MDOS 7.00 Developer's Version

[+9640News]

Tim has forwarded a beta version of MDOS V7.00 that takes advantage of several new features to MDOS.  First, the devicename TIPI is now recognized as a device in GPL mode without the use of Rompage.  Utilities such as DM2K now work without using Rompage and you can use a device name of TIPI instead of DSK0.  Now, what would not work is programs such as CHATTI, CHESS, Stuart's web broser, or any other program that makes use of the TCP Socket access.  Those applications still work in Rompage mode, just not in the new "native" mode as it requires the card to be physically mapped in.

 

I have been testing the HRD4000B on the system copying code and assembling things without issue thus far.  Tim is using a "SCS3" interface using a SCSI command SCSMAP I was not aware was present for apparently quite some time.

 

After relearning how to reload the PFM on the Geneve, I was able to SPLIT V7.00 of MDOS into two pieces so it would fit on the PFM as well as reload the PFM Ramdisk with the SCSI 8K code segment.  

 

Right now, with the HRD4000B, I have an ~25,000 sector "harddisk-ramdisk" I am using with the new FORM program creating a 1600 sector disk image, and the ~25,000 sector "harddisk-ramdisk" image.

 

Tim reports there was a speed increase with the HRD's, but I haven't tested anything thus far to determine how much of a speed increase.

 

Either way, unless bugs are found, this looks there will be a nice update coming out.  Fortunately, I make DREM backups of my hard drive images, so if something does go bad, it will not be catastrophic.

 

Beery

 

 

 

Edited November 9, 2020 by BeeryMiller

[+9640News]

I should also make note that running programs from the TIPI while in MDOS mode is not there so the TIPI will not be a hard drive replacement.

 

Beery

[+InsaneMultitasker]

SCSMAP is similar to remap in that it remaps to a specific SCSx. device number.  It was originally implemented to allow the user to map a SCSI unit (0-7) to a SCS1., SCS2., or SCS3., and came in handy for things like ZIP drives with fixed unit numbers.  You can assign that ram harddrive as one or all three.

 

TIPI is not (yet) available in MDOS.   Many of the internal commands are built on the DIRectory routine which is at its core sector-IO based.  There is also the need to sort out the memory constraints in both the command line interpreter and the master DSR.   The GPL implementation is limited (so far) by similar constraints. 

[Nick99]

Do I need to put some more memory (32kb) on my Geneve to be able to use this version?

 

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Do I need to put some more memory (32kb) on my Geneve to be able to use this version?

 

 

I believe you need the 32kb addon for anything higher than mdos 5

 

 

[Nick99]

19 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

I believe you need the 32kb addon for anything higher than mdos 4.

I suspected that, but better ask than to not really know. ?

So now I need to get my hands on the 32kb (and also the 64kb for the VDP-ram), anybody has any for me to buy? PM me (I don´t want to hijack this thread).

[+mizapf]

The 32K SRAM expansion is essential, but I don't know how many programs make use of the expanded video RAM.

 

https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Geneve_CPU_Memory_Upgrade

[+dhe]

mizapf,

  Is there a way to crank up the speed of MAME, I know for things like most arcade games, close to original timing is optimal, when it comes to things, like compiling MDOS - a 2Ghz TMS9995 would be nice!

[+FarmerPotato]

On 11/8/2020 at 8:13 PM, BeeryMiller said:

 

 

Either way, unless bugs are found, this looks there will be a nice update coming out.  Fortunately, I make DREM backups of my hard drive images, so if something does go bad, it will not be catastrophic.

 

Beery

 

 

 

What is DREM backup? I'm wondering how I can backup my HDS1.

 

[+mizapf]

7 hours ago, dhe said:

Is there a way to crank up the speed of MAME, I know for things like most arcade games, close to original timing is optimal, when it comes to things, like compiling MDOS - a 2Ghz TMS9995 would be nice!

No, actually not. A lot of work has been invested over (literally) decades to model execution times as close as possible to the real machine. If you need such things as fast compiling or assembling, maybe some external tools running on the PC are a better way.

 

 

[+mizapf]

I shall give you some more technical reasons for this, to avoid sounding like "I just don't like it."

