Geneve laptop from Win7

[mizapf]

I know pulseaudio from my Linux installation. For ALSA specifically, maybe https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture has some information.

[wierd_w]

23 minutes ago, mizapf said:

I know pulseaudio from my Linux installation. For ALSA specifically, maybe https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture has some information.

That is handy.

 

It was getting irritating wading through the sea of PulseAudio posts.  This section is potentially useful:

 

 

Quote

 

Select the default PCM via environment variable

Probably it is enough to set ALSA_CARD to the name of the device. First, get the names with aplay -l, then set ALSA_CARD to the name which comes after the colon and before the bracket; e.g. if you have

card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]

then set ALSA_CARD=HDMI.

 

 

After calling alsacfg -init, I can get output from amixer or aplay -L, grep it for "speaker", "analog", etc...  then set the variable with an export notation.

 

However, they also have a very appealing looking "Hyper minimal" gui program...  It just has python and GTK+ as dependencies (which as far as I can tell, MAME shares anyway).  I could pull the source and compile it as an installable .deb, and install it with dpkg.

 

I would need a way to invoke it from the root console though...

 

 

Edited January 18 by wierd_w

[hloberg]

finally found a working copy of GIMI  the graphics manager. cool, a graphics desktop.

[hloberg]

well, the Geneve is now organized, documented and filled with working programs on the 2 .hd drives. First I'm going to post a new Geneve package under the MAME section on my TI99RESOURCES.WORDPRESS.COM (up soon)

Then I'll figure out what I do from there. my Win7 and the Linux look to work as proof of concept of badgeless, quick boots to MAME.

edit: new Geneve package is up. just go to software and bottom to MAME packages and pick the Geneve package.

[+FarmerPotato]

On 1/20/2021 at 5:11 PM, hloberg said:

well, the Geneve is now organized, documented and filled with working programs on the 2 .hd drives. First I'm going to post a new Geneve package under the MAME section on my TI99RESOURCES.WORDPRESS.COM (up soon)

Then I'll figure out what I do from there. my Win7 and the Linux look to work as proof of concept of badgeless, quick boots to MAME.

edit: new Geneve package is up. just go to software and bottom to MAME packages and pick the Geneve package.

You are working on a Geneve info directory?

 

Mainbyte has the documents for Geneve battery replacement and Geneve 32K upgrade. @GDMike beat me to it.

 

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/upgrades.asp

 

[hloberg]

I moved all the emulation to it's own menu page on https://ti99resources.wordpress.com/ .

I'm still working on how I am going to design for the Geneve, PCard, TI99/8 & TI99/4. It might be a landing page that splits to 4? I'm not sure yet, it all depends on how much info and links I need to make.

[hloberg]

Here's the how-to on removing the Win7 branding on this Geneve laptop.

 

 

[hloberg]

Some thoughts on the software Geneve using Win7.

My goal was to see if you could use a standard PC and simulate a classic computer enough that it was mostly indistinguishable. I think I showed that it could be done using and old laptop with Win7 and MAME running Geneve emulation. The steps to de-badging the laptop of it's Win7 and HP takes only about an hour and can use off the shelf apps and techniques. The old laptop came up to the Geneve screen in about 20 seconds with no Win7 or HP badging then operated very much like a standard Geneve if it had been made into laptop. Also @wierd_w showed that the same could be done with Linux without all the hoops needed for the de-badging.

If I had a I7 computer and a fast solid state drive I bet i could got the start time way down.

Of course an I7 would more likely be UEFI so Win7 wouldn't work and would have to go with Win10 (which also can be de-badged) or Linux.

One thing about the emulators, I found an emulator in MAME that has no menu or other intrusion that might break the illusion. Not all are like that. only complaint I have about MAME is that it has gotten progressively more resource heavy in the latest versions. I couldn't run the Geneve on this laptop with the latest version of MAME and had to resort to a version almost 9 years old.

Another thing about emulators, If you boot and have all your data in an HD then your don't have to break the illusion in MAME and access a disk drive (which requires menu access). Be nice if you could boot from real floppies and swap floppies without MAME menu access. I found one program for the MSX that does allow that and allows using real MSDOS floppies, it's BlueMSX. 

Fun project. I think with a little work an lean OS and emulation combo could be created that would enable all those old boring PCs out there turn into cool retro computers look-a-likes without the massive cost and work of FPGA, RasPI or Arduino creation.  

 

 

[mizapf]

Just as a side comment: I don't think MAME has become progressively more resource-hungry. There were two steps in the evolution that indeed raised the bar:

 

0.147 (from 2012) where the CPU was rewritten to run microprograms and to fully process the READY line, thus becoming cycle-precise

0.153 (from 2014) where the floppy system was rewritten to operate on low-level flux changes instead of the high-level byte representation

 

All following changes had a smaller impact on performance, if any. In fact, both changes were inevitable due to the evolution of the MAME framework. As of now, I don't plan and I don't expect any similar changes in future.

