+OLD CS1 Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 I want to put @Tursi's "Bad Apple" demo on a cartridge for next year's VCF-SE. It is 15MB. Too big for the FG99. Too big for the carts and EPROMs I have. Too big for SAMS and a nanoPEB. How to do it?! Our TI needs to represent against all the other systems which have it. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 Well, the largest normal bank switched cart is 2MB and uses eight latches with a LS377. We could need three more latches to do 16MB. The Dragon’s Lair cart is an option, but we need to adapt the cart maker programs to use extra lines (data and address I believe) on this type of cart past the eight normal address ones to properly build the bank switching. I don’t remember who did the cart building program offhand but they can extend it up to probably 128MB easily. The second challenge is programming the eprom in the DL cart from what I remember Tursi saying. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 20, 2022 Author Share Posted July 20, 2022 hmmmm what I have is not the actual cartridge. I guess @Tursi never released that, just the packed video data, or I missed it somewhere. Might have to knock on his PMs to see if he has the time or interest in this. Or just wait for him to respond to being @ed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 2 hours ago, OLD CS1 said: Too big for the FG99. If you break the 15M, up into 128, files, of 122K. Each one could link to the next, with a delay of approx. 2.34375, sec. between loads. That should only add a whopping 300, sec. to the demo overall. ...Just saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkyPilot Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 Cartridge demos are to showcase what is possible with a system, but if it can't be made on the demo system, isn't that cheating? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 Clever mis-use of a GROM might work. That is to say, just have a "pretty much useless" GROM, (or electronically equivalent circuit) that just counts from 0 to 255. Based on the value stored/retrieved from this GROM, you could latch a 'page'. This, combined with a normal bankswitch, could give you a cartridge that holds a lot more. (you would page out whole banks of pages, using the the latched GROM value) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 20, 2022 Author Share Posted July 20, 2022 5 hours ago, SkyPilot said: Cartridge demos are to showcase what is possible with a system, but if it can't be made on the demo system, isn't that cheating? You mean, like Dragon's Lair? It is possible, but only with the right tools. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 The reloading feature of the FG99 could be used (https://endlos99.github.io/finalgrom99/#reloading). The 15MB image would have to divided into 1MB chunks. There would be some delay (1-2 seconds?) between each part, and it would require some changes to the original code. Quote To initiate the reload of a new program, the sequence >99, "OKFG99", >99 followed by the file data must be sent. Since the new image will overwrite the running image, the reload code must be relocated to RAM before it can be run. To check if the new image has been loaded, the program must watch addresses >6000->6200 for a non-zero word to appear. (For a reloaded ROM program, watching >6000 suffices.) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 1 hour ago, Asmusr said: There would be some delay (1-2 seconds?) between each part, 1MB=20sec. approx. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Lafortune Posted July 20, 2022 Share Posted July 20, 2022 (edited) I'm currently finalizing my own version of the Bad Apple demo. It's 4.4 MB, stored in bank-switched module ROMs. It runs in Mame ("ti99_4ae", European console at 50 Hz), with the "gromemu" type that @mizapf extended recently. I'm not familiar with recent hardware, but I can adapt the code if that helps. Edited July 20, 2022 by Eric Lafortune 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 20, 2022 Author Share Posted July 20, 2022 9 minutes ago, Eric Lafortune said: I'm currently finalizing my own version of the Bad Apple demo. It's 4.4 MB, stored in bank-switched module ROMs. It runs in Mame, with the "gromemu" type that @mizapf extended recently. I'm not familiar with recent hardware, but I can adapt the code if that helps. I would love to run "Bad Apple". Do not care whose it is, I just cannot stand to have to hang my head when a Commodore 64, an Apple //c, and a ZX Spectrum can run it right there in front of me. Oh, the shame! I believe 4.4MB is just larger than our largest cartridge (I think 4MB is the max we have right now, but @Ksarul or @acadiel can correct me on that.) We have utilities at our disposal for this: UberGROM, FinalGROM99, 32k expansion and 1MB SAMS. The C64 "Bad Apple" demo runs off a single 170k floppy (okay, a little larger since it uses 40 tracks versus the standard 35,) I would hope we could do it on a 360k floppy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Well, Eric's work notwithstanding, I could probably repurpose a DL cart board. I dunno what to do with them anyway, and I've offered in the past. People tend to ignore what I say. Unfortunately, I don't have anything unpacked at the moment. As for it the player needing to be changed for the hardware - nope. 32MB of the cartridge works just like any other 32MB cart (assuming you always write the same data for the bank switch, anyway). It's only when you need to differentiate more than that that it becomes an issue. However, the standard conversion/player toolchain runs at 8fps due to being in color - Bad Apple runs at 16fps since it's monochrome. So it has a hacked player. I never converted it to a cartridge since there was no 16MB cartridge at the time. Every other approach works on making it fit into memory using compression techniques and lossy data. I didn't bother, I just wanted to exercise the playback toolchain and see how it looked with a higher framerate. The audio is terrible though. If I was going to do it all again, is there a video with very clean audio I could start with? Back then, the only one I found was really clippy. I was tempted to do the metal one instead... 