 

I suppose many people believe that an emulation uses some kind of delay loops here and there to achieve the real execution speed. As for MAME, this is not the case; other simulators and emulators may do it the same way or have other ways.

 

In fact, the MAME core contains a scheduler that gives every clocked component a kind of "permit" to run for a specific amount of its cycles. The components are invoked at special points in time, deadlines. Those deadlines may be e.g. 16.67 ms apart when set up by the video interrupt (60 Hz), but they are closer together and with different time spans with several interleaved timers. So if we only had the video interrupt, we can assume the scheduler is invoked every 16.67 ms.

 

Then the core calculates the number of cycles that happen in the real machine during that time. If we take 333 ns as the TMS9900 cycle time, this means 50000 cycles. Hence, the scheduler calls the TMS9900 component in MAME to execute exactly 50000 cycles. This is done as fast as your PC can do it; there are no delay loops inside. Of course, there is an emulation of wait states and of the READY line control; the wait states are realized by letting the appropriate cycles pass without action. But this is part of the emulation, not of the emulator. (Which means: The emulator cannot take away this feature, as I wrote the emulation that way; it is a required behavior.)

 

When the TMS9900 component has finished to run its 50000 cycles, it returns control to the scheduler which will call it after the next deadline. This means that if your PC is pretty fast, the component has a lot of free time now. But if your PC is not so fast, it may actually fail to meet the deadline. In that case, the emulation runs slower than the real system. You can see that when you stop the emulator: In the command line window, you get an output about the speed. If it says 100%, then all deadlines were met. The more it is below 100%, the more it failed to keep the deadlines.

 

I put a performance comparison table on https://www.mizapf.de/en/ti99/mame/mamereq

 

The benchmark feature of MAME removes all deadlines and lets it execute everything one after another without free time. Also, the screen output is turned off because this is a heavy performance load. So if you look at the numbers for the "Thinkpad T60 Core2 Duo" when it runs the Geneve emulation, you see that it achieves 91% of the real speed. This means that this is actually the fastest way to run the Geneve emulation. All spare times are 0, and quite some deadlines were missed. This computer cannot run MAME any faster even when you removed the deadlines.

 

On my Core i7 PC, the raw Geneve performance is 483% without graphic output; this would take away another 100%. This means that when I removed those deadlines, it would run at most 4 times as fast as the real Geneve. And I did not even take floppy and hard disk operations into account, which would be important for you as you were talking about doing compile and assemble work. Those are also heavy impacts, and I'd expect that you won't make it run more than at double speed. When I do heavy floppy and hard disk work in the emulation, it may even drop below 100% on my machine.

 

There is in fact a setting "speed" in mame.ini. You may try to increase it, but as I said, you will not reach a much faster emulation, especially when your speed is already close to 100%. Maybe try it and compare the run speed of a simple TI BASIC loop 1 to 1000; you'll notice that the sound is broken, much too high pitched, but the BASIC program seems to run at the same slow pace.

[+9640News]

9 hours ago, FarmerPotato said:

What is DREM backup? I'm wondering how I can backup my HDS1.

 

DREM Backup - SD card emulating two MFM drive's.

[RickyDean]

11 hours ago, FarmerPotato said:

What is DREM backup? I'm wondering how I can backup my HDS1.

 

https://www.drem.info/

[+9640News]

I think there are two options to backup your HDS1.  I'm assuming you have a Geneve here since HDS1 is mentioned though the two options mentioned below work for a Geneve or TI-99/4A.

 

1. Get a DREM and use it for your hard drives instead of physical drives. You use a SD card and can backup your hard drive image in < 1 minute.

2. Untested, by I think you can use HARDBACK by Tom Freeman, under Rompage/TI994A mode on the Geneve or using a TI-99/4A and backup from WDS1 to TIPI.  Assuming HardBack recognized the TIPI, this is a file copy process so it will take longer.  After MDOS 7.00 is released, I think you should be able to avoid Rompage mode.

 

If I have time and think of it tonight, I will confirm Hardback is a workable route.

 

Those are the simplest two methods, but each has a cost if you do not have either a TIPI or DREM.

