TI-994a How-To

[Flandango]

@Flandango - I will give it a try when it is ready. Thanks for all your help!

Sorry for the late response.
To enable debug logs for tipiports on the tipi, follow the instructions above where you changed the delay, but this time you will change another line:
on Step #4...goto line 20 (:29)
and un-comment the

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//#define LOG

to look like

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#define LOG

then follow the rest of the steps to recompile and reboot.
Then log back in and type

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tail -f ~/log/tipiports.log

Then bring up the TI core and try call tipi again.
You should see some activity going back and forth (you should even see reset events going through each time you reset the TI).
If you don't then it's not getting data from Mister.

If you want to look for activity with a probe, check pins 37 and 38 on the PI as you send the call tipi and you should see activity or if you have easier access to the usb breakout board on the mister side check the pins labeled DX+ and SSTX+ (or simply TX+).

When you are all done and don't have a need for the log file, just comment that line again and recompile/restart.

[mnielsenau]

@Flandango - Will give it a go and see what happens. I am pretty sure that the MultiSystem board is to blame as I don't have a problem with the other IO/Boards User Ports..... But I need to give it the benefit of the doubt... Thanks so much for all your help

[edburns]

Hello MiSTer community,

I am trying to get the following stack to work but have run into a problem, detailed below.

Stack

• MiSTer DE-10 from MisterAddons https://misteraddons.com/products/mister-bundles
• Core: TI/99-4/a 21.08.29
• MiSTer.ini https://dpaste.org/tJ7i
• Video (both hooked up at the same time, for troubleshooting):
  • Composite video:
    • Antonio Villena composite adapter https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/pro ... o-adapter/
    • SOG off
    • JVC 27" NTSC TV AV-27D201 http://support.jvc.com/consumer/product ... MODL020660
    • RCA cable
  • HDMI HDTV

Problem

1. Above stack works for Atari 800 core.
2. When I power on the MiSTer and select the TI/99 core, the composite video output immediately shuts down. I can't see the core OSD.
3. The HDMI output remains working, I can see the core OSD.
4. Looking at the OSD on the HDMI video, I load the BIOS ROM.
5. The composite starts working again.

I have found the excellent spreadsheet from nml32 https://bit.ly/nml32mister and applied some tips therein, but still observe this vexing problem. Does anyone have any idea how to get around this?

[Flandango]

Unfortunately I don't have the ability to output to composite from mister at this time so I can't do in-depth testing but from my understanding, analog out via the IO board won't display the OSD without the core outputting video ( if I'm wrong, hopefully somebody can correct me ).
The TI-99/4A core doesn't initiate it's video processor without the system "bios" files it needs, that's why you see the OSD after you load the bios rom.
Since you are using the older (official release), you can simply rename the BIOS ROM file you are using to boot up with to boot.rom and restart the core.

[cathrynmataga]

What does it take to run Tipi on Mister? Do I just need a Pi and a cable? The sites I see talking about tipi seem more oriented towards running with real hardware, what I found in short searching.

[Flandango]

What does it take to run Tipi on Mister? Do I just need a Pi and a cable? The sites I see talking about tipi seem more oriented towards running with real hardware, what I found in short searching.

To get Tipi on Mister, you'll of course need a Pi with the TIPI software installed, a I/O board so it provides the User I/O port, and a cable to go from the User I/O port directly to the pins on the raspberry pi.
The TI-99/4A repo has details on which pin goes where.
Page 7 of this thread has some pictures that can give you a better idea of what it looks like, the repo will have the latest/detailed pin information.

[edburns]

Flandango wrote:

Since you are using the older (official release), you can simply rename the BIOS ROM file you are using to boot up with to boot.rom and restart the core.

Thanks, this worked perfectly!

Now I can play Tunnels of Doom and finally update the Tunnels of Doom tribute page. http://purl.oclc.org/NET/edburns/classic-gaming/tunnels

Thanks,

Ed

[edburns]

I am new here, and I appreciate joining this innovative community. I hope to contribute back in some way (I just kicked down some paypal to Mr. MiSTer Alexey Melnikov, so I've got that going for me). Anyhow, I wonder if this thread will ever be promoted to a top level topic, on par with minimig or X6800. How is that decided?