[hloberg]

10 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Just as a side comment: I don't think MAME has become progressively more resource-hungry. There were two steps in the evolution that indeed raised the bar:

 

0.147 (from 2012) where the CPU was rewritten to run microprograms and to fully process the READY line, thus becoming cycle-precise

0.153 (from 2014) where the floppy system was rewritten to operate on low-level flux changes instead of the high-level byte representation

 

All following changes had a smaller impact on performance, if any. In fact, both changes were inevitable due to the evolution of the MAME framework. As of now, I don't plan and I don't expect any similar changes in future.

I guess I shouldn't labeled it as a complaint. I'm sure what was done was for purpose to make MAME better. The slow down in Geneve really showed in GPL emulation, everywhere else was mostly OK. But that laptop was a POS AMD from 2009, so you get what you paid for (in my case, it was a donation ). I'm probably going to retire this laptop after this and give it to one of the kids where I teach with the Win10 back on it that it came with. 

[mizapf]

Actually, I did not want to sound too defensive here; I did not understand your message as a complaint.

 

However, there is one point that triggers me. Saying that some software, particularly MAME, gets increasingly hungry is a very catchy meme. It's what people tend to remember most easily, as it occurs so many times for applications, operation systems, and more, and it makes it difficult to motivate people to upgrade their versions even though the new one delivers bug fixes or nice new features. So my posting should be understood as purely informative. 🙂

[wierd_w]

I have done some initial testing, and I can get the arch package for that minimalist GTK based graphic default sound device selection app shoehorned in. (it's basically just a gzipped tar, containing a python script and some support libs)

 

The issue I have, is that my chromebook has....... "Nonstandard" ..... audio hardware, that needs a special firmware blob. 

 

I am thinking I will need to integrate audio firmware in the image as well. 

 

A dirty kludge could be to use TTY2 as another GUI panel, with the sound picker running. Then use TTY3 for the root console.

[hloberg]

NEW ATTEMPT using XP.

I de-badged the XP but found no way to get rid of the DELL start, but it's only 2 seconds. Takes only 21 seconds to come up, which I'm happy with. I actually have removed EXPLORER and boot straight into MAME. Lots of registry hacks that I'll post in my projects blog later. I'm happier with this than the Win7 version. I didn't like using a Win7 laptop that I could give to someone that could use it (that win7 laptop went to a kid learning programming). Only thing I don't like is I haven't figured out yet to get rid of the little CMD box on start up. To start and shutdown I just press the on button. Never need to get into MAME menu.

Here's the video:

 https://youtu.be/vN8aari8tVY

 

Edited February 13 by hloberg

[wierd_w]

If you are gonna go with XP, consider using BartPE as the base.

 

Lighter weight, can live 100% on read-only (or other bootable) media.

 

[hloberg]

3 minutes ago, wierd_w said:

If you are gonna go with XP, consider using BartPE as the base.

 

Lighter weight, can live 100% on read-only (or other bootable) media.

 

interesting. I'll give it a look.

[hloberg]

a few thoughts on this project:

Messing with the Geneve I felt like it really wasn't ever finished. It has a lot of potential that was never tapped. We need a Geneve revival like the C64 group has their new C65 to work with, a beta improvement to the C64. The Geneve was a better TI-99. 

I think it is doable to make a computer completely in software now.  In this XP version I am only using XP as a core as I never start Explorer but jump straight to MAME. And it took only about 1/2 hour of registry hacks to remove the rest of XP. 

Next step is to integrate a OS with an emulator so that it can access the disk, serial, printer ports without ever needing to open a menu. It could look just like the computer and act like it all in software.

[hloberg]

Set the startup to now hold the swan till the DOS screen starts. Look much better. Also wrote LINES in ABASIC as a demo. What a powerful BASIC. The hi-rez graphics are colorful and fast. Graphics are actually better then the AtariST. ST in hi-rez only had 4 colors. The Geneve has 16.

 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

On 2/13/2021 at 12:19 PM, hloberg said:

I de-badged the XP but found no way to get rid of the DELL start, but it's only 2 seconds.

Perhaps it's in the BIOS, I think there are tools to extract, edit, reload.

[hloberg]

On 2/16/2021 at 7:06 PM, HOME AUTOMATION said:

Perhaps it's in the BIOS, I think there are tools to extract, edit, reload.

some machines you can turn off the bios badging, unfortunately you can't with this one. With UEFI usually the manufacturer badging is in software and can be easily edited out. I did it in a Win10 I played with.  I also found some PCs you can set them in Legacy mode then use UEFI and that removes the badging by fooling the computer.

Edited February 21 by hloberg

[wierd_w]

5 hours ago, hloberg said:

some machines you can turn off the bios badging, unfortunately you can't with this one. With UEFI usually the manufacturer badging is in software and can be easily edited out. I did it in a Win10 I played with.  I also found some PCs you can set them in Legacy mode then use UEFI and that removes the badging by fooling the computer.

He means that the badge image can often be wholly replaced, by dumping the system flashrom, and then overwriting the image data, the flashing it back again.

 

 

[gferluga]

Working on Lenovo Thinkpad... but so sloooow... 

[mizapf]

Which Thinkpad? Processor type? Everything from Core i5-3xxx and higher should not be a problem. (See also https://www.mizapf.de/ti99/mame/mamereq)