GENEVE FAQ 02.01.2005 Compiled By Dan H. Eicher Contributions by (in no particular order)(: Jeff White Bill Sulivan Beery Miller Dr. Jerry Coffee Tim Tesch Tony Kneer Ron Reuter Ken Hastings Bill Sulivan Fred Kaal Table Of Contents: GENERAL: What is a Geneve..................................GEN0001 What is a GenMod Geneve...........................GEN0002 Is Myarc still in business........................GEN0003 Does anyone do repairs on Geneves.................GEN0004 Can I get a copy of the schematics................GEN0005 Where can I get this, that or the other program...GEN0006 Is there an emulator for the Geneve...............GEN0007 What is the PFM upgrade...........................GEN0008 MDOS: What is MDOS......................................MDOS0001 What is the current version.......................MDOS0002 Is the source code available......................MDOS0003 How many people have contributed to the MDOS source code................................MDOS0004 Is there a GUI available..........................MDOS0005 How can I customize MDOS..........................MDOS0006 What terminal specification does MDOS emulate.....MDOS0007 Is there an ANSI driver...........................MDOS0008 Which clock.......................................MDOS0009 How/Where does MDOS store its time and date stamp......................................MDOS0010 Essential MDOS software...........................MDOS0099 SETUP ISSUES: What is the latest version of the Geneve Boot Eprom......................................SETUP0001 What cards can be used with a Geneve..............SETUP0002 Can I use 1.2MB Floppys hooked to an HFDC with a Geneve........................................SETUP0003 What about 1.4MB Floppys..........................SETUP0004 What keyboards can be used with a Geneve..........SETUP0005 What printers can used with a Geneve..............SETUP0006 How do I hook up a speech synthezier..............SETUP0007 How do I load up my cartridges....................SETUP0008 What kind of monitor will I need..................SETUP0009 What is an "Emulate File".........................SETUP0010 What CRU's should my various cards be set at......SETUP0011 What types of mice can be used with a Geneve......SETUP0012 What is the largest HD I can use with a Geneve....SETUP0013 How do I format a MFM drive for use on the Geneve..........................................SETUP0014 How do I format a SCSI drive for use on the Geneve..........................................SETUP0015 How do I format a floppy drive in MDOS............SETUP0016 Boot Up: How does "boot up" happen.........................BOOT0001 Can I boot from any floppy?.......................BOOT0002 Can I boot from a hard drive?.....................BOOT0003 Why does boot from a HD require load/sys..........BOOT0004 Can I boot from a ramdisk?........................BOOT0005 Can I boot from a LARGE ramdisk...................BOOT0006 Can I boot from a SCSI device.....................BOOOT007 Is their such a thing as a bootable eprom.........BOOT0008 What is a "jump boot" disk........................BOOT0009 How can I tell if my MDOS file is good............BOOT0010 Compatability: Are all TI-99/4a programs compatible with a Geneve...................................COMPAT0001 What does ROMPAGE do..............................COMPAT0002 MISC TIPS: Transfering software between a PC and a Geneve....MISC0001 The Dred Archive Bit Problem......................MISC0002 Why can't my HFDC read single density floppies is this a bug in MDOS...........................MISC0003 I have a serial printer, how can I get the screen dump routine to work.....................MISC0004 MDOS Program Development: What tools are available to development native MDOS applications.................................PROG0001 How much GRAM memory does the Geneve have.........PROG0002 What bank switching scheme did Myarc use to allow more than 64K.............................PROG0003 How do I access speech from native MDOS mode......PROG0004 How fast is the Geneve compared to a TI...........PROG0005 HARDWARE: Are there any hardware hacks worth doing..........HARD0001 Adding 32K of Fast Static RAM.....................HARD0002 Adding 64K of Video RAM...........................HARD0003 Adding a battery holder...........................HARD0004 Another Geneve clock fix..........................HARD0005 Power related upgrades............................HARD0006 Electrical Tape Modification......................HARD0007 HFDC UPGRADES.....................................HARD0020 Upgradeing the memory on your HFDC................HARD0021 I can't get a third HD to work....................HARD0022 I've hooked up a floppy to my HFDC and now I have no HD access.............................HARD0023 Line Drivers......................................HARD0024 Qic Tape Chip.....................................HARD0025 Clean Contacts....................................HARD0030 WHO: Who can I thank...................................WHO0001 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= GENERAL: GEN0001: What is a Geneve The Geneve was a TI-99/4a upgrade produced by Myarc Incorporated of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The Geneve is sometimes refered to as a Myarc Geneve 9640 or Myarc 9640. The story behind the name.. Originally, Lou Phillips (President and Owner) wanted to call the machine something with 99, 990 or 9900, Texas Instruments asked him not to. So, he came up with the name 9640. 9 for the 9900 chip family and 640 for the amount of memory. Later, a programmer working on some of the original software told Lou, that a computer should have a name, not a number. This as they were working up the stairs at Lous home, they spotted a painting on the wall. The name of the painting was Geneve - so the name stuck. The Geneve is a TI-99/4a upgrade that was produced by Myarc Incorporated of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The Geneve is sometimes referred to as a Myarc Geneve 9640 or Myarc 9640. The story behind the name.. More Information on the origin of the Geneve computers name: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER 1995 LIMA NEWSLETTER THE ORIGIN OF THE GENEVE COMPUTER'S NAME The clamshell containing the Myarc's computer-on-a-card says "Myarc 9640 Family Computer". The box calls it "Geneve". What is the origin of these names? No, it has nothing to do with any computer chip. There is no such thing as a 9640 chip. The answer is in an article by Dave Wakely published in the August 30 1986 issue of Chicago Times, newsletter of the Chicago User Group. This is the first published account of anybody actually seeing a working Myarc computer. The report is from the June 1986 Chicago Consumer Electronics Show. "(Myarc owner Lou) Phillips stated that Texas Instruments asked him not to use "9900" in the name, but he retained the "9" and added the "640" because that is the amount of RAM which comes with the machine." "With Phillips behind the table was John Keown, author of Module Emulator, who is now doing extensive work with Myarc. I inquired about the origin of the name. Keown jumped in and stated that it was his idea. It seems that a few days before the CES, while they were working together, Keown told Phillips that he felt there should be a name for the new machine instead of just a number, "the 9640". As they were heading down the staircase from Phillips' office there was a framed print on the wall. The name at the bottom was "Geneve", and when Keown suggested this, Phillips agreed to it." The main differences between a Geneve and a TI-99/4a are: Geneve TI Plug in expansion card Stand alone console 9938 VDP 9918 VDP 9995 CPU 9900 CPU Full XT style keyboard. Slightly compressed keyboard built into console. GEN0002: WHAT IS A GENMOD GENEVE A GENMOD Geneve is a standard Geneve that has a third party modification, that allows the Geneve to run at zero wait states, effectively doubling performance. The GenMod is a small daughter board that mounts to the Geneve. This modification was created by Dynamic Memory System (Ron Walters) and sold through Bud Mills Service. This modification MUST be used with a Memex card. More Information on the GENMOD: In a nut-shell the GenMod provides up to 2MB of 0 wait- state RAM. The maximum addressable memory by the Geneve is 2MB. The TIMODE switch allows the 512K of on-board RAM to be switched out in favor of 512K 0 wait-state RAM provided by a 2MB Memex card, and the TURBO switch controls 0 wait-state operation. If TIMODE is switched off (on-board 512K RAM switched out and 512K RAM of Memex switched in) then all access to the Gate-array is also removed and GPL cannot be loaded, so the only TI programs that are available are those that execute with EXEC. However, this provides native MDOS with very fast operation in all memory if the TURBO switch is on (rarely do I have TURBO switched off). Bill R Sullivan OK, I'll try to hit what I remember. With Turbo mode on, the machine operates at 0 wait states for the memory on the Memex. If TI-MODE is on, you are using 512K of the Geneve Ram (1 wait state?, pages >00 to >3F) and the balance of the MEMEX memory at either 0/1 wait state depending on the status of the turbo switch. If TI-MODE is off, then you are using all memory on the MEMEX. The GPL interpreter won't run as the gate array is hardcoded to use Geneve onboard ram. If you have Turbo Mode on, then this is the fastest way to run the Geneve. There were a few problems with the Pal at one time that Don offered from Whtech that reduced VDP wait states when using a Geneve at 0 wait states. I think there are cases where the Geneve cold actually outrun the 9938. I remember Don trying to fine tune the timing, but I never got the final version. When TI Mode is off, using the GenMOD and MEMEX, it required a modified (one byte change) of the eprom. This was to restrict the memory test as page >3A (mirror of >7A, >BA, >FA) would fail as it would also hit the DSR pages for the cards. An unmodified Rave speech board would also have problems on page >3C, >7C, >BC, and >FC. Without the VDP Pal Mod, I would run TI Mode on with Turbo on. Beery GEN0003: Is Myarc still in business No. Myarc ran as a full time business, until the late 80s, for a couple of years after that, Lou Phillips, attempted to run it as a side business. This didnt work so well as other demands