TIPI Usage and Support

[+jedimatt42]

The one labelled Xilinx

[nwah]

Thanks all. Unfortunately I have neither the equipment nor the skill to desolder/replace SMDs or program a CPLD so I'll order another one and be a bit more careful this time around.

 

Does seem a bit of a waste of a PCB and other components though... wonder if The Brewing Academy (or @arcadeshopper here) would have any interest in recycling and otherwise-in-tact TIPI

Edited July 21, 2023 by nwah

[+arcadeshopper]

6 hours ago, nwah said:

Thanks all. Unfortunately I have neither the equipment nor the skill to desolder/replace SMDs or program a CPLD so I'll order another one and be a bit more careful this time around.

 

Does seem a bit of a waste of a PCB and other components though... wonder if The Brewing Academy (or @arcadeshopper here) would have any interest in recycling and otherwise-in-tact TIPI

Sure, if you want to send it in i'll give you a credit towards the store.. I am out of stock right now on sidecars but getting more soon pm or email to coordinate

[+dhe]

I've not seen or noticed this before, but nice feature on upload:

 

 

[+jedimatt42]

Update 3.20 - 2023-08-04 

- Added CS1 & DSK5-9 support in PI.CONFIG, and web-ui

- Added CS1 support in TIPICFG

- Added CS1 & DSK5-9 support in DSR ROM ( The physical eprom on the TIPI board )

- Updated the ea5 loader in the ROM used by CALL TIPI to leave more of scratchpad intact. Fixes loading the last couple years worth of DM2K from CALL TIPI. 

 

Functionality degrades gracefully... DSK5-9 and CS1 mapping are not effective without the ROM update. The CALL TIPI ea5 loading fix is in the ROM. You can run version 3.20 of the PI software suite without the ROM update, you just won't get any benefit. 

 

Using TIPI as CS1 is deceptively fast... there is no prompting to rewind/press play/etc... the PAB operation just performs. If you want to actual cassette driver in GROM to be used, then clear your mapping for CS1_FILE and TIPI will allow the console DSRLNK to continue searching until it finds the GROM driver. 

 

(Even if it is useless to you, I can only justify supporting, for free, the latest version of the software.)

[+OLD CS1]

Does your CS1 implementation support audio files?  Any thought for support of CS2?

[+arcadeshopper]

1 hour ago, OLD CS1 said:

Does your CS1 implementation support audio files?  Any thought for support of CS2?

no it just loads and saves whatever type of file you are opening so if you want to load a WAV you have to convert it to a disk tifiles file first 

also if you map CS1 to a filename that doesn't exist, it is created when you save to it

 

[+jedimatt42]

Here is one of my preliminary post in the dev thread with some of the background : 

 

[jrhodes]

4 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

Does your CS1 implementation support audio files?  Any thought for support of CS2?

When i inquired to jedimatt42 about adding cassette support to TIPI, i was mainly interested in being able to save data from programs like Hangman that only supported CS1.

CS2 support had not even crossed my mind.

I was also envisioning maybe someone using physical CS2 to transfer data from TIPI's CS1 to physical cassette.

I can see where CS2 support would nicely round out the cassette support though.

Edited August 5, 2023 by jrhodes

[+jedimatt42]

I can see the use case for CS1, but I don't see it for CS2...  And I put my PEB back together already...  Is there a program already written that has less function due to not having CS2?

[+OLD CS1]

44 minutes ago, jedimatt42 said:

Is there a program already written that has less function due to not having CS2?

Not to my knowledge, and it is highly unlikely anyone would ever use it except nerds like me, and even then only on occasion.  CS2 is a write-only mechanism, and IIRC the QI mobo completely eliminated the electronics for it.  The first game I wrote way back when used CS1 for level data and CS2 to save game progress.  Even that was more for the neat factor of watching a level load its data from one tape and after a level write progress data to the other.

 

So, no, CS2 has no modern practical purpose.  T'was just a thought.

[+jedimatt42]

I thought about CS2 a little, but dismissed it pretty quickly when I took this on. 

 

For posterity, if CS2 ever becomes valuable, this is the python side code change: https://github.com/jedimatt42/tipi/commit/883f2f6967f3baed6fca9a3d7c20e022ebd84f67

and this is the DSR ROM code change: https://github.com/jedimatt42/tipi/commit/ab33a63096c382f75fd2f800e5e8e0bb95b18a42 <- I called it 'TAP' when I thought I couldn't override CS1, but then I read a little console ROM DSRLNK code: https://github.com/jedimatt42/tipi/commit/8d5cf9c8726e18b626919340d17334535e2d6509

 

Todo:

 

I already need to restructure TIPICFG to handle DSK5-9. They aren't included in that tool at this time. They can be set via writes to PI.CONFIG or the web-ui. But I think I need to break the mappings to sub-screens. 