 

Beery

 

 

[+FarmerPotato]

43 minutes ago, BeeryMiller said:

I think there are two options to backup your HDS1.  I'm assuming you have a Geneve here since HDS1 is mentioned though the two options mentioned below work for a Geneve or TI-99/4A.

 

1. Get a DREM and use it for your hard drives instead of physical drives. You use a SD card and can backup your hard drive image in < 1 minute.

2. Untested, by I think you can use HARDBACK by Tom Freeman, under Rompage/TI994A mode on the Geneve or using a TI-99/4A and backup from WDS1 to TIPI.  Assuming HardBack recognized the TIPI, this is a file copy process so it will take longer.  After MDOS 7.00 is released, I think you should be able to avoid Rompage mode.

 

If I have time and think of it tonight, I will confirm Hardback is a workable route.

 

Those are the simplest two methods, but each has a cost if you do not have either a TIPI or DREM.

 

Beery

 

 

Thank you, I did not know that DREM was the SD drive option! 

 

I will say HDS1 to refer to the spinning metal MFM drive. I used to have a Myarc Winchester WDS1 (only on the 4A) What does WDS1 refer to these days?

 

When you say backup, you mean copy SD to SD, right? Can you backup a MFM drive to the DREM?

 

I would like to understand the format of the DREM image.  Does it interchange with the MESS drive image?

 

 

 

My setup is now:

• Geneve 9640 with 32K added.
• HFDC with spinning MFM drive, external case power. Boots MDOS 6.00 but I see MDOS650 subdirectory I could try (must have floppy boot in place first)
• 3.5" B: drive and 5.25" 40-track A: drive. (Hooray!)  
• @Shift838 SCARTgenie, to Samsung 910MP in French EXT mode. (Hey, anybody else get that to work without setting French region?)

 

[Shift838]

Just now, FarmerPotato said:

Thank you, I did not know that DREM was the SD drive option! 

 

I will say HDS1 to refer to the spinning metal MFM drive. I used to have a Myarc Winchester WDS1 (only on the 4A) What does WDS1 refer to these days?

 

When you say backup, you mean copy SD to SD, right? Can you backup a MFM drive to the DREM?

 

I would like to understand the format of the DREM image.  Does it interchange with the MESS drive image?

 

 

 

My setup is now:

• Geneve 9640 with 32K added.
• HFDC with spinning MFM drive, external case power. Boots MDOS 6.00 but I see MDOS650 subdirectory I could try (must have floppy boot in place first)
• 3.5" B: drive and 5.25" 40-track A: drive. (Hooray!)  
• @Shift838 SCARTgenie, to Samsung 910MP in French EXT mode. (Hey, anybody else get that to work without setting French region?)

 

i had to set my 910mp region to Germany.  From my understanding you have to be in some European region to get the EXT (RGB) input to be enabled.

 

 

[+FarmerPotato]

17 minutes ago, Shift838 said:

i had to set my 910mp region to Germany.  From my understanding you have to be in some European region to get the EXT (RGB) input to be enabled.

 

 

OK, its not just mine. I was afraid I had a goofy SCART cable and that was why EXT was always disabled. I read all the menu options several times... 

If you supplied that in the instructions, I apologize for not reading them.

 

 

 

[+9640News]

38 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said:

Thank you, I did not know that DREM was the SD drive option! 

 

I will say HDS1 to refer to the spinning metal MFM drive. I used to have a Myarc Winchester WDS1 (only on the 4A) What does WDS1 refer to these days?

 

When you say backup, you mean copy SD to SD, right? Can you backup a MFM drive to the DREM?

 

I would like to understand the format of the DREM image.  Does it interchange with the MESS drive image?

 

 

 

My setup is now:

• Geneve 9640 with 32K added.
• HFDC with spinning MFM drive, external case power. Boots MDOS 6.00 but I see MDOS650 subdirectory I could try (must have floppy boot in place first)
• 3.5" B: drive and 5.25" 40-track A: drive. (Hooray!)  
• @Shift838 SCARTgenie, to Samsung 910MP in French EXT mode. (Hey, anybody else get that to work without setting French region?)