for his time and attention out weighted Myarc business. The company was shutdown in the early 90s in good order. After the shutdown, remaining parts and inventory were transfered to a company called Cecure electronics, ran by Don Waldon. Don Waldon was active in the TI community, serving at one point as president of both the Chicago and Milwaukee users group. Finally, in the late 90s Cecure disappeared leaving many people holding the bag. GEN0004: Does anyone do repairs on Geneves. You might try : "Tim Tesch" Tim used to work for Cecure doing repairs. Tim sometimes does repairs as he has time. Many times repair is not possible, becuase the components that are bad are no longer available. As a last resort, you might try Richard Bell - he has been known to look at Myarc equipment on a best effort basis. GEN0005: CAN I GET A COPY OF THE SCHEMATICS You are in luck thanks to Ron Reuter Geneve schematics can be found here: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/geneve/geneve.html More Schematics can be found: ftp://ftp.whtech.com/geneve/schematics/ GEN0006: WHERE CAN I GET THIS, THAT OR THE OTHER PROGRAM Since the Geneve has been out of production for many year that availablility of software and vendors very from year to year. One vendor that has kept a good supply of TI and Geneve software is Ramcharged computers - Ron Marcus - 440.243.1244. MDOS and GPL are freely available, check ftp.whtech.com. ftp.whtech.com also includes many many programs and manuals for the Geneve including the complete 9640 News CDROM. If you own PC99, you can also purhase the CYC which has all the Micropendiums from begining to end in text searchable PDF format. Many Geneve articles are included. pw2.netcom.com/~mjmw/cyc GEN0007: Yes. The MESS emulator now emulates a Geneve complete with a harddrive. http://www.mess.org/ and hard drive preloaded with software and tested, thanks to Beery Miller can be found here: www.9640news.com - you can find MESS files there. Note: The Geneve emulation in MESS would not have been possible with out the programming skills and contributions of Raphael Nabet. GEN0008: What is the PFM upgrade. PFM stands for Programable Flash Memory. This is an upgrade that replaces your boot eprom and replaces it with either 128K or 512K of programmable flash memory. TAT has written several utilities that will allow you to boot your Geneve from this memory and you can use the rest as a ramdisk. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- MDOS: MDOS0001: What is MDOS MDOS [Myarc Disk Operating System] is the native operating system of the Geneve. MDOS presents the user with a command line environment very similar to Microsoft MSDOS. The major feature one must get used to, is that MDOS maps certain drive letters to device, this happens automatically, but can be over written with a remap command. As an example A: = DSK1. For details, please see the documentation that accompanies MDOS. MDOS includes a portability layer called GPL MODE, (MDOS is sometimes called NATIVE MODE). Once GPL is invoked the Geneve functions very much like a TI. When TI created the 99/4a, the beauty of the architecture was that, to add additional capabilities, all one had to do, was add a card. Each card would have it's own DSR [device service routine] that would add it's capabilities to the OS. This was a very good thing in theory. When Myarc came along with the Geneve, they realized that there were many short comings in many cards DSR design, that, while working well in the 99/4a environment didn't work well with the Geneve's hardware/software design. (One could also debate, that the Geneve's hardware/software design, did not work well with existing DSR's.) So, Myarc was left with a two choices, rewrite DSR's, providing new DSR EPROMS for every device [to some extent Dijit did this with their AVPC video card] or support a limited set of hardware in MDOS. This allowed them to by pass sending out new EPROMS and they could easily patch short comings in each MDOS release. The down side was more RAM taken by DSR code in the OS, more complicated OS code and the need to add driver code directly to MDOS for ever device MDOS supported. At one point Myarc called this code the “super DSR”, also at one point Myarc discussed creating an specification that would allow people to add their own DSR's in to the OS. Similar to MS-DOS's use of device.sys in config.sys. Unfortunately, this external DSR specification was never implemented. Some of the mile stone releases included: 2.21 – Last to boot without the extra static ram. Also fixed clock bug. Many times if a Geneve powered up with a dead battery the clock would be in test mode, this kept MDOS from writing any files. 4.0 - Added SCSI support, this version and all following, MUST have an extra 32K static ram chip installed to function. 6.0 - Added year 2,000 support. 6.0A - Added PDMA MDOS0002: What is the current version As of the writing of this document - 6.50 for MDOS and 6.50 for GPL - These two file should be used together and not mixed and matched with other versions. The last version that will work with out the additional 32K of static memory is 2.21 – this information might be handy to test a Geneve before adding the extra memory. I believe MDOS 6.0 was the first release that would support SCSI on a GenMod Geneve and 6.0A supported upgraded SCSI cards with PDMA. But your best bet of course is MDOS 6.50. MDOS 6.5 was released Nov 08, 2002. (Chicago Faire) It was a collaborative effort between Tony and TAT. Who knows if it would have been released at the Faire had Tony not updated pieces of both programs earlier. :) MDOS0003: Is the source code available Yes, thanks to Beery Miller. Beery was a Geneve advocate who published a diskazine, called 9640 news. Paul Charlton wrote MDOS a senior electrical engineering project, it was also a work for hire program written for Myarc. At some point in the relationship, Paul Charlton felt he had not gotten all of what Myarc owed him and he stopped producing upgrades and fixes. At this point Beery got involved and with Lou Phillips blessing led a MDOS buyout. MDOS users contributed from 25+ dollars. Once enough money had been collected, the check was given to Paul Charlton, who gave the source code to Beery. Berry actually flew to New York to get the code in person. The source code, in compilable format is available on the HD image that Beery Miller put together. MDOS0004: Many different people have contributed to MDOSs development. At least a dozen people have worked on the source code. For the last eight years, the primary maintaner has been Tim Tesch. Up until MESS emulated a Geneve one of the challenges was that in order to work on MDOS, you had to have the following items at your finger tips, a working Geneve, an HFDC and harddrive, the source code and a copy of GenASM. Now thanks to the MESS emulator and Beerys hard drive image anyone with a relatively modern PC can work on, play with and contribute to MDOS! MDOS0005: IS THEIR A GUI AVAILABLE Yes, a number of them. One of the prettyest - but never finished was GIMI by Lou Riccio. Windows9640 - This is a Graphics Subsystem, that can either be used as full GUI or used in a runtime version with applications, written to its API - one example is CFORM. Written by Beery Miller. GenBench - Written by Al Beard. This emulates a program launcher similar to one on the Amiga. MDOS0006: How can I customize MDOS Most setup "tweaks" are done to MDOS one of two ways. Way1: CYA - This program by Tim Tesch lets you customize MDOS and save it back to disk. It also will update the computed CRC value. Some of the items you can tweak with CYA include permanently setting drive assignments, setting the head step values for floppies and HD's. Way2: In your AUTOEXEC file, there are many commands for customizing your environment and drive configuration. MDOS0007: What "Terminal" specification does a Geneve Emulate. ADM3A. MDOS0008: Is there an ANSI driver There is not an ANSI driver for MDOS, but TAT and MJM did write a very nice ANSI viewer for MDOS. MDOS0009: Which clock MDOS always sets and uses the Geneve's Real Time Clock for time and date stamping. Any other clock, HFDC, BwG is not used at all. MDOS0010: How/Where does MDOS store it's time and date stamp? This information is from the HardMaster manual by Garry Christensen. HardMaster is the only commercially produced editor for hard drives. It works both on a Geneve and a TI. HardMaster is available from Ram Charged Computers. HardMaster also includes a version that works on floppies, the beauty is, once you get comfortable with the command structure, you can easily move back and forth between hard and floppy drive editing. Sector 0, words >12 to >15, contain the date and time of creation. The time is first. Write the value down in binary notation. The first 5 bits are the number of hours (24 hour clock), the next 6 are the minutes and the final 5 is the seconds divided by 2. When you catalogue your disk you will see that the seconds are always even. Do the same with the date. The first 7 represent the year, the next 4 are the month and the final 5, the day. In the printout of my sector 0 the words >13a5,>B24F are the time and date. Breaking them into binary gives: 0001 0011 1010 0101, 1011 0010 0100 1111 When split they look like this: 00010 2 Hours 011101 29 Minutes 00101 10 Seconds (x2) 1011001 89 Year 0010 2 Month 01111 15 Date The time and date information for the file descriptor is held in bytes >14 to >17. MDOS0099: Essential MDOS Software Windows9640 By Beery Miller - This is a Graphical Environment/Multitasker for MDOS. According to a post on the yahoo groups list server [01.02.2003] by Beery Miller, programmer of Windows9640 the full version of the software is PD. Please note there is also a run time version that is used by Mike Maksimiks HF Format program. Clint Pulleys Disk Manager - This is an 80-column disk manager with support for directories and enhanced error handling. It has been updated by Clint to handle Y2K issues. XCOPY by John Johnson - This program has many options, and is a good way to back up your data and defrag your hard drive. EDIT by Peter Muyes - This is a nice TI like editor for MDOS, it is not as fully functional as Funnelweb but will handle most needs, except for heavy word processing extremely well. Bruce HellStroms Memory Viewer PORT - This is a native MDOS terminal emulator by Tim Tesch, it supports the extra speed and memory of the Geneve. Works well at 38.4KBPS. Exec and Texec by Barry Boone. Allows you to run E/A option 5 files from the MDOS command line. Texec is a special version for Telco that will allow Telco to run at 4800 with out dropping characters. Tim Tesch modified to EXEC to allow you to run it in "ROMPAGE" mode from the command line. CYA by Tim Tesch with updates by Tony Knerr. CYA will not only guide you through many MDOS configurations that you would have to do with many lines in an AUTOEXEC file or that you would have to make sector edit changes but will also test some hardware and report back the amount of memory your HFDC has, the amount of video RAM you have, the amount of static memory you have and version of the boot EPROM. