+dhe Posted November 19, 2021 Share Posted November 19, 2021 Here's an email I preserved regarding the program Arcturus with some interesting information. Arcturus email.pdf 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 Nice bit of background data exchange on how GROM bases work too. It is unfortunate that the actual (original) Arcturus cartridges are so hard to find. I like the cartridge shells they used--and those cases could be used with somewhat different circuit cards as regular cartridge slot cases as well, so they were nicely multifunctional. I may have to open mine one of these days and see if I can make a mold set for the cases. . .and the Killer Caterpillar cartridges in the same shells are even harder to find. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 I have a miner 2049'er - that's a side port 'cart'. I opened it up once and was surprised... It was the first time I'd seen surface mount tech used on a TI. It appeared to me, it had one square chip under a blob of black resin... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 Several TI carts used the blobs. Miner 2049er, Espial, St. Nick, and even some experimental The Attack cartridges from TI. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 On that occasion, if some of you have original dumps of the sidecar games, I'd be interested in a copy for MAME. Most dumps are more or less patched to run as a normal cartridge. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted November 21, 2021 Author Share Posted November 21, 2021 I always wondered how people copied them out... I usually used JP Hoddies CSAVE on a TI with a PBOX connected to the side... Yea.. that side, that now has a module plugged in to it! ? Also, during the development of PC99, 2049er was one of those cartridges that challenged the emulator. It was doing weird things with Sprites. Mark Van Coppenolle - spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was doing, but in the end I think he called it a day and just changed a few bytes in the dump to make it work 100%. Not to different then the patching Mike Maksimik did to a lot of carts to make them run on the Geneve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted November 21, 2021 Share Posted November 21, 2021 If you had an internal 32K expansion, I could imagine a way. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 21 hours ago, dhe said: I always wondered how people copied them out... I usually used JP Hoddies CSAVE on a TI with a PBOX connected to the side... Yea.. that side, that now has a module plugged in to it! ? Also, during the development of PC99, 2049er was one of those cartridges that challenged the emulator. It was doing weird things with Sprites. Mark Van Coppenolle - spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was doing, but in the end I think he called it a day and just changed a few bytes in the dump to make it work 100%. Not to different then the patching Mike Maksimik did to a lot of carts to make them run on the Geneve. I dug into 2049er a fair bit when the F18A was being developed, and found there's a bug in the collision detection code. Not sure what the challenge in PC99 was, but we were trying to figure out why sprite collisions didn't occur. It turns out the game logic uses the sprite collision bit to determine whether to run the collision code. So, when the bit shows a collision, then it runs through all the objects to see what collided. The problem is, instead of sprite collision >20, the code checks >02, which is the "5th sprite" counter. When there are not five sprites on a line, these bits act as a counter and change continuously... so basically, at random points the code finds bit >02 set and checks for collisions between objects, and the game works. But if this counting isn't implemented, then no collisions ever happen. That's the only oddity in there I'm aware of though. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fabrice montupet Posted November 22, 2021 Share Posted November 22, 2021 On 11/21/2021 at 5:11 PM, Ksarul said: Several TI carts used the blobs. Miner 2049er, Espial, St. Nick, and even some experimental The Attack cartridges from TI. I own a TI Mind Challengers cartridge embedding (four) blobs too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted November 24, 2021 Share Posted November 24, 2021 On 11/21/2021 at 1:41 PM, dhe said: I always wondered how people copied them out... I usually used JP Hoddies CSAVE on a TI with a PBOX connected to the side... Yea.. that side, that now has a module plugged in to it! ? Someone (name withheld) in the Lubbock TI users group bought Miner 2049'er, and dumped it with Mini Memory, BASIC support routines like PEEK, and the cassette port. He was in the introduction to assembly language class I taught (overconfident 14 yr old me) and, went on to write tools in assembly, but I haven't heard of them since. 3 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkyPilot Posted November 24, 2021 Share Posted November 24, 2021 One of my top 10. arcturus.bin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 On 11/23/2021 at 9:35 PM, FarmerPotato said: Someone (name withheld) in the Lubbock TI users group bought Miner 2049'er, and dumped it with Mini Memory, BASIC support routines like PEEK, and the cassette port. He was in the introduction to assembly language class I taught (overconfident 14 yr old me) and, went on to write tools in assembly, but I haven't heard of them since. I too attended one of your classes, but was pulled out when I got orders to go to Iceland..dang it was awesome for the little time I had. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 4 hours ago, GDMike said: I too attended one of your classes, but was pulled out when I got orders to go to Iceland..dang it was awesome for the little time I had. Wait, what? you were in Lubbock? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 Just now, FarmerPotato said: Wait, what? you were in Lubbock? No but I think you visited las Vegas, unless I've got you confused with someone else.. could be Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 28 minutes ago, GDMike said: No but I think you visited las Vegas, unless I've got you confused with someone else.. could be No that's not me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) Well you gotta twin. Damn. Haha... Well, I'm not sure who it was, but someone came out to the group at TISNUG and started teaching us all about assy. And the fella was like 18 or so...hmmm Edited November 25, 2021 by GDMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 6 minutes ago, GDMike said: Well you gotta twin. Damn. Haha... Well, I'm not sure who it was, but someone came out to the group at TISNUG and started teaching us all about assy. And the fella was like 18 or so...hmmm It was 1984. Was there a Fest-West in Vegas? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted November 25, 2021 Share Posted November 25, 2021 (edited) I don't remember. Lol but that sounds familiar. Edited November 25, 2021 by GDMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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