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TI Basic vs. TI Extended Basic


retroclouds

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... and for kicks and grins - maybe we can use the tech from the UberGROM to replace GROM1/2 in the console with ROMs and get a better "roll your own" BASIC installed.  They're socketed after all... just create a nice little daughter board for them.  Maybe an Atmega 328P might be enough to handle this... dunno.  Tursi?

 

I don't know how many modules rely on TI BASIC GROMs - Household Budget Management, Personal Record Keeping, etc, might - because of the compiled nature of them, but I seriously doubt anything beyond the first 50-60 PHM#s would use it.

 

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Yeah, that was kind of the intent of the MPD, except it'd replace all three GROMs. I tested it, it worked fine, but then life happened.

 

I still like the idea of wrapping that up, but I am less excited about building some of the alternate interfaces - I wanted to code one like GEM and it kept exploding into more than a simple shell. ;)

 

Also less excited about building the hardware ;)

 

But one of the main benefits of MPD was the ability to maximum compatibility, since it could swap in any original GROMs before starting a piece of software, so no matter what interface you used to launch it, the software that was launched would see a stock system. That was also tested and working.

 

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I’m assuming if we make it to replace just the console GROMs, the software can be optimized for that.  I know we’re using the 1284P in the UG because it has 128K of flash - the 328P has 32K of flash and might work just as well (the software plus modified GROM content).  Offhand, do you remember the overhead for the simulation software?

 

This would allow us to use not only modified shells but also modified and extended GROMs like TKGROM0, ones with added machine language TI BASIC tokens, etc.  Plus is a super easy mod to a stock system. Pop three chips and have a daughter board that plugs into one.  
 

Which leads to another odd thought - with a replacement of this as well as the F18A, if you don’t use a GROM cart, would you still even need -5V in the console?  ?

 

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The 1284 was used because it was the largest memory size in a DIP package, which I thought would be easier for people to design cartridges around. In theory any 5v AVR will run the same software and "just work", but in practice I have not actually made it work (I only tried once, but on a much smaller one that might not have been able to drive one of its pins strongly enough...)

 

But yeah... that's more or less what I wanted to do. The ability to drop in other options increases the complexity over just pre-building it, but also solves the issue of needing to pre-guess what makes the most sense. ;)

 

But MPD has fallen much lower on my TODO list, no clue if I'll ever make it to it, especially if I keep taking time-consuming RL jobs. Maybe people can patreon my salary...? ;);)

 

I think the CPU also needs -5v... though it'd be nice to replace that too. We need something like a Vampyre ;)

 

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