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= SETUP ISSUES: SETUP0001: WHAT IS THE LATEST GENEVE BOOT EPROM? Finally after over a decade of waiting for 1.0 release of the Geneve Boot Eprom, Tony Kneer took it upon himself, to an upgraded boot eprom. This was a mamoth undertaking as the source code is now lost. Tony has release version 1.00 of the Geneve boot eprom. Holding down the space bar will give you a nice menu asking which device you wish to boot from, incidentally, it also includes the ability to boot from a SCSI hard drive. SETUP0002: WHAT CARDS CAN BE USED WITH A GENEVE TI, Myarc and Corcomp Disk Controllers. Myarc HFDC This card can support 1.4 megabyte drives, if it has a 9216B data seperator chip. Some cards have a 9216 (no b) and are unreliable at anything higher that 720K. Horizon Ramdisks. Rave Ramdisks. Myarc 512K card (*) This card required modification to work in a Geneve environment. Rave Speech Adapter. TI, Myarc and Corcomp RS232s. WHT SCSI Controller. SNUG SCSI Controller. MEMEX - Memory Expansion (*) Defaults to 512K - you must have the GenMod to go up to 2MEG. ForTI Music Card - Note: you will need to patch GPL. SETUP0003: CAN I USE 1.2MB FLOPPYS ATTACHED TO AN HFDC IN A GENEVE SYSTEM The HFDC could be modified to support 1.2 Meg (500kbps, 360rpm, 80-track) drives. The density select inputs to the floppy data separator (SMC9216B) would have to be decoded to give the density select signal to the 34-pin connector. Most, if not all, 1.44 Meg (500kbps, 300rpm, 80-track) drives do not require the signal. In reality, the density select signal is a speed select (300/360rpm). A 500kbps, 300rpm drive, be it 3.5" or 5.25" would appear the same to the controller (a 1.44Meg drive). Unfortunately, the coercivity of 5.25" high density media is not sufficient to store the same amount of data as 3.5" high density media. In fact, 300/360th (5/6) of 1.44 is 1.2. It is the faster speed (360 rpm) that brings the 5.25" high density media to usability at 500kbps. Jeff White From: "Jerry L. Coffey" Subject: TI99: That messy 1.2MB format These analogies are useful for understanding the gross characteristics of IBM 80-track formats, but the reality is a lot messier. 1.2M -- This is formatted to 1,213,952 bytes in 2371 allocation units of 512 bytes each. NOTE that 2371 is not evenly divisible by 160 (which is the total number of tracks on both sides of the disk). Right! The number of sectors per track is DIFFERENT on the outer and inner tracks. So the formatting code has to change parameters as the head moves inward. Messy stuff! 720K -- This one also uses 96 tracks per inch ("80 tracks per side) but there have been two different versions. The first (up to DOS 3.x ) used 512 byte allocation units, but then at about DOS 3.3, this was changed to 1024 byte allocation units (which could give the same capacity with fewer total bytes per track, but I think there was also a change in the head switching pattern at the same time). Anyway, the 3.5" formats (at 135 tracks per inch) are a whole bunch simpler and more rationalized than the many IBM 5.25" formats. Jerry L. Coffey, PhD. Mathematical Statistician SETUP0004: What about 1.4MB floppies? Yes, these work fine, but your HFDC must have a 9216B data seperator chip. You also must use the remap command in MDOS. SETUP0005: WHAT TYPE OF KEYBOARD CAN BE USED WITH A GENEVE Any that is XT compatible. It is recommended, you use one that has an XT/AT switch, so you have access to Function-11/12, as some software likes to use these keys and they are not available on XT only keyboards. SETUP0006: WHAT PRINTERS CAN BE USED WITH A GENEVE. The Geneve will support any printer that the TI will at the application level. MDOS does include a routine that will allow you to do screen dumps, printers supported by this are ????. MDOS also supports a built in print spooler that is XXK and is active in both native MDOS and GPL mode. SETUP0007: HOW DO I HOOK UP MY SPEECH SYNTHESISER You will need to use a RAVE Speech adapter. A Corcomp TripleTech card will NOT work. Note, while fixing WHT SCSI controllers to work with the Geneve, Michael Becker noticed problems with the timing of the PAL on the RAVE Speech adapter. Michael issued an updated PAL which might be available from Richard Bell. SETUP0008: HOW DO I HOOK UP MY MODULES. Since the Geneve is a card to be plugged into the pbox, it doesn't have a cartridge slot. Because of this it is neccisary to first dump all of your modules to disk before removing your TI and Flex/Interface cable. To help you do this Myarc provided a utility called CSAVE to dump modules to diskette. SETUP0009: WHAT KIND OF MONITOR CAN I USE The uses the 9938 Video Display Processor. The Geneve natively supports two types of monitors composite and Analog RGB (sometimes called TV grade), but there are at least two other options. OPTION 1: A composite monitor you should be able to some what view 80 columns. If you use a color composite monitor, about the best you will be able to do is run things in GPL mode (40 column). Note MDOS can run in 40 column mode (issue the command MODE 40). OPTION 2: An analog TV grade RGB monitor. At one time, this type of monitor was common as it was used on Commodore 128s, Amigas, COCO 3s and Ataris. One of the more common model used by Geneve fans is the Magnavox 8cm515s. Also Kodak made some TV grade RGB monitors. Richard Bell helped procure a number of these from an outfit called Rochester Electronics. OPTION 3: The Video Turtle - this project was created by Jim Krych a TI and Amiga enthusiast. He created this device as he saw the pool of TV grade RGB monitors were being depleted. Basically the device takes the RGB out signals and converts them to S-Video. You can use any S-Video TV. Some are better than others. The unit I saw demonstrated was a wide screen (25) and the 80-columns out from a Geneve looked pretty good. The Turtle was sold through Texacomp LTD. OPTION 4: Jim Uzzel has successful interfaced an PC VGA monitor to his Geneve with a commercially available converter. Plans can be found (???) SETUP0010: WHAT IS AN EMULATE FILE By Bill R. Sullivan An Emulate file, emulating DSK1 is an HFDC "thing". Emulate files can be created with MDM5 or with T & J Software's Emulate program for the Geneve. Once the binary file is created (it includes all the files that you copy to it upto file created size-max normally 2880, 3000 or so on Geneve) it can be set to active by MDM5 or T & J Software. The file will then be accessed as DSK1 as long as it is set to active. Many such files can be created on HDS1 only, but only one can be active at a time. During emulate activation the physical DSK1 drive cannot normally be accessed--there are ways around this. Tim Tesch writes: The modified emulate creation utility I released allows you to make the files as large as 12,800 if memory serves correctly. One such emulate holds all of my infocom and Adventure games :) The Emulate 'bit' should ONLY be turned on by MDM5 or the Emulate programs for the Geneve. I don't believe I masked that bit when I wrote BITRESET - my goal was to eliminate the archive bit only. As for Ken's assumption regarding the archive bit; yes, MDOS does change the status of this bit during file updates and possibly copies. I forget the current 'rules' MDOS follows. SETUP0011: WHAT CRU SHOULD MY CARDS BE SET AT Geneve+Floppy Floppy @>1100 Geneve+HFDC HFDC @>1100 Geneve+Floppy+HFDC HFDC @>1000 Floppy @>1100 Geneve+Floppy+SCSI Floppy @>1100 SCSI @>1200 Geneve+Floppy+HFDC+SCSI HFDC @>1000 Floppy @>1100 SCSI @>1200 Horizon RamDisks should be set to the follow CRU address: F Internal Horizon Ramdisk 8 bit CRU >1400 256K G Internal Horizon Ramdisk 8 bit CRU >1600 256K N Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1400 800K O Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1600 800K P Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1000 800K Q Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1700 800K R Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1800 800K S Internal Horizon Ramdisk 16 bit CRU >1900 800K SETUP0012: What kind of mice can I use with a Geneve The Geneve has a mouse port built in. Myarc produced plug in mice. This is NOT a serial mouse. There are instructions for modify a Logitech Bus mouse. [Beery Miller Notes: This MUST be the LowRes mouse.] You can also use a modified serial mouse hooked to the RS232. In both cases you will need a three button mouse as all Geneve GUI software requires the third button. Also, there are two different drivers, depending on which mouse type you use. Al Beard updated the Geneve mouse driver, adding extra API's for use with GenBench. The serial mouse uses a more basic API, it was written by Bruce Helstorm. SETUP0013: How big of a hard drive can I use Answer by Fred Kaal: The maximum size of a hard disk that can be used on a Geneve is ~260Mb. Each disk type (floppy, hard disk or SCSI disk) holds a 16 bit number in it's volume information block VIB) that tels the device service routine (DSR) how many allocation units (AU) are available. So a disk can have a maximum of 65535 UA's. One AU consists of one to 16 sectors so long this is a power of two. So an AU can be 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 sectors. The number of sectors per AU depends on the real disk size. Bigger disks holds more sectors/AU so smaller files waste more disk space. On a floppy disk the number of sectors/AU is always 1. One sector (seen from the DSR [TI specification?]) is always 256 bytes. The maximum size of a floppy disk depends on the number of tracks