidecar. I believe this is what I'm looking for? https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/TIPI-SIDECAR-Raspberry-PI-interface-board-*44pin-interface-port-required*/p/103690282/category=28272181

 

One last question (on this pass, I know I'll have more). What is the difference between the 32k sidecar and a SAMS?

 

Thanks again for the help!!

 

Regards,

Bill

 

[+Lee Stewart]

16 minutes ago, Bill Smith said:

One last question (on this pass, I know I'll have more). What is the difference between the 32k sidecar and a SAMS?

 

The SAMS card supplies the 32 KiB expansion RAM in addition to the extra RAM that can be paged into one or more of the 4 KiB blocks addressed in that expansion RAM (>2000, >3000, >A000 – >F000).

 

The 32 KiB sidecar has only the 32 KiB of expansion RAM.

 

You can have one or the other in the system, but not both.

 

...lee

[Keneg]

12 hours ago, Lee Stewart said:

 

The SAMS card supplies the 32 KiB expansion RAM in addition to the extra RAM that can be paged into one or more of the 4 KiB blocks addressed in that expansion RAM (>2000, >3000, >A000 – >F000).

 

The 32 KiB sidecar has only the 32 KiB of expansion RAM.

 

You can have one or the other in the system, but not both.

 

...lee

I believe you can set a jumper on the TIPI/32k to disable the 32k and use SAMS if you want.  Arcadeshopper can give you more info.

[+arcadeshopper]

On 10/3/2020 at 7:44 PM, Keneg said:

I believe you can set a jumper on the TIPI/32k to disable the 32k and use SAMS if you want.  Arcadeshopper can give you more info.

The wiki on the TIPI/32K can give you all that info: https://github.com/jgparker/tipi/wiki