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 21, 2022 Author Share Posted July 21, 2022 16 minutes ago, Tursi said: Well, Eric's work notwithstanding, I could probably repurpose a DL cart board. I dunno what to do with them anyway, and I've offered in the past. People tend to ignore what I say. We never ignore, we just over-look stuff. So, yeah, I would be very grateful for a re-purposed DL cart running "Bad Apple" for next year's VCF-SE. 17 minutes ago, Tursi said: I was tempted to do the metal one instead... ¿Por qué no los dos? How does the metal rendition match up to the video? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Tursi said: I was tempted to do the metal one instead... Wow... I needed that in my life! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 (edited) It probably doesn't match up. Anyway, I did the work to revise the toolchain for generating mono video. Everything was still pretty theoretical when I did the Bad Apple conversion, so probably worth updating it anyway. You can find a cartridge image here now: http://harmlesslion.com/temp/TI_vids/ Might be small enough to attach, too. It's still a 16MB cartridge, of course. When do you need it in hardware? misc_BadApple8.zip Edited July 21, 2022 by Tursi 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Oh, and of course the toolchain - https://harmlesslion.com/software/vidconvert 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Lafortune Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 6 hours ago, Tursi said: Every other approach works on making it fit into memory using compression techniques and lossy data. I didn't bother, I just wanted to exercise the playback toolchain and see how it looked with a higher framerate. The audio is terrible though. If I was going to do it all again, is there a video with very clean audio I could start with? Back then, the only one I found was really clippy. I started from what I presume is the standard Bad Apple video. The audio seems ok to me, although I'm using a chiptune instead (and lossless video compression). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 21, 2022 Author Share Posted July 21, 2022 6 hours ago, Tursi said: When do you need it in hardware? July of 2023? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 19 hours ago, HOME AUTOMATION said: 1MB=20sec. approx. Oh dear, that's a lot slower than I expected. The C64 compression looks somewhat similar to the one used in the megademo for the spinning cube: It's a while since I did this, but I think the algorithm was drawing the whole screen using 256 characters, only updated the parts of the name table that had changed, and set a maximum on the number of updated characters between each frame. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 9 hours ago, Eric Lafortune said: I started from what I presume is the standard Bad Apple video. The audio seems ok to me, although I'm using a chiptune instead (and lossless video compression). Impressive to get it down to 4MB lossless! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+mizapf Posted July 21, 2022 Share Posted July 21, 2022 Everybody seems to be pretty familiar with "Bad Apple" ... This is the first time I ever heard about it, including the video. But I'm not really a measure here, I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 21, 2022 Author Share Posted July 21, 2022 1 hour ago, mizapf said: Everybody seems to be pretty familiar with "Bad Apple" ... This is the first time I ever heard about it, including the video. But I'm not really a measure here, I guess. Ugh. Boomers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brain Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 As much as I loved giving him crap at VCF-SE for the lame excuse of a 15MB file not being able to be put in a TI cart (since that is exceedingly lame), I'm happy to design a quick cart if needed with 8 or 16MB of flash ROM for this effort. But, it has to be doable and without a ton of work effort. THe TI is sometimes challenged in specs, but this cannot possibly be the showstopper. Jim 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 22, 2022 Author Share Posted July 22, 2022 1 minute ago, brain said: As much as I loved giving him crap at VCF-SE for the lame excuse I mean, it did sound like a lot of "Wah wah wah! I don't have a large enough cartridge!" Watching the demo in Classic99 made me wish the debugger could show bank switches. ::demanding user intensifies:: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brain Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 9 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said: I mean, it did sound like a lot of "Wah wah wah! I don't have a large enough cartridge!" Watching the demo in Classic99 made me wish the debugger could show bank switches. ::demanding user intensifies:: Truly, it did. It was like a jet engine's worth of "LAME" coming from across the room. It was all I could do to not leverage it in some sick TI-platform burn from the Commodore table. Jim 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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