dphirschler

Is it this guy? Darryl

I have a bunch of TI disks, 100 or so maybe more. I can’t jumpstart my PEB to test the disks. I was able to transfer 20-30 disks a while back (two years ago maybe), and then last month I transferred two disks. And that was the end of it. The first disk transferred easily. The second transferred with some trouble. No more would transfer after that. Details: The first batch of disks was transferred using a PC with a (I don't have the model number at the moment) 5.25” floppy drive. It’s an older Windows XP machine. I have it booting off a Win98 boot disk, booting into DOS. I then run the ti99-pc software. I transferred probably 30 disks with only a couple of failures. I ran out of time and put everything away. I only recently got back to trying to transfer them again. And then I was unable to transfer a single disk! The second set of disks was transferred using the same PC with a TEAC FD-55GFR floppy drive. I got two transferred before it stopped working. I noticed one disk (labeled “Atarisoft” :-( ) was damaged pretty badly. A good half a centimeter-wide ring on the disk had been rubbed clean of any magnetic material. It was practically see-thru. My initial feeling is that some of the magnetic residue rubbed off on the drive heads. However, I don’t know if it was already like that or if it just happened. I bought a cleaning disk and gave it another go. Nothing. I could give it a third attempt using the actual TI floppy disk drive (which is a half-height Toshiba 5471L0K) mounted in the same PC. But it will be some trouble to remove the drive. Any advice? Darryl

Regarding "solid state cartridge" vs "command module". I believe " command module" is an older, less modern-sounding term. I prefer "solid state cartridge" on my retro design, so that is what I use. And I should say that I am still refining my label design. In particular I know I need to tweak the outlined TI logo. I've designed it with some bleed (I just don't show it in the mockups I put up here). My labels are 300dpi and sized correctly. I am only showing 72dpi labels here. When I get it finished, I will post the ai file. Darryl

As I continue to go through some old TI pamphlets and catalogs, I've discovered a game that I did not know existed. Here is how is listed in the catalog. Battlestar Galactica (speech) Wage war against the computer or an opponent as you pilot your Viper fighters and Battlestars through 3 dimensional space. This will be the first Cartridge to provide combat between two 99/4A's. ARCADE style. TI 99/4A only. Speech Synthesizer optional. Cartridge. Did this game ever come out? I can't remember ever seeing it. There is no photo or screen shot. It's a Bill Cosby catalog from 1983. Darryl

I'm in. PM sent. Been waiting for this. Darryl

Realizing this is an extremely noob question... I don't see the negative lead for the LED; I only see positive. Where is it? Darryl

I didn't notice earlier you were asking Lee. Anyways, here is my outlined TI logo in vector. Darryl EDIT - You don't want this one. I've refined it, fixing a few problems in it and generally made it look better. tilogo outlined.zip

Sure. I will attach it later on today. Darryl

Here's one I would have used in my younger days. lol Darryl

I'd like one, possibly two, depending on the final price. Nice looking board. Will there be an LED on it? I couldn't see one. Darryl

I love The Gimp. And I use it a lot, but in this case, it's done in Illustrator. Darryl

I agree. It was better centered before I enlarged the text. I'll fix that. Thanks. Darryl

I've further refined the cart labels. I like my retro redesign the best. So I made several variations using TI's color themes. Utility cart: Game cart: Game cart with fancy font (inspired by Parsec): Educational games: Darryl

You might need to create a blank dsk image and store it on the nanopeb. Then you can write your files to that "disk".