Thanks,

Ed

[notFound]

@Flandango, found some time to experiment again with last release and I have some issue on F18A and TIPI.
F18A
I can’t get 3 demos to works from the F18A demo disk:
Demo 1 the bird sprite split in two sprite
Demo 6 stop and hang
Demo 7 when I use the cursor key to get the cube rotation, after a while the screen stop to refresh.
Mario bros. works but there is some delay when the "Mario sprite" run, seem to lose some timing .
TIPI
If TI core start with TIPI enabled, the core hang, while, if TIPI is disabled on startup all works as expected, after that I enable TIPI without hangs.
On reset, not a problem if TIPI is enabled or not.
Turbo mode is disabled.

Cheers,

[Flandango]

Hey notFound,
Thanks for the info.
For Demo1, are you talking about the stationary Yellow bird top left and the moving black outline bird? If so that's normal behavior.
For Demo 6 I can't even get that to work on JS99er so I can't even try to do a comparison with something to try and pinpoint the issue.
Demo 7...I can't get it to work on JS99er either. It loads up and just hangs there...no movement nor anything. On the Mister, I only got it to move once of the dozen or so times I've tried only to have it crash on me.
So I am not sure that Demo 6 and 7 work properly as they may have targeted an earlier version of the F18A and is no longer supported with v 1.9? Not sure.
Mario Bros, it does slow down once in a while and not sure if that's normal behavior or timing issues. Unfortunatly I don't have an F18A to actually do comparisons with.
As for Tipi, do you have a tipi connected and running? If not, then you have to disable that feature or Extended Basic will hang looking for DSK1 and will not jump over to the "Disk" drive to check.
If you do have a raspberry pi with tipi attached and you are getting hangups, what Raspberry Pi are you using and do you get the same behavior with the regular version of the Ti core?

[notFound]

Hey Flandango thanks for the explanation. As, you report my same issue for some F18A demos, maybe there is compatibility problems within roms version but isn't a problem, other that, works great. About TIPI, I use raspberry PI 2B as well tested on PI 4 and both give me the same issue. TI core (last release) with TIPI enabled hangs on looking for DSK1 under XB. I start the mister and TIPI at the same time and wait until the raspberry complete the boot. At the end of line isn't a great issue by enabling the TIPI after the mister start, only for few seconds to get in. In another my post I request the possibility to have a Parallel/serial port, I understand that DE-10 have some hardware limitation to emulate a parallel port but hope in a serial communication. Another request on the future of TI core is to remember the last rom loaded. Now is possible for a full rom converted in .m99 by rename it in boot0.rom but some roms won't works. "Load Rom Cart & Load GRom Cart" with capability to restore/reload the last used rom. I use Cortex Basic 80 and tried to convert in .m99 format a renamed in boo0.rom for an auto boot but nothing, the rom won't start, maybe I missed somethings. In this case the possibility to have attached the cartridge at boot strap would be another great addition. Cheers,

[Flandango]

Hey notFound, I have adding serial port support on the list. As for autoloading the last cartridge/rom used, while it's possible, it's not a feature you can toggle on or off and most user may not want that feature enabled. It doesn't mean I can't look into implementing something down the line but at the moment it's low on my list of things to look at.
As for Cortex Basic 80, the copy I managed to find doesn't have a boot strap to make it autostart on power up, like Force Command 1.32 by Jedimatt42 can. If one does exist and you know where I can find it, please let me know so I can look at it. If you want to use the regular cart (where you still have to choose Cortex Basic from the boot menu, then make sure you add the "-P 8" flag to the createImage.py command line. For example, here is what I used to create the M99 for Cortex Basic 80 that I got my hands on...

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createImage.py --Crom CBASIC80_040.bin -P 8 CBASIC80_040.M99

And as you know, you can use boot0.rom so it will autoload that cart (it won't start up Cortex Basic, but the rom is loaded).