ForceCommand needs an update to it's TIPIMAP command for controlling them as well. 

[dgrissom]

On 8/5/2023 at 12:58 PM, jedimatt42 said:

Update 3.20 - 2023-08-04 

- Added CS1 & DSK5-9 support in PI.CONFIG, and web-ui

- Added CS1 support in TIPICFG

- Added CS1 & DSK5-9 support in DSR ROM ( The physical eprom on the TIPI board )

- Updated the ea5 loader in the ROM used by CALL TIPI to leave more of scratchpad intact. Fixes loading the last couple years worth of DM2K from CALL TIPI. 

 

Functionality degrades gracefully... DSK5-9 and CS1 mapping are not effective without the ROM update. The CALL TIPI ea5 loading fix is in the ROM. You can run version 3.20 of the PI software suite without the ROM update, you just won't get any benefit. 

 

Using TIPI as CS1 is deceptively fast... there is no prompting to rewind/press play/etc... the PAB operation just performs. If you want to actual cassette driver in GROM to be used, then clear your mapping for CS1_FILE and TIPI will allow the console DSRLNK to continue searching until it finds the GROM driver. 

 

(Even if it is useless to you, I can only justify supporting, for free, the latest version of the software.)

I don't have some of the more specialized hardware that require the DSK5-9.  CS1 might be useful but am not really certain?

 

With that said and since I am a bit compulsive, I decided to to try the EPROM update.  In my case, after the update, TIPICFG on 2 occasions showed the ROM dated as 8/4/23.  However, most of the time the machine would simply hang.  The problems went away after reverting to the previous ROM.  Am I missing something in the installation? 

 

The erased EPROM(s) seemed to program and verify correctly...

 

Thanks...

[+OLD CS1]

3 hours ago, dgrissom said:

CS1 might be useful but am not really certain?

I am.

[+jedimatt42]

@dgrissom there should not be any magic associated to the eprom update. Maybe the hardware is just unsettled? 

[dgrissom]

2 hours ago, jedimatt42 said:

@dgrissom there should not be any magic associated to the eprom update. Maybe the hardware is just unsettled? 

Sounds reasonable. I'll give it a Level 1 diagnostic, or some Tums..🙂

 

Actually, I'll probably leave well enough alone and not update at this time.  I can see me screwing up my system with my fat fingers. 

Edited August 7, 2023 by dgrissom
Wasn't funny or serious enough.

[+jedimatt42]

I believe I have 2 confirmed installations (besides myself) of the updated EPROM. 

[jrhodes]

Everything is working fine from what i've seen.

Awaiting your tweaks to TIPICFG for the new DSK 5-9 mappings.

Edited August 13, 2023 by jrhodes

[+jedimatt42]

2 hours ago, jrhodes said:

Everything is working fine from what i've seen.

Awaiting your tweaks to TIPICFG for the new DSK 5-9 mappings.

I've been a little distracted. I kinda want to restructure TIPICFG completely. In the mean time, you can edit PI.CONFIG in your favorite DV80 editor to set the new properties.

[+arcadeshopper]

@PeteE@Asmusr js99er needs an update for the new rom?

 

[+mizapf]

Is there a built DSR code file which I can pack into the ti99_tipi.zip for MAME? I just saw the source code on Github.

[+arcadeshopper]

36 minutes ago, mizapf said:

Is there a built DSR code file which I can pack into the ti99_tipi.zip for MAME? I just saw the source code on Github.

https://jedimatt42.com/dl

 

[+OLD CS1]

Here is a "why the hell would you want to do that?" question: can the Speech Synthesizer case version of the TIPI be used in the PEB with a Rave99 or the 838 equivalent??

[+arcadeshopper]

3 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

Here is a "why the hell would you want to do that?" question: can the Speech Synthesizer case version of the TIPI be used in the PEB with a Rave99 or the 838 equivalent??

of course..all of them can btw just need the right connection 

[+mizapf]

If you want to use the new DSR in the MAME emulation, replace the file ti99_tipi.zip in your rompath with the attached file.

 

However ... due to the nature of MAME, we will get checksum errors each time the ROMs are changed, unless I also change the checksums inside MAME for the TIPI ROM. Yes, this is intended and a Good Thing^TM.

 

These error messages can be ignored, but I think we cannot turn them off completely (this is, IIRC, also on purpose from the core devs).

 

Does it make sense to update the checksums now, or do we expect more frequent changes in the DSR in the future? If so, I'd update the checksums in longer terms (every 3rd time or so).

 

When I update them, users of the old DSR will get checksum errors, of course.

ti99_tipi.zip