XB3 Cartridge EPROMs

[jschultzpedersen]

Thanks. Yes, I managed to mess up with dashes and underscores again. A privilege of old age I guess 😀 It works now. The secret was in the rom1 definition.

 

[RXB]

Hmmm I just use Classic99. Go to Cartridge, Open the one ending in C.bin and it works fine?

No need for a scripts in the INI file.

[Gary from OPA]

Just now, RXB said:

Hmmm I just use Classic99. Go to Cartridge, Open the one ending in C.bin and it works fine?

No need for a scripts in the INI file.

Yeah there no need for scripts if you want just the stripped down version. Unless you like having it listed as option in the user menu.

 

Or course for me I am testing a script the loads the 24k pop-cart console ROMs as well plus another bank of 5 groms also. Which clasic99 supports infact you can load multiple racks of groms now. Just sadly all banks of groms point to the same set of ROM pages as those are not banked (yet) and you only have one set of groms 0/1/2 in all banks. It would be great if @Tursi would allow at least to override groms 1 and 2 the ti basic part in other grom banks that would make things nicer at least for my own development projects.

[SteveB]

On 4/29/2024 at 7:28 PM, RXB said:

XB3 has added more routines so it does more comparisons like not just checking ROW and COLUMN it also checks ranges of numbers or validates values.

Is there a manual available for download? What use has an  XB 3 if you don't know the features..?

[+mizapf]

Just now, SteveB said:

Is there a manual available for download? What use has an  XB 3 if you don't know the features..?

Months - no, years - of discoveries of secrets! Suspense! 🙂

 

[RickyDean]

Yeh, just doing a Call Version brought this up.

[Tursi]

1 hour ago, Gary from OPA said:

Yeah there no need for scripts if you want just the stripped down version. Unless you like having it listed as option in the user menu.

 

Or course for me I am testing a script the loads the 24k pop-cart console ROMs as well plus another bank of 5 groms also. Which clasic99 supports infact you can load multiple racks of groms now. Just sadly all banks of groms point to the same set of ROM pages as those are not banked (yet) and you only have one set of groms 0/1/2 in all banks. It would be great if @Tursi would allow at least to override groms 1 and 2 the ti basic part in other grom banks that would make things nicer at least for my own development projects.

You can via the INI. We did this just last month for the OPA startup.

 

There's just no /autodetect/ method for doing it, since it expects you are dragging and dropping a cartridge, not an operating system.

 

I need to add the RPK support, and I was toying with supporting Classic99.ini fragments as well, since RPK doesn't support everything Classic99 can load. But, I need time. Someone win the lottery and hire me. Hell, I'd finish V4 rather than continuing to hammer on V3.

 

 

[Tursi]

1 hour ago, Gary from OPA said:

Just sadly all banks of groms point to the same set of ROM pages as those are not banked (yet) and you only have one set of groms 0/1/2 in all banks.

Just re-read this - you mean multiple GROM bases on GROMs 0,1,2? Pretty sure I added that for you.

 

Maybe I'm confusing intent, but if that's what it was, you set Emulation/bankedConsoleGROMs in the Classic99.ini to 1, then load as normal with G1, G2, etc.

 

That's a hardware mod on a real console, so it doesn't make sense to do it per cartridge.

 

Edited May 1 by Tursi

[Gary from OPA]

23 minutes ago, Tursi said:

Just re-read this - you mean multiple GROM bases on GROMs 0,1,2? Pretty sure I added that for you.

 

Maybe I'm confusing intent, but if that's what it was, you set Emulation/bankedConsoleGROMs in the Classic99.ini to 1, then load as normal with G1, G2, etc.

 

That's a hardware mod on a real console, so it doesn't make sense to do it per cartridge.

 

Hmm. I forgot about that "ini" switch, i guess its not in the drop-down menus! -- haha -- As I was able to load like 4 slots of groms 5 to 7 but only 1 slot of console groms. -- i will try that switch and see if i can get all 8 slots running with each with 8 different groms (well the main part the first 6k of console grom 0 should always be the same, otherwise you end up with lockups!

 

Only thing left to emulate the pop-cart would be to tie the rom pages to the banked console groms as well, with each block of 4 pages (32k) set to switch to the matching console rom, for how that works hardware see the tech pages on modding the 3 slot widget, the pop-cart basically did that for up to 8 slots, so you would have 256k of ROM >6000 but divided into 8 sections of 32k (4 pages), or if 16 slots then of course that would be 512k divided into 16 sections of 32k (4 pages). (when I publish the pop-cart source code, you will most likely understand better how it works)

 

of course i rather you win the lottery and buy some outside walls for v4.00 instead of patching v3. some more you going to run out of 999's soon, or we end up with v3.999999999999999901b at this rate!

Edited May 1 by Gary from OPA

[Gary from OPA]

47 minutes ago, SteveB said:

Is there a manual available for download? What use has an  XB 3 if you don't know the features..?

this is the only PDF's I have, one is the Asgard ad and order form -- And the other is the manual which explains most of the new features and how the pop-cart stuff works -- the other changes are similar to Mechtronic XBII+ in regard to loading the "ApeSoft" graphics library, and previous fixes in their XB.

1993-asgard_xb3.pdf ExtendedBasic3.pdf

[SteveB]

I've been playing around with XB 3 tonight ... BASICally how well it could be used with TiCodEd and Classic99.

 

XB3 introduces seven new token which are not available in the TiCodEd-Tokenizer: DATE$, HEX$, LALPHA, LWRC$, OFF, TIME$, UPRC$ 

 

XB3 also uses a different memory-layout, so the generated files differ between TiCodEd generated and saved by XB3. The XB compatibility makes it still possible to load TiCodEd generated XB3 files.

 

Awkward looking constructs like CLOSE #ALL, CALL CHAR ALL, VAL(>"FFFC") and CALL MOTION GO/STOP seem to work. As there is no OFF token, CALL SCREEN OFF is not supported, making CALL SCREEN ON pointless, though working. The same applies to CALL QUIT ON/OFF. XB GEM and RXB do not need extra token, so they integrate better.

 

Line-numbers can be used in CALL GOSUB and CALL GOTO, but not with TiCodEd-labels.

The syntax-highlighter shows all keywords (token) in black. You can see, that "off" is not recognized.

 

If you renounce from using the tokenizer and paste the created XB program to Classic99, you can use the Structured Extended BASIC also with those unsupported tokens.

 

 

You may auto-copy the XB code to the clipboard with this integration setting:

 

If you want to play yourself with the combination of XB3 and TiCodEd, place this file in the ./lib directory and select it as Extension Package:

 

XB 3.xbpkg

 

 

This will declare the additional CALL routines to the code generator (otherwise you will get an "undefined" error) and the editor code-completion (press control-space):

 

Have fun,

Steve

 

 

 

 

[RXB]

I have disassembled most of XB3 3.0 so far both ROM and GROMs