[notFound]

Hey Flandango thanks for put in your todo list the serial port, also, a cartridge with on/off features sounds good.
The Cortex Basic 80 that I found, doesn't have a boot strap like yours maybe on the web there is some one that have modded the bin header, if I found one I'll let you know.
The rom with the "-P 8" flag works well, thanks.

[mnielsenau]

@Flandango - I did a little bit more investigation with the MiSTer MultiSystem board and I have found that the PI and the MultiSystem boards ARE talking to one another as I have been able to get into Force Command and initiate a DIR command. However most of the time it locks up half way or some way into the directory listing. Sometimes just as the listing is starting and others before it ends.

I think this is why CALL TIPI fails in basic as it goes to load the TIPICFG and TIPICFH files from the PI and gets corruption when it starts to load them. It seems that the "dirty" signals that you mentioned are worse on the MultiSytem than on a standard I/O board (maybe due to the extra distance from the I/O pins on the DE10?) . Not sure if you have had any progress on addressing the dirty signals issue but I am 90% sure that this is what is happening here.

Anyway it seems to work reliably on my MiSTer stack so for the moment I am using it there and really enjoying it, but just wanted to give you and update on my findings.

[Flandango]

Here is my latest core, that is still undergoing testing by Tmop, but looks stable enough to let others use it before submitting a code push up the chain.
What's new:

• Fixed an issue with 16K inverted banked roms (Paged 379)

• Added Mechatronics mouse support. For the few apps/games that use it (Breakout, TI Artist...)

• Added the ability to use a mouse in place of a joystick (experimental). Tested Centipede with trackball and seems to work ok.

• Added Myarc Floppy Drive Controller support. You can now use Double Density images using the DSR from Mame (ddcc1) just unzip it, change extension to .bin and use it in place of the Normal TI-FDC DSR. If you manage to get a hold of the Myarc 80 Track DSR/Firmware, it will allow you to choose between 5-1/4" (40 Track) and 3-1/2" (80 Track) drives (in a sub menu) that brings up the image sizes to 720k (1440 sectors).

• Added a "Turbo" button to floppy operations to speed up reading/writing some.

[Flandango]

@mnielsenau, Sorry I just saw your post. No I haven't had time to look into any further. I am waiting for my MultiSystem to come in, which I believe isn't for a while...by June I think?. Once I get a hold of it I will do some more testing to see what may be the cause and if there is anything I can do to work around it. Thanks for researching it and giving me updates

[jedimatt42]

Here is my latest core, that is still undergoing testing by Tmop, but looks stable enough to let others use it before submitting a code push up the chain.
What's new:

• Fixed an issue with 16K inverted banked roms (Paged 379)

• Added Mechatronics mouse support. For the few apps/games that use it (Breakout, TI Artist...)

• Added the ability to use a mouse in place of a joystick (experimental). Tested Centipede with trackball and seems to work ok.

• Added Myarc Floppy Drive Controller support. You can now use Double Density images using the DSR from Mame (ddcc1) just unzip it, change extension to .bin and use it in place of the Normal TI-FDC DSR. If you manage to get a hold of the Myarc 80 Track DSR/Firmware, it will allow you to choose between 5-1/4" (40 Track) and 3-1/2" (80 Track) drives (in a sub menu) that brings up the image sizes to 720k (1440 sectors).

• Added a "Turbo" button to floppy operations to speed up reading/writing some.

If you can experiment, there is a setting in /home/tipi/tipi/services/tipi.sh

Try increasing TIPI_SIG_DELAY

The typical userport has (I think) pull ups on the signals. On a real TIPI there are just the tiny pullups built into the CPLD. This can impact signal rise and fall time and stability. Different length wires, etc, all can play a part.

I don't have a userport on my mister setup, so I can't tune this myself. Or I would.

Edit: I meant to quote the post by @mnielsenau but surely fumbled my phone.