 

The DREM drive is hardwired to respond as MFM Drive #1 and MFM Drive #2.  While you could make your existing spinning MFM drive as #3, it would be read only as you can not write to drive #3 on the real hardware.  On the Geneve, the Myarc HFDC in MDOS mode is always HDS1.  It is HDS1 in GPL mode as well, however if you use Rompage, it is now using the HFDC eprom and is then WDS1 as it is on a TI-99/4A.

 

The DREM "format", is basically a sector by sector copy of a hard drive image.  It has a CFG file that goes along with it on the SD card to tells all the parameters for the drive (heads/cylinders/spt/etc).  Maximum size right now is 64 MB for the image.

 

As far as backup, turn Geneve off, pull SD card from DREM, plug into Windows PC, copy directory where the drive images are stored to your Windows PC hard drive.

 

I don't make frequent backups, but when I am doing a significant amount of programming, I make backups of the drive image files.  As I have two DREM's as I have two HFDC's, I can copy a SD to my windows hard drive, then copy the new files overtop the old images on the other system.

Beery

 

 

 

 

 

[+mizapf]

45 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said:

I would like to understand the format of the DREM image.  Does it interchange with the MESS drive image?

The format in MAME is a special metadata-enriched container format. But if you have a sector dump, you can easily create a MAME HD image and vice versa (using chdman or TIImageTool).

[+9640News]

9 hours ago, BeeryMiller said:

 

2. Untested, by I think you can use HARDBACK by Tom Freeman, under Rompage/TI994A mode on the Geneve or using a TI-99/4A and backup from WDS1 to TIPI.  Assuming HardBack recognized the TIPI, this is a file copy process so it will take longer.  After MDOS 7.00 is released, I think you should be able to avoid Rompage mode.

 

If I have time and think of it tonight, I will confirm Hardback is a workable route.

 

 

Just tested.  Hardback is hard coded to accept only WDS drive numbers, so no way to backup to the TIPI.

 

I also tested DM2K, and it complains as well.  So, right now, I do not have a simple solution to backup a spinning MFM drive to another high capacity storage device with the current utilities we have on hand in an automated or quick manner.

 

Beery

[+InsaneMultitasker]

4 minutes ago, BeeryMiller said:

Just tested.  Hardback is hard coded to accept only WDS drive numbers, so no way to backup to the TIPI.

 

I also tested DM2K, and it complains as well.  So, right now, I do not have a simple solution to backup a spinning MFM drive to another high capacity storage device with the current utilities we have on hand in an automated or quick manner.

 

Beery

Did you use ROMPAGE with DM2K?  You won't see WDSx otherwise...

[+9640News]

10 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

Did you use ROMPAGE with DM2K?  You won't see WDSx otherwise...

 

I tried both with and without Rompage mode with DM2K backing up a WDS1/HDS1 device to the TIPI.  I believe the issue is with directory creation.

My "test" was to give it a starting destination on the TIPI, and then to allow it to create the directories on the fly.

 

Beery

[+9640News]

I should also add I was trying to copy a directory that additional sub directories underneath.

Beery

[+InsaneMultitasker]

6 hours ago, BeeryMiller said:

 

I tried both with and without Rompage mode with DM2K backing up a WDS1/HDS1 device to the TIPI.  I believe the issue is with directory creation.

My "test" was to give it a starting destination on the TIPI, and then to allow it to create the directories on the fly.

My only thought/suggestion is that you check the tipi log for clues.  Will DM2K create a directory on the TIPI if you peform that operation manually?  Are you using DSK0 or TIPI?  I don't know if Fred accounts for the unit number that is missing from the TIPI device name. If the device number is being parsed from the fourth character as is typical, the unit could be wrong.  Conjecture until cause is proved, I suppose. 

[+9640News]

Tim,

 

Did some more testing.

 

With MDOS 7.00 in Rompage mode, with DM2K I can copy two directories deep from WDS2 to DSK0 no issue.

 

With MDOS 7.00 in normal mode, with DM2K I can NOT copy the first file under the the marked directory (with subdirectories --- aka MDOS source).  It chokes on the first file, as the MDOS directory is not made so it can't copy the file to the TIPI.  This sounds like a limitation of the master DSR in GPL mode.

 

At least now, there is a way to backup hard drive files on spinning devices out over to the TIPI versus using floppy disks.

 

Beery