per side (40 or 80), the number of sides (1 or 2) and the density (single=SD=1, double=DD=2 or high=HD=3) is: 80tracks * 2sides * 3(HD) = 480 AU's * 256bytes = 122.880 bytes The allocation bitmap of a floppy disk is 200 bytes. An allocation bitmap is used to define the unused sectors. So 200 bytes * 8 bits = 1600 bits or 1600 pointers to free AU's. Thus big enough for the maximum of 480 sectors. The maximum size of a harddisk according to this number can be calculated as follows: 65535 AU's * 16 Sec/Au * 256 bytes = 268.431.360 bytes A hard disk uses sector 0 for the VIB and sectors 1 trough 31 for the allocation bitmap. The maximum number of AU's these sectors can hold is: 31sectors * 256bytes * 8bits = 63488 AU's The maximum size of the hard disk can be: 63488 AU's * 16 sect/AU * 256bytes = 260.046.846 bytes If a hard disk is bigger than ~260Mb the rest of the space will be lost. SETUP0014: How do I format a MFM hard drive [GFS012] Fred Kaal writes: A MFM drive must be formatted and initialized before it can be used. Formatting a disk will place the structure of sectors on the surface of the drive. Initializing a drive will add some information called the volume information block (VIB) in the first sectors of the device for the device service routine (DSR). A program to format and initialize a MFM drive is the Myarc Disk Manager V or MDM. Before formatting and initializing your MFM drive you must know the following parameters of your drive: 1) The number of sectors/track 2) Number of heads 3) Number of cylinders 4) Write pre-compensation (or accept the supplied default) 5) Reduced write current (or accept the supplied default) 6) Interlace (or accept the supplied default) The most common figures are: Disk size 5Mb 10Mb 20Mb Sectors per track 32 32 32 Heads 4 4 4 Cylinders 153 306 615 NOTE: The password to format from MDMV is format. NOTE2: There is a bug [actually a couple] in the HFDC controller chip, this bug manifests itself in the format routine. Sometimes, if the wrong values are written the bitmap, it will no longer allow you to format the drive, even if physically/mechanically the drive is in good shape. There are two potential ways to fix this problem. The first is to turn the drive off and walk through MDMV until you are asked for the format password. At this point, you turn on the hard drive, type format and go [this works a good percentage of the time]. For more stubborn cases, you will need to find a PC with an MFM controller. Do a low level format on the PC, with the correct parameters, then bring the hard drive back to the Geneve and you should be able to use MDMV at this point to format the drive. NOTE3: There is a hardware bug that disallows writing to hds3. So.. You can forget about formatting hds3 and using it. I have been told that it will work well as a read only drive. NOTE4: Unfortunately the HFDC design does not allow for isolation between hard drive and floppy drive termination. So, if you are using your HFDC to control hard drives and floppies, you should test and make sure each work individually, before attempting to use the floppies and hard drives together. If they work separately and not together, more than likely you have a termination problem. SETUP0015: Fred Kaal writes: A SCSI drive must be formatted and initialized before it can be used. Formatting a drive will place the structure of sectors on the surface of the drive. Initializing a drive will add some information called the volume information block (VIB) in the first sectors of the device for the device service routine (DSR). A program to format and initialize a SCSI drive is Disk utility 2000 or Du2k written by F.G.Kaal. This program can be found at whtech.com No disk information is needed in order to format and initialize a SCSI drive because SCSI drives supplies the information needed to the program. SETUP0016: HOW DO I FORMAT A FLOPPY DRIVE IN MDOS With the Geneve able to support floppy drives in size from 90K to 1.4MB it is important to be able to spell out the exact type of format you wish to lye down. Also, many format program written exclusively for the 99/4a do not take the larger sizes in to account. Fred Kaal writes: A FLOPPY disk must be formatted and initialized before it can be used. Formatting a disk will place the structure of sectors on the surface of the disk. Initializing a disk will add some information called the volume information block (VIB) in the first sectors of the disk for the device service routine (DSR). Because a FLOPPY device was the first available mass storage device available there are many programs around to successfully format and initialize a floppy disk: 1) Use the build in FORMAT command from MDOS (see page 40 of the manual) 2) Disk manager1000 (DM1000) from GPL mode 3) Disk manager 2000 (Dm2k) from GPL mode 4) Disk utility 2000 (Du2k) from GPL mode 5) Clint Pulleys disk manager – This program will allow you to enter formatting parameters. 6) Hypercopy will allow you format disks in addition to copying. Before formatting and initializing your FLOPPY disk you must know the following parameters: 1) The number of sides (1 or 2) 2) The number of tracks (40 or 80) 3) The density (single=SD, double=DD or high=HD) 4) The number of sectors/track (16 or 18) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Boot Up: BOOT0001 How does "boot up" happen: Boot up is controlled by the Geneve's boot eprom (controlling boot up is about all this eprom does). Note the swan in Myarc released boot eprom was designed by a young (at the time) art student, Kim Mi Kyung. She was senslessly killed in a subway shooting in the late 80's. The document below is by Jeff White and explains how the Boot Eprom on the Geneve works: On nice feature of the boot eprom is that upon each power up it does a quick memory check, if a an error is found, the eprom will display a message that tells you. TAT write:I can confirm this. In fact, it works with Genmod,too. If the RAM on the Memex is bad, missing, or otherwise inaccessible, the EPROM will provide everyone's favorite "HONK" and BAD CPU RAM message JHW writes: The Geneve boot EPROM first determines if the floppy controller is a TI, CC, Myarc or other. If it is a TI, CC, or Myarc floppy controller, the built-in boot EPROM routine does sector i/o directly to CPU memory, not using the DSR on the card for sector i/o -- only the Myarc cards have direct CPU transfer capability and the timing issue. If the floppy controller is "other" (like an HFDC), the sector i/o routine of the card's DSR is supposed to load a version of "LOAD/SYS" that will load "SYSTEM/SYS" from the device. The "LOAD/SYS" file must be in the WDS1.DSK1. directory, an active DSK1-emulation or on floppy disk in drive DSK1. If the LOAD/SYS file is found on WDS1 (hard drive), the SYSTEM/SYS file will be read from WDS1.SYSTEM/SYS. If found on floppy, DSK1.SYSTEM/SYS is loaded. Tim's trick to put a "LOAD/SYS" renamed "SYSTEM/SYS" on floppy to boot from SCSI was used because DSK1 directory - or file-emulation is not in the SCSI DSR. If booting from a recognized floppy controller, SYSTEM/SYS is the first file loaded. I think that is a correct summary. "Deficiencies" in the DSR code (only VDP transfers or timing issues) are why the Geneve boot EPROM has its own sector i/o code. If the card is not recognized, but has DSK1 in its device list, the boot EPROM will load DSK1.LOAD/SYS (DSK1 directory or file emulation, or floppy) that should load SYSTEM/SYS from the device. Jeff White BOOT0002: Can I boot from any floppy? By default the Geneve's boot order is??? MDOS will only look on DSK1 - it will not search any other drives. The program must be called "SYSTEM/SYS". Note versions of MDOS later than 3.0 REQUIRE at least a Double Side or Double Density drive a TI Single Sided/Single Density drive is not large enough to hold later MDOS's. BOOT0003: Can I boot from a hard drive? (VERY SHORT FORM) Yes, but you must do the following: Create a directory called DSK1. on your hard drive. Place a program file called LOAD/SYS (available from ftp.whtech.com) in HDS1.DSK1. Place SYSTEM/SYS in your root directory. (LONG FORM TO SETUP FROM THE BEGINNING) By Jeff White First, to use an HFDC with the Geneve and a current (2.x-6) version of MDOS, it should be set to CRU >1000 (4-DIP in all ON positions) or CRU >1100 (4-DIP with 1 switch OFF, 2-4 switches ON). If you have a floppy controller other than the HFDC in the system, the HFDC should be at CRU >1000. The HFDC EPROM version should be H11, which can be checked with MDM5 on a 4A system. There are some bad versions of H11 out there, and no way to easily tell if you have one. Other releases (H8-H10 and H12) are less certain than H11. All versions have bugs, but the H11 is the best bet. It is possible that the EPROM is labelled with a version. However, the number is often noted in hex- -- H10 labelled as "HA" and H11 labelled as "HB". Format the hard drive on a 4A system with MDM5 (v1.41 is as good a choice as any) to 32 sectors per cylinder. For a 251, your 8x620x32 settings are correct. Accept the defaults for reserved directory sectors, etc. Assuming successfully formatting, copy a few files to the root directory (ONLY directory) on the hard drive. Catalog the hard drive, delete the files, and swap the 4A out for a Geneve. Boot the Geneve from floppy: (1) HFDC at CRU>1000, another floppy controller in system -- Put floppy disk with SYSTEM/SYS v2.x-6 in DSK1, turn system on, wait for up to 1 minute to see the MDOS prompt. If it does not boot to the prompt, something is wrong. (2) HFDC at CRU>1100, floppy drive attached as DSK1, 20-pin cable attached to HFDC, but 34-pin edge connector detached -- Put floppy disk with LOAD/SYS and SYSTEM/SYS v2.x-6 in DSK1, turn system on, wait for up to 1 minute to see the MDOS prompt. If it does not boot to the prompt, something is wrong. If it did boot, connect the 34-pin edge connector and ribbon. Warm boot the system with Control-Alt-Del. [This last step is done in attempt to get MDOS to recognize the correct allocation unit size of the hard drive.] Assuming that LOAD/SYS and SYSTEM/SYS were the only files on the boot disk, you should be at the A-prompt and HDS1 is the E-drive. Execute each of the following MDOS commands by typing it exactly on a line and pressing the enter key. E: MKDIR DSK1 COPY A:SYSTEM"/"SYS CD DSK1 COPY A:LOAD"/"SYS If you get any error messages