[Flandango]

If you can experiment, there is a setting in /home/tipi/tipi/services/tipi.sh

Try increasing TIPI_SIG_DELAY

The typical userport has (I think) pull ups on the signals. On a real TIPI there are just the tiny pullups built into the CPLD. This can impact signal rise and fall time and stability. Different length wires, etc, all can play a part.

I don't have a userport on my mister setup, so I can't tune this myself. Or I would.

Thanks Matt! Correct, the IO board has 10k pullups to each pin on the User port.
And thanks for all the work you have done with Tipi!
I will test the Delay with my Zero W since that is the one that gave me the problem.
Mnielsenau, if you plan on testing out the TIPI_SIG_DELAY, make sure you modify the one for your Raspberry Pi model.

[jedimatt42]

Also, when modifying code on the PI inplace, the update process will fail... so you have to revert those changes before update.

I'll fix the tipi.sh script so it can consume this value from /etc/environment if it is set.

[remowilliams]

Here is my latest core, that is still undergoing testing by Tmop, but looks stable enough to let others use it before submitting a code push up the chain.

WOOT! Realms of Antiquity here I come!

[Flandango]

As a quick follow up, I reverted my change to tipiports.c that i had un-commented the delay code and verified that it wasn't working with the Zero W but when I changed the delay in tipi.sh from 0 to 100, it worked.

Also, when modifying code on the PI inplace, the update process will fail... so you have to revert those changes before update.

I'll fix the tipi.sh script so it can consume this value from /etc/environment if it is set.

That would be great!

[jedimatt42]

TIPI update 2.31 - tipi.sh now respects the value of TIPI_SIG_DELAY in /home/tipi/tipi.config

/etc/environment didn't work like I expected on Raspberry PI OS... so I just used the existing config file

So you should be able to add this line to /home/tipi/tipi.config:

TIPI_SIG_DELAY=100

Tipi wiki docs: https://github.com/jedimatt42/tipi/wiki ... _sig_delay

[mnielsenau]

@Flandango and @jedimatt42

Thanks to both of you for your efforts on the TI-99/4A core and the TIPI support

I did some testing on both a standard I/O board and the Mister MultiSystem with both a Pi ZeroW and a Pi3B+ with the upgrade to 2.31 and adding in TIPI_SIG_DELAY=100 to the tipi.config file and changed the tipiports.c file back to //delayMicroseconds(1L) rebuilt tipiports and rebooted.

On the standard I/O board both the Pi ZeroW and the Pi3B+ both worked flawlessly and allowed me to load programs without lockup and on the PI ZeroW the DIR command in FC responded a little quicker than with the delayMicroseconds(1L) set.

On the Mister MultiSystem both the PI ZeroW and the Pi3B+ still struggled to get a DIR command done in FC. Sometimes it would complete the first time however doing a second DIR it would lock up in the middle. I did try TIPI_SIG_DELAY=150 but still the same lockups. It seems like the USER port on the Mister Multisystem is somehow different than the standard I/O boards.

Just wanted to let you both know my findings Thanks again to both of you for the great work on this core!

cheers,

mnielsenau

[edburns]

Flandango wrote:

Since you are using the older (official release), you can simply rename the BIOS ROM file you are using to boot up with to boot.rom and restart the core.

Thanks, this worked perfectly!

Now I can play Tunnels of Doom and finally update the Tunnels of Doom tribute page. http://purl.oclc.org/NET/edburns/classic-gaming/tunnels

Thanks,

Ed

I am working on this update to the page now and would like to direct readers to a Patreon or similar thing for Flandango. Is there one?

Thanks,

Ed

[Flandango]

I am working on this update to the page now and would like to direct readers to a Patreon or similar thing for Flandango. Is there one?

Thanks,

Ed

Thanks Edburns, but I don't have a Patreon.
But what I do have is another small update.......
This is a minor update to bring it up to the latest framework which incorporates Adaptive Scanlines by Wickerwaka.
Adaptive Scanlines is still in it's infancy but the great folks behind it are hard at work creating filters and presets for folks to enjoy.
Suggestion is don't enable Scandoubling effects (i.e. crt-25%/50%/75%) if you are using HDMI and use the new filters.

