+OLD CS1 Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 But ROM cartridges were not really blocked, they were just not listed in the selection list (which is bad enough). So did the game autostart on power-up, that is, without Master Title Screen? They were not blocked per-se, but the QI OS only reads the GROM headers of cartridges, whereas both GROM and ROM headers were read in prior OS. This ensures that cartridges MUST have a GROM which must be purchased from TI. Or a clever GROM replacement. Nintendo did some BS like this in the NES around the same time with the 10NES lock-out chip. This was used at least a couple of times in lawsuits, one against Atari, but ISTR eventually the lock-out was ruled against. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Not sure about Arcturus (although if someone would like to send me an original Arcturus cartridge, I'd be more than happy to plug it in and report back). I did the hack of Arcturus for Jon, it had one of its 8k ROM banks at >4000 in the DSR space, and used a DSR powerup link to auto-start. (Being a sidecar made that possible, of course.) The other banks were in the high RAM area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Tursi, do you still have the original dumps? I'd like to rebuild the "unhacked" versions. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 I have exact dumps at home for all the sidecars. Courtesy of Mini Memory saving to CS1, autostart being disabled by a hack, and Tape99er to get the code from cassette to a file. Sent from my LG-V496 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 I have exact dumps at home for all the sidecars. Courtesy of Mini Memory saving to CS1, autostart being disabled by a hack, and Tape99er to get the code from cassette to a file. Sent from my LG-V496 using Tapatalk give..give, Please!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 give..give, Please!!!Heh. I will when I get home and have a chance to zip them up. Nobody can really use them until MZ builds their sidecar capabilities into MESS. That's why we hacked all of them to run from the main cart slot. Sent from my LG-V496 using Tapatalk 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Look at this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/TEXAS-INSTRUMENTS-TI-99-4-PERIPHERAL-EXPANSION-BOX-/112004056582?hash=item1a13f64606:g:vXAAAOSwEOxXQIIL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted May 25, 2016 Author Share Posted May 25, 2016 Hopefully someone in the surrounding states will want to bid on it at the last second and take it home. These things are tanks and the shipping can get rather steep. It even comes with an RS-232, that's nice, especially these days. Did you notice the P-Box under the one he's selling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 (edited) Hopefully someone in the surrounding states will want to bid on it at the last second and take it home. These things are tanks and the shipping can get rather steep. It even comes with an RS-232, that's nice, especially these days. Did you notice the P-Box under the one he's selling? Yes he/she, must be a TIer no doubt. The Disk controller and R232 are the more expensive components in the case. I'd say about 150.00 to 200.00 would be fair +shipping. Of course opinions are worth what you pay for them Edited May 25, 2016 by RickyDean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+arcadeshopper Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 http://www.ebay.com/itm/231955211333?rmvSB=true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith99er Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 If he had listed it at $100, he probably would have sold it for $250-$300, but $500 is really pushing it. True dat! $250 less and postage to UK might have got a bid from me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Price drop: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 291771154534 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith99er Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Wowzers! Just need postage to UK now and I'm in there... :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeBo Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 (edited) Tursi, do you still have the original dumps? I'd like to rebuild the "unhacked" versions. Oh yes please!!!! Say, would the dumps work in one of them there newfangled Flash ROM carts, or would memory addresses get all kerfuffled? Edited May 25, 2016 by PeBo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeBo Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 (edited) A massive price drop 4 days before the end of the auction? Not something one sees often on ebay. Sounds suspiciously like he's reading this thread. Edited May 25, 2016 by PeBo 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeBo Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Wowzers! Just need postage to UK now and I'm in there... :-) Might be worth asking him...I've found that U.S. sellers will often break their US only shipping rule when asked. Not sure what it's like going in that direction, but I buy a lot of stuff from the UK, France and Germany and find tracked shipping is usually considerable less than shipping to Canada from the U.S. (and not much slower - add about an extra week). Take into consideration though that extremely rare TI carts in the UK do not often exceed about £75 (€100 / $110 US) so this one is still a bit pricey for your side of the pond. Insist on int'l tracking and pay the extra though...Standard Royal Mail is cheap as all get out, but isn't the most reliable at trans-Atlantic shipping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 A massive price drop 4 days before the end of the auction? Not something one sees often on ebay. Sounds suspiciously like he's reading this thread. hmmm, or, maybe, because me and some friends offered him 75 / 45 / 85 $ ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted May 25, 2016 Share Posted May 25, 2016 Might be worth asking him...I've found that U.S. sellers will often break their US only shipping rule when asked. Not sure what it's like going in that direction, but I buy a lot of stuff from the UK, France and Germany and find tracked shipping is usually considerable less than shipping to Canada from the U.S. (and not much slower - add about an extra week). Take into consideration though that extremely rare TI carts in the UK do not often exceed about £75 (€100 / $110 US) so this one is still a bit pricey for your side of the pond. Insist on int'l tracking and pay the extra though...Standard Royal Mail is cheap as all get out, but isn't the most reliable at trans-Atlantic shipping. I ordered 2 PEBs from US last year, so I know the pain but, big mitigation on arrival. Every time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Heh. I will when I get home and have a chance to zip them up. Nobody can really use them until MZ builds their sidecar capabilities into MESS. That's why we hacked all of them to run from the main cart slot. Excuse me, they work just fine in Classic99. How do you think I /did/ the hack? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Excuse me, they work just fine in Classic99. How do you think I /did/ the hack? Heh, whoops. :-) (Tursi did it first, I apologize!!!! <grin>) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Say, would the dumps work in one of them there newfangled Flash ROM carts, or would memory addresses get all kerfuffled? The original dump of Arcturus, at least, can't work from the cartridge port because it runs in DSR and 32k RAM space, which is not available there. I would expect similar issues from the others. Because TI chose not to route all the address lines to it, only cartridges work in the cartridge port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 We probably want to split this thread into the ROM cleanup in the other forum... Anyway, I didn't see anything in the DSR space (>4000) in Miner 2049er or Espial. Unless they were doing something pretty strange. I think I only found stuff in the memory expansion slot. I don't even remember seeing anything in >6000, either. Definitely strange, those two carts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Did they only have to have enough in the DSR space to get scanned by the Monitor during boot? Having not seen the dumps or worked with them, I would suppose it is possible this area was just a mapped portion of regular ROM, if so. I mean, why waste an entire ROM if you were going to just expose a header, and what advantage would there be in running a program in DSR space if you can map ROM into the 8k/24k areas of 32k? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Putting into the DSR space has one big advantage: The program can be called automatically. For each peripheral card, the pointer at 4004 is used for an initialization routine. The P-Code card, for instance, seizes control via this way. You can also use the cartridge autostart flag (I think it is 6001). In all other areas, nothing happens, as expected. The selection list is only populated with the names in the GROMs or cartridge ROMs (6000), not with entries from the DSR space. You can, of course, create a fake selection list by the cartridge itself, but the usual way does not include the DSR space, and no other space for that matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted May 26, 2016 Share Posted May 26, 2016 Okay, then that is what I missed before. I understood that the Monitor start-up scanned GROM port GROM and ROM for the selection list, then DSR space (or vice-versa.) I ejected that cart so long ago and so quickly, I do not recall if it started automatically or if there was a selection list for it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.