during any of the commands, something is wrong. Remove the floppy disk from the drive. Turn the system off and back on. If the system boots, you are now ready to risk your important data to the will of the HFDC. If the system does not boot, something is wrong. BOOT0004: WHY DOES BOOTING FROM A HARDDRIVE REQUIRE LOAD/SYS? From: "Jerry L. Coffey" As I recall the decison was based on space considerations. The HRD code was shoe-horned into the eprom code, but support of the HFDC blew the byte budget, both for the code in SYSTEM/SYS and the space for boot code in the eprom. So a tiny snippet of code was added to the eprom to call a second stage (external) routine called as DSK1.LOAD/SYS. BOOT0005: Can I boot from a ramdisk? Yes, you will need to get a program called FORM3MEG (By Jim Schreder). This will format Horizon Ram Disk and allow them to boot. Note: In order to setup a Horizon to boot, it can only be 360K (if any larger it will not boot). Horizon series 3000 can have a modification added called the Phoenix MOD (this is built into series 4000 boards) - this will effectively, take a large Horizon and create a 360K boot drive and leave the rest for larger drives. BOOT0006: WHAT IF I WANT TO BOOT FROM A LARGE RAMDISK (or some people are never happy!) By Tony Knerr Ok, here's how to make a Horizon over 800K bootable. The boot eprom on the Geneve only has routines for up to Quad density disks, so we will have to "fool" it when reading our "High Density" ramdisk so it can find the proper sectors where SYSTEM/SYS is located. Format the ramdisk with Form3meg, choose Y for "Set disk to boot MDOS" and Y for "Load SYSTEM/SYS from disk to ramdisk" and go ahead and load the file on the ramdisk. Now that SYSTEM/SYS is on the Ramdisk, you will need to find the File Descriptor Record for it. Load up "Disk Utilities" or some other sector editor. The sector will begin with the filename and will probably be sector >4 or >8. Write this sector down. You'll also need to find the first actual data sector of SYSTEM/SYS. This sector includes the string "reassembling". Write this sector down also. It will probably be >200. Now for the thinking part. We will be editing bytes >1C, >1D, and >1E of the sector with the FDR (either >4 or >8, you DID write that down, did'nt you?) We will be interested in the 6 nybbles, or digits, of these three bytes. Let's number them 1 through 6 starting at the left digit of byte >1C. Here's what the Nybbles mean: Nybbles 4, 1, and 2, in that order, are the starting sector of the file. Nybbles 5, 6, and 3, in that order, are the number of sectors of actual data in the file. So if bytes >1C, >1D, and >1E are >40, >F0, and >1F, the FDR is telling us we have a file that starts at sector >040 and the data in it is >1FF sectors long (for any MDOS over version 2.50, at least). Well the length is ok, but the Geneve will load the wrong data, because it thinks the file starts at sector >040 instead of sector >200! You'll get a lock-up, because the wrong data was loaded in ram where SYSTEM/SYS is supposed to be. So lets fix it. If we edit Bytes >1C, >1D, and >1E to be >00, >F2, and >1F, the we are telling the eprom that the file starts at sector >200 and is >1FF sectors of data in length, where the eprom will find the correct data. If you've done everything right, the Geneve will now boot from the ramdisk! If not, you'll have to disable the ramdisk via the on-off switch, reboot from floppy, turn the ramdisk back on, then start over and do it correctly the next time. It DOES work, I've been doing it for years. For a 1.44m floppy, copy SYSTEM/SYS onto a "clean" disk. The FDR will be at sector >4. Edit Bytes >1C, >1D, and >1E to be >00, >F2, and >1F (again, this is for MDOS version 2.50 and greater). WARNING! Do not perform any file operations such as copy, move or delete on the SYSTEM/SYS file after you have made these changes! You can copy other files to or from the disk, but file operations on SYSTEM/SYS will corrupt all sorts of things on the disk, just don't do it! The information which enabled me to come up with this procedure can be found on pages 61 through 63 of the HFDC manual, "File Descriptor Records". If you don't understand the above instructions, just ask and I'll try and address any problems you may have in this procedure. BOOT0007: CAN I BOOT FROM A SCSI DRIVE Yes, thanks to Tony Kneer's Boot Eprom Version 1.00 - see instructions include with this file for setup. BOOT0008: Is their such a thing as a bootable eprom? Yes and No. Initally Myarc advertised or stated, eventually MDOS would be stablised and burnt into an eprom. This never happened. Later Jim Schroeder who wrote FORM3MEG created the software, and Don Waldon came up with the design to use a FLASH EEPROM to function as a many RAMDISK, directly on the Geneve. With this package, one can load a current version of MDOS into the flash EEPROM and boot from it. Gary Bowser of OPA was advertising a Boot Eprom for the Geneve, but this also never was released. Also - See PFM upgrade above. BOOT0009: WHAT IS A JUMP BOOT DISK These were specially manufactured disk by Jerry Coffery that allowed for extrememly fast boot up times using regular floppy disks. From: "Jerry L. Coffey" The most enthusiastic users of JumpBoot were developers who needed a fast robust method of rebooting while chasing bugs that made some parts of the system unavailable. Al Beard was one of them. By the way, the last release of JumpBoot included included a modified utility that would install the long (Hard-disk) version of SYSTEM/SYS on the disk (at a slight loss of boot speed) for those occasions when the boot files or other portions of the hard disk are corrupted and you have to fall back to floppy. The 9640 floppy boot routine does a binary search for the SYSTEM/SYS file. The starting point is the largest power of two that is less than the total number of files (=number of pointers in sector 1). So if you want a hit on the first try, put SYSTEM/SYS in that position (by juggling other filenames). I did this on the Jump Boot distribution disk to impress the troops the first time they ran it. Jerry BOOT0010: How CAN I TELL OF MY MDOS FILE IS GOOD Tim Tesch has written a program called CRaCkIT that will read through a SYSTEM/SYS file and will compute a CRC value. This CRC value will then be compared to an original CRC value that is embeded in that release of MDOS. CRaCkIT will then tell you if your SYSTEM/SYS is corrupt. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Compatability: COMPAT0001: Are all TI-99/4a programs compatible with a Geneve? The answer is Yes and No! In general, yes - but their are a few "gotchas". Some of the most common: 1. On a TI, the scratch pad area is 256 bytes long and responds at multiple address in the >8000 range. On the Geneve, this 256 bytes is not shadowed. So if someone was careless and used one base address, and then switched to another and expected the same data to be there, they are out of look. 2. Writing code "to the bare metal" - an example would be someone that wrote code that speaks directly to the 9901 to read the keyboard instead of using KSCAN, these programs would fail. 3. People that got sloppy with GROM Base Address. Some of these programs have been fixed. Mike Maksimik (MJM) who wrote the SCSI code for MDOS fixed many modules to run on the Geneve. COMPAT0002: What does ROMPAGE do Ben Hatheway created ROMPAGE to allow low-level disk access to programs (MDM5 & most Sector Edit programs) that weren't designed to use the Geneve's Super DSR. It simply pages out the Super DSR & pages in the real DSR at CRU address >1100. Jeff White also wrote a TI BASIC program that did the same thing, and I believe Mike Dodd wrote MDM4 that would also do it and automatically load MDM5 (HFDC has to be at >1100). Fortunately, Tim Tesch has added ROMPAGE capability to the GPL loader menu, so we no longer need any of these separate programs for this purpose. Return to the GPL loader menu will restore the Super DSR. (Be aware that an HFDC at >1100 is accessed using "HDS" tags when the Super DSR is paged-in, but is accessed using "WDS" tags when the real DSR is paged-in.) - Bill -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=- MISC TIPS: MISC0001: TRANSFERING SOFTWARE BETWEEN A PC AND A GENEVE PC Transfer is a wonderful utility that works with Myarc and Corcomp controllers (Note compatible with TI's diskette controller or the Myarc HFDC) that will copy files from your Geneve (or TI) to a floppy that can be read on a PC. This program was orginally designed with 5.25" 360K diskettes in mind, but others have gotten it to work with other types of diskettes (see below): Here are some notes from Bill Sullivan on how to do this: Configure CorComp to DSDD for all drives that support 80 tracks. In your AUTOEXEC file put the following statements: SETDSK 108 (for DSK1. - most 80 track drives will work with "0" for step rate & 8 is for 80 tracks) SETDSK 208 (for DSK2., etc.) To use PCT with 720K PC diskettes, format the diskettes on a PC!!! The PCT FORMAT utility only formats to 360K. MISC0002: The Dred Archive bit: I've copyed a file from my Geneve to a Disk on my TI and not it won't run or delete! You have ran afowl of the Geneve's archive bit!!! Myarc decided to use an unused bit in the file descriptor to determine if a file had ever been backed up or not - just like in MSDOS. According to TI spec's this bit was reserved, so programs should mask it's value. Unfortunately, many DSR's do not mask the bit, so what you end up with is a file decriptor that screws up many programs. From:"Bill R. Sullivan" Corcomp & BwG FDCs, along with Ramdisk have the problem when the archive bit set. The TI FDC has a lesser problem with it. Myarc FDC & HFDC do not have any problems with it. Therefore, many believe it to be a Myarc created "bug" for their non-Myarc FDCs and HRDs. Jeff White points out.. Bill, pp62,67 of the HFDC manual, 3rd ed, give the bit definitions of the file status flags of floppy and hard disk File Descriptor Records. Bit 4 of the file status flag is the backup bit that could be causing your trouble. With a sector editor, you should be able to tell if it is the potential source of the problem. Byte 12 of an FDR will normally be >0x or >8x, for fixed or variable length files. If byte 12, the file status flags, has a value of >1x or >9x, the backup bit is set. A DSR that incorrectly