retroclouds

Not sure about the release date yet. I have it kinda working, but it’s more of a workaround really. I did not find the root cause yet and this makes it too unstable to my liking. In between I have had a broken TI-99/4a console, so had to get a F18a installed in a second console. Note that you can always get the latest build at github, but no guarantees to it working

My daily driver TI-99/4a console is partly nonfunctioning. This took me a while to figure out. When disconnected from the PEB, my console starts-up normally and I can jump into TI-Basic and it behaves normally. When connected to the PEB, it hangs during power-up (cyan blank screen) and the title screen does not appear. To me it looks like it hangs when scanning the DSR’s as the disk controller light is on when it locks. One of the first things I did is clean sideport contacts, but no result. I then removed all the PEB cards except disk controller and 32k, same thing. Then I switched the FLEX cable card, again no change. As a last resort, I switched to my 2nd PEB box and all the cards in it, no change. This made me believe, there’s an issue with the console itself. I plugged in my Miner 2049 cart in the sideport and game title screen is there. But the animation continously resets while building the title screen. Looks quite interesting actually. The same applies to the cartridge port as well, Munchman sometimes work perfectly, other times I get artifacts on screen. Note that this is a F18a equiped console, so I’d rule out broken VDP ram. Are there any clues to what could be broken here? I thought it perhaps has something to do with the data or address lines going to the sideport and cartridge port? Or might this be an issue with a broken CRU? Really like to save this mainboard, especially because of the F18a, but I’m a total hardware noob. I’m also kind of afraid that if I try to remove the F18a from the socket I’ll break off its legs.

I’d like to 3d print this, but it seems the design is no longer available. Are there other any known sources?

I am very happy that the V9938 will be supported in js99er. This allows me to support the 9938 besides the F18a. With that in place I could run Stevie on mame. Mainly for debugging purposes, that is. js99er is my main driver for development, combined with classic99.

Filip Van Vooren

Was able to solve the issue. Stevie is now able to read the catalog on IDE drives. Still having issues with navigating the directories. I am sometimes getting a path not found error. The behaviour is different compared to for example the HDR4000 or TIPI. Need to do some more testing and check what else is in this release, because it's the first time I touched it in 2024. EDIT: Also have some strange behavior on the IDE1 when trying to save INVADERS source code. It runs into a file error exactily after writing 1999 lines. I wonder if there's something in the IDE DSR that prevents writing DIS/VAR80 files with 2000 lines or more.

I kinda like fzf as a TUI for linux. https://github.com/junegunn/fzf?tab=readme-ov-file#linux-packages

From Fred's Documentation (when reading the directory/catalog): In the case of the IDE peripheral there will be always a last record returned with an empty name!. This might be the cause of the problem. Will do some testing on this.

Unfortunately not, real life (work mainly) has been occupying a lot more time as anticipated. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

I can see mine. Upper row, 3rd on the right. Just kidding, thank you so much for the hard work on this. It is really very much appreciated.

I read that the pico9918 also has 80 columns possibility. I’m using the F18a with 80 columns mode a lot in my Stevie editor (in fact it’s 80x30 or 80x24 with overlayed sprite as cursor and Position based attrbiute color mode. Not sure if that is the correct naming, basically the color table is as large as the screen table so each character can have it’s individual FG/BG color. Is this something that’s possible with the pico9918 as well? When working on the firmware I do have an enhancement request. Really would like to have 80 columns mode with more rows, e.g. 80x48 or 80x60 Thoughts?

I’m so sorry to hear about your loss Fabrice. I wish you lots of strength in these sad and hard times.

Thanks for reporting this. I have tested with both TIPI and the HRD4000B, but not with IDE. Do have an IDE card but my IDE hard drive died before I could test with Stevie. Anyway should be able to reproduce the reported behaviour. I can imagine it might be an issue with the directory format, that is timestamp attributes. Will take a look next month when I have spare time. I am sure this can be fixed.

yes, that would be possible. I am not really using any of the finalgrom99 features. The only exception to that is the menu option to chain to another FG99 cartridge image (RXB, …) from inside Stevie.

Renovating the house right now. But I should have some spare time coming up in 4 weeks. If no one beats me to it, I’ll create a small loader for the finalgrom99