Writing to Cartridge; was: Software prices
2 messages · 2008-01-08 → 2008-01-08 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org
Participants: Adam Trionfo, Timex
Preserved from the Timex/Sinclair 2068 Yahoo Group (2001–2019), which is no longer online. Text reproduced from the archive.org archive; email addresses masked.
Messages
1. Writing to Cartridge; was: Software prices
Adam Trionfo · Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:28:
Bill Loguidice, on Tue 1/08/08 at 12:37 PM, wrote:
>>
I don't see a technical reason why you couldn't have a battery backed read/write cartridge.
>>
I just checked the "TS 2068 Technical Manual" about this. Table 2.4.2-1 (on page 68) has the cartridge connector signals listed. I'm no expert on this, but it DOES seem that it would be possible to have a writable cartridge (pin 23 is Write). I'm not sure what the storage limit would be (64K?). Anyone? What's neat about this idea is that the software needed for the system to "learn" to read to the cartridge could be loaded directly from the cartridge.
Not all consoles could have a writable cartridge. For instance, the Astrocade could not. It has the bare number of pins needed to read a cartridge. That's it. Writing to RAM on the Astrocade was expected to take place using the 50-pin expansion-- which is where ALL RAM expansions eventually went for that system.
Interestingly, the "TS 2068 Technical Manual" also refers to cartridges called "BASIC Application Cartridges." The TS 2068 ROM supports BASIC programs running from cartridge. This is a neat idea. The Astrocade doesn't support this feature outright, but user's did figure-out how to do it in about 1985 (seven years after the system was released!).
The Tech Manual also has a few other goodies about cartridges:
1) 64K EPROM cartridge schematic (using four 16 EPROMS)
2) Mask for the 64K cartridge (WOW!)
The "TS 2068 Technical Manual" sure is a neat book!
Although the Tech Manual IS available online... OCR software has been used on it to keep the size manageable. Obvious mistakes litter the whole document. That's not too bad. The mistakes that you have to be careful about are the mistakes that are NOT obvious. For this reason, this manual should probably be rescanned as an image. I estimate that a B&W, 300DPI version of this manual would be about 20MB (vs. the 3MB OCR'ed file).
Adam
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2. Re: [ts2068] Writing to Cartridge; was: Software prices
Timex · Wed, 9 Jan 2008 00:22:
On Jan 8, 2008, at 9:28 PM, Adam Trionfo wrote:
>
> Bill Loguidice, on Tue 1/08/08 at 12:37 PM, wrote:
>>>
> I don't see a technical reason why you couldn't have a battery
> backed read/write cartridge.
>>>
>
> I just checked the "TS 2068 Technical Manual" about this. Table
> 2.4.2-1 (on page 68) has the cartridge connector signals listed.
> I'm no expert on this, but it DOES seem that it would be possible
> to have a writable cartridge (pin 23 is Write). I'm not sure what
> the storage limit would be (64K?). Anyone? What's neat about this
> idea is that the software needed for the system to "learn" to read
> to the cartridge could be loaded directly from the cartridge.
I think Jarek made a 64K cartridge.
See this: http://8bit.yarek.pl/interface/ts.cartridge/index.html
And see the other pages. He made interesting things for Timex
computers like a 512K RAM expansion!!
> Interestingly, the "TS 2068 Technical Manual" also refers to
> cartridges called "BASIC Application Cartridges." The TS 2068 ROM
> supports BASIC programs running from cartridge. This is a neat
> idea. The Astrocade doesn't support this feature outright, but
> user's did figure-out how to do it in about 1985 (seven years after
> the system was released!).
There are 3 cartridge types:
LROS takes control of the computer. Internal ROMs are disabled.
AROS uses BASIC interpreter.
ROM is simply a ROM that can be paged using the OUT 244,3
Je
>