handles the FDR byte 12 could cause problems. You can check the file status flags with a BASIC program, as well: 100 OPEN #1:"DSK1.",INPUT,RELATIVE,INTERNAL 110 IF EOF(1) THEN 200 120 INPUT #1:F$,A,B,C 130 PRINT F$,A,B,C 140 GOTO 120 200 STOP The F$ variable is the filename, of course. A, B, or C is the file type -- only one of them, but I do not recall which. The file type may or may not be the same as the file status flags byte in the FDR. I.e., the flag/status byte(s) used in standard PAB access are not bit-for-bit equivalent to the FDR byte 12. Jeff White Your probably thinking, that all this conversation is well and good, how do I fix it, if your handy with a sector editor you can do it that way, or... The program is called "Backup Bit Remover". I think the archive was called "!BITREMOVR" or "!BBR" It is a very small program; I think I even released the source code with the program. Tim Tesch, S&T Software MISC0003 WHY CAN'T MY HFDC READ SOME SINGLE DENSITY FLOPPYS, IS THIS A BUG IN MDOS? No, this is a well known problem. The Corcomp disk controller, does not add enough gap bytes for all controllers. The HFDC's disk controller chip is very sensitive to this. There is a way around this problem though... Bill, Here's something for what its worth. When Mike Dodd was perfecting the format routines in Hypercopy, he spent months tearing his hair out trying to make things work correctly on the Corcomp card. Even when he tamed the problem for my early CC card, another beta tester with a later card was still having problems. I had always assumed that the low-level formatting code supplied by CC was perhaps a bit sluggish and that was why they ran out of track before all the bytes in the recommended track image were written. But Mike was controlling the WD1773 directly, so maybe it was a quirk of the chip. Anyway,with some help from Paul Charlton, Mike succeeded in his goal of formatting, reading and writing compatibly between any of the three controllers (Myarc, CC, and TI) in all supported formats. So if you have a copy of Hypercopy, use it to format and copy the disks on the Myarc controller. You may be able to read the result on the WD1773 card. No guarantees, but a lot of beta testing suggests it will work. Jerry L. Coffey, PhD. Mathematical Statistician MISC0004 I HAVE A SERIAL PRINTER, HOW CAN I GET PRINT SCREEN TO WORK? You'd have to re-write a portion of the screen print routine within MDOS. The XOP which handles Screen prints is hard-coded to used "PIO.CR" as its output device. There is no padding, so the best you could do would be to sector edit this to "RS232." If you have the MDOS source code, check file "L6\VX2B2CS". This is where the change should be made.... Tim =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- MDOS PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT What tools are available to development native MDOS applications. PROG0001: GenProg This was a commercial package released by Paul Charlton, included an extensive linker, librarian and two pass assembler. GenAsm This was a shareware program, released by Clint Pulley and Al Beard, it allows the user to write native MDOS programs in assembler - it also needed for the following package. TIC This is a mostly K&R compliant C package. It is very powerful in capable righte hands, Mike Maksimik wrote CFORM - a power graphic hard drive format utility in this language. Fortran9640 This is a commercial package written by Al Beard as a big brother to his Fortran99 package. Very polished and professional. Al used it to write an 80-column Fractals package and several sector editor type utilities. PROG0002: HOW MUCH GRAM MEMORY DOES THE GENEVE HAVE From: Jeff White Subject: TI99: Geneve GRAM Banks. The Geneve has 8 pages of 8K RAM dedicated to GRAM in GPL mode. These are pages >38-3F. The two ROM banks (flipped with writes to >6000 or >6002 in write-protected mode) occupy pages >36 and >37. Thus, the Geneve can handle 16K cartridge ROM (per XB-type banking) and 64K GRAM. It would be possible to load an MDOS utility that would put several cartridges in memory that could be swapped in and out via software in GPL or MDOS modes, but such a system would not allow both cartridges to be available at once (like having TE II speech available from XB on the SNUG SGCPU system or CaDD PC99). ...Of course, hooks could be put into the GPL interpreter to copy GRAM's in and out of >38-3F, but that would slow things down. Another option is to write a GPL interpreter that runs GRAM from RAM in native MDOS mode. PROG0003: WHAT BANK SWITCHING SCHEME DID MYARC USE TO ALLOW MORE THAN 64K Tim Tesch writes: Take a deep breath and plunge into the waters of the Geneve memory map! I'll do my best to keep the waters clear and temperature "just right!" Mapper "Page" | Memory Range 0 | >0000 - >1FFF 1 | >2000 - >3FFF 2 | >4000 - >5FFF 3 | >6000 - >7FFF 4 | >8000 - >9FFF 5 | >A000 - >BFFF 6 | >C000 - >DFFF 7 | >E000 - >FFFF The Geneve has a TOTAL addresssable memory of 2 MB, allocated in 8K chunks called pages. Each page is 8K of the total 2MB, giving us 256 mappable pages. The mapper, eight contiguous 1-byte values, determines which of the 256 memory pages are located in the 64K area, pages 0 through 7, as shown above. This 64K is what is termed the "visible" memory range as all pages must be mapped here to be "seen." How does mapping work? Mapping memory can be thought of as an 8-CD Changer. Your CD library may contain up to 256 CDs, but you can only put 8 CDs into the changer at one time. The changer (mapper) does not know you have more than 8 CD's (pages), and it is quite content to play those 8 CDs over and over and over again. To play something else, you need to change the CD (page) in the changer (mapper). Only one page may be mapped into the a mapper page at a time; i.e., you could not have page >a0 and page >B0 mapped into the mapper slot 0 (>0000->1FFF). trying to do so would be like placing two CDs into a single slot in your changer - they both won't fit! However, you may map a single 8K page into all 8 mapper slots, resulting in "copies" of the same 8K of data in all 8 mapper slots - you could do this with CDs if you had 8 copies of the same CD! (For a more picturesque look at the mapper and pages, run MEMTEST on the geneve.) So, if my mapper said I should have pages 0-7 listed as follows >20,>21,>22,>23,>24,>40,>41,>42, page >20 would be mapped into >0000-1FFF. page >40 would reside at >A000-BFFF and so on. That aside, the Geneve only loads these 8 slots with a program image file. This, like the TI, is based upon the first three words of each file. The address portion of the file is only 1 word, which means a maximum address of 64K, another "limitation" imposed this time by the software, not the hardware. The other two words dictate the starting position (also 64K limitation) and the file type. The Geneve, like the TI, can use overlays. With the Geneve it is a little simpler as the modules can be stored in CPU memory. How? The program can reservere as little as 8K or as much as whatever the system has free - the programmer must decide this. The program can then load the overlays into the reserved memory. Or, like the TI, can load them from disk and place them in the right spots. To use our CD changer analogy, this is comparable to having only 1 CD left in your library because other people (programs) had borrowed your CDs (pages of memory). The more CDs in your library, the more possible to swap out; a Geneve with 2MB of memory can swap more pages than one with 548K. MDOS loads a bit differently. The EPROM and LOAD/SYS both load MDOS into contiguous 8K pages, starting at page 0, until MDOS is loaded. For MDOS 5.00, pages >00 through >1F are used - 128K. MDOS is then "started" and it unravels itself a bit, takes up a few buffer pages, and moves some code around. This is why MDOS, though only 128K in size, takes up much more. PROG0004: HOW DO I ACCESS SPEECH FROM NATIVE MDOS MODE Jeff White writes: Accessing speech is possible on the Geneve in native mode. Recall that the speech addresses are mapped to >9000-97FE (even bytes) on the 99/4A bus. Note that the 8K pages corresponding to 99/4A bus memory are >B8, >B9, etc. This gives the well-known result that the EPROM DSR pages fall at page >BA. That is, page >BA corresponds to 99/4A memory >4000-5FFF. Of course, on the Geneve, page >BA can be on any 8K boundary or not mapped at all. Speech is within the >8000-9FFF memory of the 99/4A. This external bus memory corresponds to page >BC on the Geneve. Thus to access speech while in MDOS mode, map page >BC to any 8K page within >2000-DFFF. The offset within the page will be >1000-17FE. If I remember correctly, only four addresses are needed for speech (>9000, >9002, >9400, >9402 on the 99/4A). These are offsets of >1000, >1002, >1400, and >1402. If you use mapper register >F111 to put page >BC at logical >2000-3FFF, the speech ports corresponding to >9000, >9002, >9400, and >9402 on the 99/4A would be >3000, >3002, >3400, and >3402 for Geneve native mode. If you want to map page >BC so that you can use the same addresses as you would on the 99/4A, use mapper register >F114. Using page >BC also works with the ForTI music card. It normally maps to >8400-87FE on the 99/4A, and >8600-87FE on the Geneve in GPL mode. This address space is also used by the MBP cards and other so-called clock cards. Again, the cards can be accessed in Geneve native mode by simply calculating the offset in the 8K logical memory page that physical page >BC occupies. Hope this explains it. PROG0005: HOW FAST IS THE GENEVE COMPARED TO A TI By Jeff White The 9900 in the 99/4A works at 3MHz, 4 wait states per word access (6 cycles). CPU PAD is 2 cycle access. Thus, the 8-bit bus has a burst rate of 3 million/6, or 500000 words/sec, the 16-bit bus 1.5million words/sec. Assuming an average of 5 full bus cycles per instruction, 8-bit memory would be 100K instructions per second (500000/5), and 16-bit memory would be 300K instructions per second. I.e., 0.1-0.3 MIPS for the 99/4A. The 9995 in the Geneve works at 3MHz, 1 wait state per byte access (2 cycles), except SRAM at 0-wait per byte and CPU RAM at 0-wait per word. Thus, the 8-bit bus bursts at 1,500,000 bytes/sec, or 750000 words/sec, and 1,500,000 words/sec for 0-wait. Assuming an average of 6 full (8-bit) bus cycles per instructions, 1-wait memory operates at 250000 (1.5M/6) instructions per second, 0-wait memory at 500000 instructions per second, and CPU RAM memory at 1 million instructions per second. I.e., 0.25-1 MIPS. Because the 99/4A and Geneve use a mix of memory speeds (wait states), with the fastest (16-bit memory) of both limited to 256 bytes, the upper end is seldom reached except for the most speed critical operations. