DeepBrainActivity proudly presents,       

DOCUMENTATION FOR DOSTIGER v0.8beta
Originaly written by Jonas Minnberg

Continued by Kty & Fred 1998-1999

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

LINKPORT EMULATION

ROMDUMPS & FARGO

KEYBOARD MAPPING

COMMANDSTATE

A FEW NOTES ABOUT TIMING

DEBUGGER

TODO

CONTACTING ME

History

DBA

INTRODUCTION

NOTE: DBA continue the DOS version of TIGER.

Tiger is a portable emulator for the TI92/92+/89 calculators. It uses the
68k emulation core from UAE (The Ultimate Amiga Emulator). It
is freeware.

Some features:

• Saves it's state when quitting, so you start where you quitted
• Linkport emulation (see below)
• Works with Fargo, DoorsOS
• Works with 1Mb & 2Mb ROMS, 128 or 256k memory
• Nice debugger
• Constrast emulated (Try [Alt] + [+] & [-])
• Flash is emulated, but ONLY for the TI92+ so far

LINKPORT EMULATION

    Tiger emulates the linkport in two ways. First through the parallel-port. You need the kernelmodule "ti.o" for this to work. Once this is installed as "/dev/ti", you should be able to send files between a real TI92 and the emulator through the homemade parallel-cable. I have tried this with Jimmy Mårdells Tetris, and it works fine in linkplay between a real TI92 and the emulator. It can also load files directly from disc and emulate the TI92 protocol to load them into the emulator. This is accomplished from the commandstate (see below) with the "load" command (and also the "files" command which is perhaps less obvious). (Note: Before you can use the ti.o module you have to create a node for it using: "mknod /dev/ti c 60 0". Then do a "insmod ti.o".)

If you want to run Fargo on the emulator, you need to load a backupfile with the fargo core inside (coverted with "putfargo".

Just Press F10 to go to commandstate and then
type "load <file>.92b" and press enter. It should load pretty fast (progress is indicated with one dot per 2k transferred).

Most TI92+ or TI89 romdumps may not be runnable under TIGER (the emulated calc freezes) because they are corrupted by the TI's FLASH protection.
To get them work, just put FFF8 0000 at offset 0x10000 using an hexadecimal editor.
An interesting feature is that if you have Archive Utility installed on your calc, a romdump will contain all your archived files.
Future versions of Archive Utility will also include ability to make archives backups that would be loadable into romdumps.

Letters, Numbers, Cursormovement, F1-F8 + some others are the same keys on both keyboards

When you press F10, you enter the command state. Here you can enter all sorts of commands at the prompt to configure Tigers
behaviour. Here is a list of what has been implemented so far.

CONFIGCOMMANDS

These commands can be loaded & saved to a config file. They can also be given on the commandline (like "tiger -colors 2
 -romfile v13.rom -memsize 256") in which case it overrides the default config file (tiger.cfg).

• colors <n>
    Set current number of emulated extra grayscale colors.
    The three typical values are:
      0 - No grayscale, only 2 colors (B/W)
      2 - Two extra colors = 4 color grayscale (graylib)
      5 - Five extra colors = 7 color grayscale (fargray)
    And even
      11 - Really blurry, and works both with grayscale/fargray

  Increasing this value will make moving graphics become "blurred", just like on the real TI92. Note that fargray pictures are kind of weird, so my
  grayscale emulation gets confused. If the picture comes up wrong, press ESC and try again. It gets it right 1 time out of 4 :)

• romfile <file>
    Set the romfile to use at startup.

• memfile <file>
    Set the memfile to use at startup and save at program termination.

• tickrate <n>
    Set number the rate of the timer. Only works in the Pentium version. Defaults to 40000 and can be any integer value. The higher the slower.

• cyclerate <n>
    Set the rate of instructions. Only works in the Pentium version. Defaults to 140.

• itick <n>
    Sets number of instructions per timertick, the primitive timing used in the nontimeable (non-pentium) version.
  

• memsize <128|256>
    May only be 128 or 256
  

• iodevice <device>
    Device to use for linkport. Defaults to /dev/ti. Does not work in the DOS version.
  