[edburns]

Adaptive Scanlines is still in it's infancy but the great folks behind it are hard at work creating filters and presets for folks to enjoy.
Suggestion is don't enable Scandoubling effects (i.e. crt-25%/50%/75%) if you are using HDMI and use the new filters.

I wish I knew what you meant by that. I would like to test this, but I need more concrete instructions. I am more of a "get it working good enough and leave it alone" kind of person. Also, I only use the TI core with composite video via S-video cable. So I probably don't even need this right? Even so, I would like to understand what this is and why someone would want to use it.

[Flandango]

Sorry for not being more informative. Adaptive Scanlines is something new being introduced to MiSter where, just like Shadow Masks, they are video filters so folks who don't use CRTs can mimic the scanlines and other crt/vga artifacts.
I myself don't have a CRT anymore to test the core on so I don't know if the new framework messes up VGA output from the core.
So in your case, if you try out this version of the core and everything still looks good (with your current settings), then that's great you don't have to do any other testing unless you want to play with these new filters (not released yet via update scripts, but you can get some from Discord).
The only thing that I noticed with all the new/updated cores that utilize the new Framework, is if you used Scan Doubling so you can get the pseudo scanlines and not using scaling, the scanlines now are not even. With the new Adaptive Scanlines feature, you don't need to use Scan Doubling and simply use the new filters. But folks who need to output to VGA/CRT and need to use 30khz instead of 15khz, they need to use Scan Doubling and I don't know what results they will get because I can't test it myself.
I haven't heard any complaints on the other cores that currently utilize the new Framework so I am assuming the results would be the same for this core.
But if anybody notices issues that can't be adequately addressed, I am willing to revert to the previous Framework if need be.

[edburns]

Flandango wrote:

Since you are using the older (official release), you can simply rename the BIOS ROM file you are using to boot up with to boot.rom and restart the core.

Thanks, this worked perfectly!

Now I can play Tunnels of Doom and finally update the Tunnels of Doom tribute page. http://purl.oclc.org/NET/edburns/classic-gaming/tunnels

Thanks,

Ed

I have updated the page with detailed instructions for the MiSTer. Here is an excerpt:

you will learn how to go from absolute zero to equipping your dungeon crawling party using MiSTer. Let's break the tutorial into several sections.

One time setup: Going from zero to being ready to see the 16 color boot screen of the TI-99/4a.

Going from the 16 color boot screen to equipping your party.

Going from 16 color boot screen to restoring and resuming.

Let's dive in!

https://www.ridingthecrest.com/edburns/ ... ister.html

[tmop]

Flandango wrote:

Since you are using the older (official release), you can simply rename the BIOS ROM file you are using to boot up with to boot.rom and restart the core.

Thanks, this worked perfectly!

Now I can play Tunnels of Doom and finally update the Tunnels of Doom tribute page. http://purl.oclc.org/NET/edburns/classic-gaming/tunnels

Thanks,

Ed

I have updated the page with detailed instructions for the MiSTer. Here is an excerpt:

you will learn how to go from absolute zero to equipping your dungeon crawling party using MiSTer. Let's break the tutorial into several sections.

One time setup: Going from zero to being ready to see the 16 color boot screen of the TI-99/4a.

Going from the 16 color boot screen to equipping your party.

Going from 16 color boot screen to restoring and resuming.

Let's dive in!

https://www.ridingthecrest.com/edburns/ ... ister.html

Regarding TOD, is possible to run the data files directly in cartridge, without using the disk. My last MegaPack 4.0 (available on Atari Age: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/31265 ... nt=4967326 ) has 9 games in .M99 format (under the SSS_Games directory).

A new, updated Magapack will be released soon and it will include 49 TOD games in .M99 format. The disk will only needed to save your game progress.

[Flandango]

Here is the F18A version of the core with the latest updates.
Enjoy.