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- HARDWARE HARD0001: ARE THERE ANY HARDWARE HACKS WORTH DOING Remeber, many of the Geneve's parts are unavailable, there is no company that will make repairs for you. So, if you screw up anything you are pretty much on your own. Warning number two, the Geneve is a multilayer board, it's pretty easy to trash an inner trace and not be able to figure out what is wrong. HARD0002: ADD 32K of FAST STATIC RAM From: Tim Tesch Subject: TI99: Geneve-32K Upgrade Instructions A few people have asked how to modify their Geneve with the extra 32K SRAM, to give them extra memory and let them use MDOS 2.50 and above. So... here we go... Requirements: - Soldering iron, 15-20watt max. - Solder, use rosin core NOT organic core - 8" piece of wire-wrap wire. - (1) 32Kx8 SRAM (Hitachi 62256 compatible) DISCLAIMER: If you are not comfortable modifying your equipment, DO NOT PERFORM THIS UPDATE! I will NOT replace blown gate-arrays or 9901s for free! Enough said. STEP 1: --------- Carefully remove 32K chip from Geneve, noting the ORIENTATION. The square/half-circle should be facing the back of the card (joystick/mouse/video connectors.) If you are not sure, use a Sharpie or piece of tape to keep track of the position. Use a small, wide-blade, flathead screwdriver. Apply gentle pressure to the TOP of the memory chip with your thumb, while gently "prying" between the memory and its socket. DO NOT PRY ONE SIDE COMPLETELY. Doing so will bend the pins on the opposite side. Pry the chip a bit at a time, switching from one side to the other until the chip is free. >> This chip is located to the left of the battery, directly below the 12volt regulator. If you do not recognize this chip - STOP! Send in your card :)- STEP 2: --------- Stack the new 32K chip on top of the existing memory. Place the newchip on top of the old chip. The square/half-circles MUST lay "on top" of one another. BEND pin #20 enough so that it does not contact the pin underneath. You may do so using a small-blade screwdriver. Here is a visual representation: 1 1 1 1 1 4 3 2 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 +----------------------------+ | | | HM62256-10 ( | (upside down) | +----------------------------+ 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ^ ^ ^ * DO NOT SOLDER THIS PIN TO ITS NEIGHBOR BELOW * One additional note: - TAT 09.13.1999 Before performing STEP #3, you need to solder the pins from the top chip to the pins on the bottom chip, leaving pin#20 unsolderd. STEP 3: ------- Insert stacked chips into socket. chip should be inserted as shown above, half-moon to the right. Make sure pin #20 clears the EPROM so that you can solder the wire to it as shown in step #4. STEP 4: ------- Solder wire to memory. Strip and tin one end of the wire. Solder to pin #20, taking care not to short it with (a) any adjoining pins or (b) the EPROM directly below. Take the wire and bring it to the underside of the board. You can go around the "top" or "bottom". DO NOT GO THROUGH THE HOLES NEAR THE EDGE CONNECTOR! While tempting, you run the risk of stripping wire and shorting something. worst-case, you short the wire with +16 volts! This would not be a good thing. STEP 5: -------- Solder wire to underside of Geneve - GATE ARRAY. This step MUST be done carefully and exactly. If you make a mistake, you risk blowing out your gate array. This chip will cost you about $45.00 to replace. Strip the wire, exposing no more than 1/8". We will solder the wire to the gate array as follows: <<<- mouse/joystick/video<<< o o Gate Array o o o o (underside of o o o o board) o o o o o o o o o o o o o o X o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o "X" marks the spot. Carefully solder the wire to this pin. Make sure that you do NOT short any of the three surrounding pins. In case you wish to count, it is the FIFTH pin from the left, TOP row. STEP 6: ------- Test the geneve Replace clamshell and put into your PEB/Case. Turn on the power and see what happens :) If all went well, you should boot without any problem. Once booted, type CHKDSK at any valid disk. You should see: 589824 bytes of total memory. STEP 7: ------- Pat yourself on the back - you've successfully modified your geneve! Go try MDOS 6.00. * Tim Tesch, S&T Software ADDITIONAL NOTES: (By TAT) Anyone adding the 32K SRAM memory to their Geneve to make it compatible with MDOS 5.0 should be careful when following the instructions. One of the Geneves I took home for repair would would not run certain programs, like Directory Manager or Port. So I tried the following: MEMTEST reported 576K - the proper memory CHKDSK reported the same MDOS 5.00 loaded properly GPL appeared to work properly I checked the traces and wire running to the 32K socket - all good. It was only after I stepped away for some ice cream did I realize what the trouble was... The user had stacked the two 32K chips properly with one very important exception!! He soldered ALL 28 pins, including pin 20, which should only be connected to the gate array on the solder side. By doing so, the two chips "overlapped", their contents became one and the same. Talk about double trouble! What's the proper orientation of the Geneve when doing the 32k upgrade? Place Geneve on a table as follows: 1. keyboard,joystick,mouse,video connectors to LEFT 2. LED(red light) to RIGHT 3. Edge connector CLOSEST to you The gate array will now be in correct position. Make certain you do NOT short out any adjoining pins. HARD0003: ADD 64K of VIDEO RAM HOW TO EXPAND YOUR GENEVE TO 192k VDP RAM. Another hardware project for your favourite computer. by Alexander Hulpke. This article is ment to show, how to install additional 64k of VDP RAM (expansion RAM) on your Geneve. This RAM can NOT be used to display, but only as an quickly accessible interrim storage.. Some programs, for example my YAPP painting program, make use of this RAM, that is standard on the Mechatronic 80 Zeichen Karte and easyly upgradable on the DIJIT AVPC.. WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARN. . This Project requires soldering and handling of CMOS Memory chips. You should attempt it ONLY if you are experienced in working with computer hardware. This project is not for beginners. You should have done something similar yet, for example the 32k static RAM addition.. I will not describe the handling and pin counting fully, if you are experienced, you'll have no problem with it.. If you are not sure, wheteher you are able to do it, ask a friend with experience to do it. Mistakes may do irreversible damage to your computer !. WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARNING---WARN. Read the description fully first, before starting ! This operation requires : A soldering iron (small tip, NO soldering gun). rosin core solder. varnish-insulated wire (I could not find the translation of the german "Kupferlackdraht" , perhaps wire wrap wire). A knife, something to remove the wire's insulation. A Ohm-meter for checking connections. Two RAM chips: HM50464P-15 (The best would be identical types as in your Geneve for identical timing). Costs: I paid for two chips 40DM (approx. 25-30$). By now, the price should be lower!. What to do: - Remove the Geneve from Box and clamshell, put it before you with the chips atop and the video connector to the right. In the lower right corner of the printboard, you'll see 4 RAMs of the descripted type. If your chips are not socketed, think again about it. This will make it VERY difficult! - To the top, there is the 9938, a 64pin (shrinked) chip. Find pin 61 (CAS0) of the 9938 (Lower row, the 4th from right. Find Pin 16 of the first 50464 (U79).. =-=-=-= PIN 16 (CAS) I v 9938 < =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I > 50464 I =-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= x PIN 61. - Now you should check with the Ohm-meter, if there is connection between these two pins. Do the same with the last 50464 (U80). These both are one bank! Check also if the two chips' in the middle have their pin 16 connected to pin 60 (CAS1) of the 9938. This procedure is only to assure you, that you selected the right pins.. - Remove the first 50464 from its socket. Take a new 50464 and bend its Pin 16 in an Horizontal position. Put it atop the old one (remember the indentation), and solder all pins exept Nr. 16. Cover the bent away pin 16 of the top chip with some solder. Put the (lower) chip back in its socket (So all pins of the top one, except the SELECT have also connections to the 9938) .. - Do the same with the last 50464.. - Take about 5cm wire, remove the insulation from it's ends, cover them with solder, and connect with it the both bent away Pin 16's of the two top chips.. - Take about 20cm wire, prepare it like the other one, and solder one end to the pin 16 of the last top 50464 (This pin will now have two wires connected to). - Move the wire through one of the small holes atop the PeriBox connector (or only throuth the notch near the connector). - Flip the Geneve, video connector to the left.. - Find Pin 59 of the 9938 (lower row, 6th from the left):. - Solder the other end of the wire to this pin. This must be done very careful, since the pins are narrow.. - Flip the Geneve back, and check with the Ohm meter, if all connections are well: Pin 16 of U79,80 to Pin 61, U77,78 to 60, the both new to pin 59. Check if there is no connection between adjacent pins, neither on the 9938, nor the RAM's. - Move all visitors, family members etc. out of sight. Now comes the thrilling moment : - Re-install the Geneve in clamshell and box. - Switch the system on. If it has any problems, switch off and check again the connections you made.. Otherwise check the working of the VDP RAM with the checking program. Load the VDPTEST program with EA3, Name START. It will run about 1 minute and display afterwards the results. All tests should issue "passed", otherwise recheck your work !. Move all persons you replaced in the room again, and show them your masterwork!. [Editors Note: The easiest way to do this now, is with CYA - it will report back to you the amount of VDP RAM found] . Be aware, that you can acces the new RAM ONLY by changing VDP R45. Also in G6/G7 mode only every SECOND Byte is used! See 9938 manual for details. Enjoy 64k Expansion RAM! Your done.. ...................... HARD0004: ADD A BATTERY HOLDER The Geneve has a soldered in CR2032 that is good for about two years. Replaceing this with soldered in version with a battery holder will make life much simplier for you in the future. 