• sync <0|1>
    If you set this to 0, screen updating will be syncronized with the timer which means it will always be updated regurlarly. This
    may cause grayscale pictures to flicker when you press keys and other things happen in the code.
    If you set this to 1, screen updating will be synced with Irq 1. This means that if Irq 1 does not run, the screen is not updated.
    This options usually makes grayscale rock-stable, but wont work at all in programs that turn off Irq 1 (like "tunnel" and "torus").
    This option is 0 per default but switching it to 1 is usually a good idea when grayscale is involved.
    
  

• darkcol #rrggbb: Set the dark (darkblue) color to the given RGB value (in HEX).

 

• lightcol #rrggbb: Set the light (greengray) color to the given RGB value (in HEX)
  

DIRECTCOMMANDS
 These commands perform a certain action and cannot be present in
 the configfile or on the commandline.
  

• libreq <file>
    Checks what libraries a fargo (92P) file requires to run.
  

• load <file>
    Loads a 92P or 92B-file into the TI92. Note that fargo-
    backups are supposed to give a "Transaction Failed"
    message.
  

• files
    Prints the current variables present in the TI92
  

• ls
    Lists *.92P & *.92B files in the current directory.
    

•   cd [directory]
    Changes to another directory.
  

• quit
    Quit the commandstate and jump back to the calculator.
  

• putcfg [file]
    Write all configurable settings to the given config-file.
    If <file> is not given, write to the file that was loaded
    at startup (usually tiger.cfg).
    
  

• getcfg [file]
    Load all settings from the given config-file. If <file>
    is not given, load the file that was loaded on startup
    (usally tiger.cfg).

• keys [89|92] : sets the keyboard to emulate TI92's or TI89's
    

A FEW NOTES ABOUT TIMING

If you run the pentium version, you should know a bit
about the "tickrate" and "cyclerate" commands. I have
found that the default values work pretty well for
my P200.. But on my P100 it's a bit too slow. I think
that the P100 is around the minimum for emulating the
TI92 at full speed.

Anyway, the "cyclerate" is a measure of how long to
delay each 68000 instruction before proceeding to the
next. On slower pentiums, always set this to 0 as delay
is not necessary. On faster pentiums, the default works
pretty fine (can be adjusted from program to program if
you want as exact speed as possible).
The "tickrate" is a measure of how often the internal
timer of the TI92 should be increased by one. Since the
screen is updated every 16th time the timer ticks, this
value is important for emulator performance. For fast
pentiums, you should propably leave it at 40000. For
slower Pentiums, you should propably increase this to
leave more room for the 68000 emulation, or, if a
game is running too slow you could try to decrease this
(which will speed the game up if it is syncronized with
the timer and is not too CPU demaning).
Good luck :)

DEBUGGER

"q" goes back to emulator
"x" To dump regs and current PC
"d [start] [len]" disassembles
"m [start] [len]" shows memory
"b [adress]" lists,sets and clears breakpoints
"h[l|w|b] <data> [start] [len]" searches memory
"t" trace
"s" trace to next instruction (be careful)

Instead of address you can use a0-a7 or d0-d7 (eg "m a7")
or you can use #n for breakpoint #n (eg b #0 to remove
breakpoint #0).

TODO

• Storing files & backups to disk

• Screenshot option

• Amiga version!

• Fix and release sourcecode to people who want to port it

• Fix better documentation
  

THANKS

David Ellsworth - For his great work on Fargo and source of
                  information needed to make the emulator.
Bernd Schmidt   - For making UAE from which I isolated the 
                  68k emulation core.

CONTACTING ME (Jonas Minnberg)

Please report bugs!
All constructive comments appriciated!

Jonas Minnberg
jonas@upright.se (work) or
md94-jmi@nada.kth.se (school)
#IRC: Sasq

Homepage for Tiger:
http://www.nada.kth.se/~md94-jmi/tiger/

Bye for now!

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History

09/1999	0.8Beta	Public release of the new version
1998/1999		New versions by DBA
	0 to 0.7Beta	Previous version of DOSTIGER by Jonas Minnberg

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DBA: Fred and Kty

DBA is our 'team' name :)Visit our New Web Site at:
We are two students in school engineering in France (ESEO - Ecole Supérieur d'Electronique de l'Ouest) and we are interested in programming and in designing specific hardware device for special platforms such as Texas Instruments calculators TI89/92+
If you want to contact us:
Use the assembly89/92 list at ticalc.org
Or,

Fred	imfred@mailcity.com	ICQ # 33467465
Kty	kty@mailcity.com	ICQ # 45376616

   

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Jonas Minnberg

DBA