Nice collection! Aren’t there more educational carts than that? I’d suggest grouping them by subject, or perhaps by level. What’s the difference between Decimals and Decimals-1? Darryl

Holy crap, that is clever! Darryl

> I just curious, does anyone remember "WCM" in a hardware data library? It would be interesting to know, just for the hell of it. WCM is my friend’s initials. So he must have named the routine after himself. > Anyway, do you have your heart set on reproducing the original diskette or would you settle on a substitute loader? Certainly, I’d be happy with another loader program. But I am more interested in solving this puzzle. This was a cool loader. And if something is wrong with it with today’s emulation software and updated hardware, I’d like to know why. At the moment, I suspect the disk transferring software… especially since it seems to be behaving the same in MESS, on the NanoPEB, and on real hardware. The only thing common there is the software used to transfer the floppy. I vaguely remember attaching machine code to XB programs somehow (using Disko perhaps?). It would load with the XB program, but would show up as garbled characters in the listing. I don’t see any of that here. That’s the main reason I suspect the TI99-PC disk transferring software. Perhaps it sees XB programs and ignores the non-ascii characters when transferring(?). We did all kinds of goofy things back then just because we could. I used ‘@’ as a variable name. We named disks “NONO…..1” (note the period chars were illegal) using Disko. Attached machine code to XB programs in weird ways. Ripped carts using the Widget and load interrupt switch. And who knows what else? I know we also had some game loaders that required Mini-Mem, but I cannot remember why. Maybe that was one of the cart ripper programs. Darryl

Could this loader have been dependent on the presence of a Gram Kracker? We (my friend and I) both had one. Darryl

Very likely. I remember having a battery backed clock. But I thought it was the Myarc. Could it be that the disk-reading software (TI99-PC) has a problem with these types of disks? It seemed to read them fine, and the loader program seemed to work... well, it maybe isn't loading the hidden code properly. How exactly did you discover it, Mizapf? But I also remember doing something to convert DIS/VAR to PGM format. I just don't remember what. I also remember having some game disks that were made to be loaded in Minimem. Darryl

I am a graphics guy, so I had to make my own template for TI cartridge labels. I never liked the original black labels. I always thought that adding color was a good thing, but the text was still hard to read since all the labels still looked the same except for color. And then they started adding different fonts for the games and then the labels really came to life. Parsec was instantly recognizable with its purple label and large yellow letters. So anyways, here is my first template of the original TI cart. And here is template number two. I don't think I ever noticed that they changed more than just the color of the background. The text "Command Module" was replaced by the more modern sounding "Solid State Cartridge". And here is my retro redesign using elements of both labels. Only slight changes such as bolder text and the slicker looking TI logo. Finally, here is my template of the newer labels using color, large fonts, and the more modern language. None of these are exact. I only estimated the colors, sizes, and layouts using Ebay photos. I'll make them more exact later on. I'd be interested in feedback on the labels. I plan on making some nice labels for my multicarts after I burn them. Darryl

Ahh! That rings a bell. I remember that. But we had this working on original equipment. Maybe a Myarc Mem Exp. at most. I tried loading the same files in MESS and they also failed. So I am not sure why it fails. Has anybody tried it on real equipment yet? My PEB is still dead so I cannot test it. I did try my super Scott Adams Adventure disk on the NanoPEB and it worked just fine, so I know the NanoPEB works now. Darryl

I am having trouble loading games from my NanoPEB. It boots up into my game disk just fine, just as it used to back in the day. But the games just don't load. Can it be a problem with the NanoPEB and the way this game disk was written? The game disk has a bunch of cart games (some Atarisoft, TI and Parker Bros games). And it is designed to auto load into XB giving you a menu. That much works. But when you select a game, it just goes blank. The loader/linker program was written by my friend long ago. The menu was written by me in XB. I haven't yet tried loading the games through EA yet. I suppose that is the next test. But I really wanted it to work like it used to. I'd appreciate it if some of you could test out my game disk on your NanoPEB/CF7+ and also on real hardware. I'll attach the dsk image. Darryl 07_games_bones.dsk

I'd like one, but I bet they are all gone now. Darryl

I found documentation for the 512K cart last night buried in one of the pages in the thread. But it was WIP (unifinished). Is there a final documentation? Why don't you put it (and supercart roms) on the first post so everybody knows where to look for the most up-to-date files. Darryl

So who won the auction? Anybody here? Darryl