1. Note which post are positive and which is negative with your volt meter. - you might want to make a small mark on the board with a sharpie pen. 1. Cut out the old battery with a pair of side cuts, don't try to solder on it. 2. Heat the two pins (one at a time) and remove. Take a solder sucker and solder wick and clean up the post. 3. Orient the battery holder correctly, not you will need to take sharp pen or knife and mark the top of the battery holder as it will stick up higher than the top of the card. Now remove the battery holder, and with a hacksaw, take off the top edge. 4. Reorient your newly modified battery holder and solder in place. Battery holders can be found at www.jameco.com - part number Jameco #: 38535. Ron has put up an excellent example tutorial with lots of pictures here http://mainbyte.com/ti99/bat_9640/bat_9640.html. HARD0005: Another Geneve Clock fix or... Ok.. I have replaced my battery and my Geneve STILL won't keep the time! Now what? Ken Hasting writes: It's the SIP resistors! I had 2 that were 1K (correct) and 2 that were 10K (incorrect). I battled that problem for MANY months, asking advice from Don O'Neil (maybe he remembers it) and also of Don Walden. Walden suggested that all the SIP resistors should be 2.2K, and when I installed those - the problem got REALLY bad! I decided to install 1K SIP resistors, and THAT took care of the problem. I don't remember which 2 had the wrong value (originally), so I can't say which one specifically is tied to the clock circuit (although, I could get out my Geneve schematics and trace it out)! If you need to replace a SIP resistor (yourself), and you don't have a desoldering iron that can heat all the pins at the same time, use a pair of small, wire (or nippy) cutters and cut the old SIP resistor between each pin, so you can unsolder and remove the resistor network one pin at a time! That's cutting right through the resistor itself, not the pins. You won't be able to get that close to the PC board, or you might damage a trace under the SIP resistor. After removing the old SIP resistor, make certain that all 10 (or 6, depending on which one) holes are free of solder. Insert a SIP machined-pin socket array, and solder it into place. This will allow you to remove a SIP resistor in the future, should it be necessary. Also, it allows for more flexibility, so the SIP resistor does not get broken when handling the card, or plugging or unplugging connectors on the back of the Geneve. The 10-pin SIP resistor nearest to the back of the card, is well-known for breaking, if the card is flexed too much while plugging (or unplugging) connectors to the Geneve. Usually, the crack is so slight, it can't be seen with the naked eye. Using a magnifying glass and plenty of light, you should be able to see if any of the SIP resistors are cracked. When the SIP resistor nearest to the back of the card gets cracked, the most common problem is with the Geneve's mouse - it will act very erratically! The transistors nearest to the clock chip could also be the problem. I have seen many different values on those transistors on different Geneve's. I don't know why the same exact value was not used in different batches of Geneve's produced, but maybe the differences are so slight, that it doesn't matter. Values I've seen are: 2N4126 & 2N3906. I don't remember what the different values are (I have a reference book, but I'm not going to dig it out, unless you want to know what the values are), but it may only be that one might have a higher mv tolerance. Sorry for the long message. I hope this info is of help. - Ken P.S. 10K SIP resistors are also marked with a 103, and 1K with a 102. If you need to buy new SIP resistors, don't forget to get the SIP machined-pin sockets. They will usually be a long strip of about 30 pins (used for SIPP memory). Use a sharp knife to cut them to the right number of pins you need. DON'T use nippy or wire cutters to cut the SIP sockets - that will usually mash one or both of the pins (and the plastic insulator) on either side of the cutter's jaws! WARNING!!! Be VERY careful, if cutting the SIP resistors! They are (usually) ceramic, and will "shatter" when cutting, sending bits and pieces around at high speed!!! Wear goggles or close your eyes (and mouth) just prior to snipping the resistor. Use caution! :-) HARD0006: Power related upgrades Most Voltage Regulators are rated at 3 AMPS instead of the more common 1 AMP. Motorola used to make a line that are rated at 3 AMPS, I think they have been replaced by a company called On Semiconductor www.onsemi.com. The part number is ???? MC78TO5ACT ???? if you replace the default units on your geneve it should run cooler. Ever voltage regulator on the Geneve should have a nice big heat sink. In addition when Don Waldon was doing repairs on the Geneve he always replaced the default capacitors (the ones feeding the voltage regulators) with 35V 22MicroFarad. HARD0008: Electrical Tape Modification On the Geneve, HFDC and FDC (floppy disk controller) produced by Myarc; Myarc ran traces to close to the bottom of the "goose neck" that protrudes from the back of the PBOX. These cards have silk screens which masks the problem. After a number of insertion and extraction cycles, the silk screen rubes off, causing a short between the cards and the PBOX. For this reason, most people run electrical tape around the "goose neck". HARD0020: HFDC UPGRADES Technical these should be in another FAQ - but if your HFDC is not running optimally, in can cause decreased joy in your Geneve 9640 experience. HARD0021: Upgradeing the memory on your HFDC As noted earlier in the document the first upgrade you will want to do, if it has not been done already is upgrade the 9216 to a 9216B – required if you are going to run 1.4MB floppies. The next thing to check is if your HFDC has the original 8K static RAM. If it has, you should upgrade it to a 32K static chip. Richard Bell writes: The U# (Or "location on the PCB".) for the on board RAM is "U2" and the 32k chip # is HM62256LP-120 or equivalent and the 8k chip #is HY6264A or equivalent. Note: This is a drop in replacement, no changes need to be made. Another way to check which memory chip you have without opening the card and looking is to use CYA. Pressing H for HFDC Info will tell you what size chip you have installed. Note by TAT: The 8K to 32K upgrade is needed only if someone formats a hard drive to 33 or 34 sectors/track using CFORM. You must use a 32K chip to read/write from/to a CFORM-formatted hard drive. HARD0022: I can't get a third HD to work There is a flaw in the HFDC design that does not allow for writes to a third HD. You can format it and write files your files to it as drive 1 or drive 2 and then hook it up as drive 3 as read only device. HARD0023: I've hooked up a floppy to my HFDC and now I have no HD access Note the HFDC is sensitive to termination, make sure if you have a floppy hooked up, that the last drive is terminated, also make sure the last HD in a chain is properly terminated. HARD0024: Line Drivers by TAT: Replacing the Motorola tranceivers (U29, U39) 26LS31/26LS32 is good, and is standard practice for any HFDC that comes to me for repair or upgrade. If you format a hard drive and you see bad sectors, if the chipset is Motorola, replacing with National Semiconductor parts usually clears the problem. HARD0025: QIC Tape Chip by TAT: Removing the QIC? tape backup support chips requires a jumper added between two pins. I know the pins by sight only... but please note it for reference. If you don't jumper the traces, sometimes unpredictable results occur. HARD0030: Clean Contacts You can find books written on how and why to clean contacts and edge connectors, this can be your best friend for solving the occasional glitch. For card edge connectors, I (DHE) have been using www.radioshack.com Model: 64-4341 pen edge cleaner. For the contacts in the pbox, I usually take a business card (not a glossy one) fold it over on the clean back side (ie fold in two) and push straight (down) into the connector and pull straigh up (out) of the female connectors. The pins are not designed to bear pressure if you where to move the card from the back to the front of the pbox. Also, you might still be able to find them, but nintendo made a good clear for their entertainment system. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- WHO0001: WHO CAN I THANK Michael Becker - Upgrade PAL for Rave Speech Adapter, SCSI controller/MDOS compatibility updates. Richard Bell - Hardware repair, Customer education, SNUG hardware distribution, running the Hidden Reef BBS. Paul Charlton - MDOS, GenProg development system. Dan Eicher - Documentation, MDOS bug hunting, MDOS help system. Tony Knerr - Boot EPROM upgrades, MDOS improvements and bug patches, support and education. Mike Maksimik - MDOS Improvements, Patching 99/4a software to run on the Geneve, MDOS SCSI Support. Ron Markus - for continuing to make commercial software available. Beery Miller - MDOS improvements, 9640News, Genie forum moderator, MDOS Buy out. Bud Mills - Production of Geneve compatible hardware. Don O'Neil - For producing Geneve compatible hardware and ftp.whtech.com - THE source on the net for TI software. Lou Phillips - The father of the Geneve. Jim Schroeder – Many original MDOS programs, FORM3MEG and the PFM upgrade. Tim Tesch - Hardware repairs, MDOS improvements, documentation, PFM Modifications, Geneve Sound system, CDROM Juke box, Port Terminal Emulator. Jim Uzzell - Upgrades and enhancements to ABASIC, MDOS Bug Hunting, many many ABASIC programs. Don Waldon - For many years of Geneve/TI support and trying to carry on when Myarc shutdown. Jeff White - Geneve technical support/education, fixing some of the most stubborn bugs in MDOS. Tom Wills - For setting up and running the TI list server on yahoo.