| Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-10
|  Guilty of stupid assumptions...
We assumed that the Plus4 would hang around and be used by the hardcore. The Emus have breathed some life back into the situation. I, personally, was guilty of falling into a rut of using specific floppy routines in much of the stuff I wrote. The worst offender was the:
OPEN15,DV,2..... (where DV is the current device #)
INPUT#2,K3,AA,...
for DIM arrays
The emus, at present, with their partial 1541/1551 support will choke on those lines with a "line too long error" when trying to read in values for highscores, program options, etc.
I remember writing a few ml disk access routines that I will have to try in the place of them. Passing variables between Ml and Basic could be tricky. Most of the cardgames, readers and utilities that I uploaded, to Funet, used this bad (as it turned out) practice. The offending line can be REMed out and the programs will run.
WinEMU comes closest to handling floppy calls the best, but I find YAPE and Minus4 to be my personal favorites. They definately need better floppy emulation.. difficult, I know.
I told James C, that as I get time this winter when the snows come, I will try to get a lot rewritten. meanwhile if anyone has a suggestion as either a substitute for the Input or Get routines, on the Emus... I'd appreciate the input.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2002-07-10
| This has partialy been discussed
with Ati..... I have asked for the ability of an emulator to:
a) allow detection of itself (YAPE 0.38 and higher allow this as an option, which I need to talk to him some more about)
b) write directly to the D64 file (I have to admit Ati's 1541 routines do help in reading from the D64)
The problem with Ati's emulation detection is that a) I haven't been able to get it to work b) the user has to turn it on manually, it's not automatically set when YAPE is installed c) it has to be turned on each time the emulator is run; even though it's in the config file and the checkmark appears upon reload, the user has to uncheck and recheck for it to be truly active.
I have attempted to email Ati about this before in length, with specific examples, but the computer connection decided to hiccup and the message was lost.... and I didn't have the time to rewrite the email at the moment, and then.... and then.....
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-11
| Good.. figured someone would be on the ball
I found that using a combination of Emus (Yape was one) I could just about do a little reprogramming, on them. Nice that you can set the memory pointer on the Save. I think, though, they aren't reallly ready for everyday usage. I will probably dig out my old Plussy and use it this winter to rewrite some programs. I think I can skirt around those Floppy specific routines with either an ML memory saver or other. Some of the sample files I sent Mike, for his Minus4, were redone. I'll bet there are those files on that CD, somewhere.
I really did love the little orphan, that's why I wasted so much time with it. You'll also note that I might be dumb, but not totally stupid... while working with the Plussy, I DID do a version of virtually all the programs and utilities, for use on the C64 and C128. Basically all companion programs. Especially the graphic utils, ml toolkits, readers, archivers and recipe programs. That was a lot of fun. Heck, since I already had the disassembly and homemade memory maps for them... it wasn't really too bad. Used to get kinda bored, during the long winters we have here, when we lived in the Bush
I sure would love to see ATI implement the open and print fetch routines, at least, on his Emu. Meantime, just rem out any offending lines. Most are just for screen options and highscores... the defaults work well.
If you ever run across a dead Plus4... basically just the empty case (I even have spare keyboard assys) let me know. It would allow me to insert that spare 256K board for use. My old machine is still setup for dual Pal/Ntsc mode.. need to keep it that way. By the by.. I've still have a number of spare chips, xtals and roms for the Plussy stashed.
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2002-07-12
| I have what you need!
Jim, I do have a Plus/4 with 15 bad memory locations up in higher memory (up above 60000) so it screws up pretty quick with strings or some ML programs (Higgyterm crashed pretty quick on this one). If you're gonna pull or bypass the memory on the motherboard then it would be fine.
I can hook it up and run some C16 stuff on it to be sure it's not TED screwing up, if you like.
If you want it, I would like to keep the 7501 and TED as spares for my other two units. As long as you have those then you'll be okay. Keyboard is yellowed but functional; I can pull that if you don't want it either.
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Posted By
BushRat
on 2002-07-12
| Sounds good
I haven't seen a Plus4 in a second-hand store, here in Alaska, for years. I must have sent a dozen to various folks in the past. Okay James, hang on to it and we will connect on the Email. Strip it out, board, keyboard and all. All I need is the upper and bottom plastic shell. If you need parts or power supplies let me know. I have:
5 - 8501R1 CPUs
7 - 8360R2 TEDs
1 - 8360R1 TED
4 - 251641-02 PLAs
4 - 318005-05 Version5 Kernals (Ntsc)
2 - 318005-04 Version4 Kernals (Ntsc)
2 - 318004-05 Version5 Kernals (Pal)
1 - 318004-04 Version4 Kernals (Pal)
4 - 17.73447 mhz Pal Xtals
4 - 14.31818 mhz Ntsc Xtals
8 - 318006-01 Basic Chips
10 Sets of the built-in software (3+1)
5 - Superload Roms
2 - TurboPlus Roms
1 - 1551 Turboload Rom
2 Sets of OS96 Roms (Pal)
2 Sets of OS96 Roms (Ntsc)
2 SpeedScript+4 Rom
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