If you downloaded the binary-only version, you can skip straight to Installation. Before building you should make sure that the SDL development code has been installed on your system and ensure that the sdl2-config utility is in your search path.

If everything is installed properly, running 'make' will build all the executables found in the binary-only package. Any OS specific operations are detailed in the following sections.

NOTE: When building from the source, all the executables are left in their corresponding directories.

Linux & Raspberry Pi

            ~/ti99sim> make
          

Macintosh OS X

            ~/ti99sim> make
          

Windows

The Directories

            make install
          

            ─┬─ cartridges
             ├─ console
             └─ disks
          

The Console ROM & Cartridges

            ─┬─ cartridges
             │  ├─ Alpiner.ctg
             │  ├─ Editor-Assembler.ctg
             │  ├─ Parsec.ctg
             │  └─ TI Extended BASIC.ctg
             ├─ disks
             │  ├─ ASSM1                   - E/A Disk 1
             │  ├─ ASSM2                   - E/A Disk 2
             │  ├─ DISKASSM                - Miller Graphics' Disk-Assembler
             │  ├─ dsk1.dsk                - Default disk image
             │  ├─ image.cf7               - Fle accessed by CF7+ module
             │  └─ MG_DIAG                 - Miller Graphics' Advanced Diagnostics
             └─ console
                ├─ cf7+.ctg                - CF7+ ROM DSR module
                ├─ Gram Kracker.ctg        - Miller Graphic's Gram Kracker ROMs
                ├─ spchrom.bin             - TI Speech Synthesizer ROM
                ├─ ti-disk.ctg             - TI ROM DSR module for disk access
                └─ TI-994A.ctg             - TI-99/4A ROM
          

Up and Running

            ti99sim-sdl
          

            ti99sim-sdl --dsk2=ASSM1 --dsk3=ASSM2 Editor-Assembler.ctg   (DSK1 will default to using the dsk1.dsk image)
            ti99sim-sdl --dsk1=MG_DIAG "TI Extended BASIC.ctg"           (Note the use of quotes when using modules with spaces in their name)
            ti99sim-sdl -f Parsec.ctg                                    (OK, bring 'em on ...)
          

This is a simple utility that will list all of the cartridges/disks/files in the path(s) specified. Each entry is displayed as a SHA1 hash of the entry followed by the filename. Disks and cartridges will additionally display either the disk name or cartridge title. All output is sorted by SHA1 and any duplicate entries are marked to make it easier to clean up multiple copies.

NOTES:

Command-line syntax:

The ti99sim emulator uses special .ctg files to store the ROM and/or GROM images contained within the computer console and plug-in cartridges. The convert-ctg program allows you to create these cartridges. It will convert your existing v9t9 ROMs or create cartridges using output from a hex dump of a ROM image. A set of sample files, TI-994A.dat, Mini-Memory.dat, and Gram Kracker.dat, located in the roms directory, are supplied as examples of the format of the hex dump file. NOTE: These files do not contain complete hex dumps of their corresponding ROMs but can be used as templates if you have the required information.

To convert existing v9t9 cartridges, type convert-ctg foo.bin where foo is the base name of a set of ROM files. The base name is usually the portion of the filenames that are common between all files associated with a particular cartridge. convert-ctg understands the naming conventions used by present and past versions of v9t9, and will attempt to determine which version of files that you have installed. For example, the following command will convert the files PARSECC.BIN and PARSECG.BIN to PARSEC.ctg:

          convert-ctg /your-path-here/v9t9/v6.0/modules/PARSEC.BIN
        

Files to be converted can be in any directory. The new cartridge will be created in the current working directory. To create the console ROM cartridge you need to specify either 994a.bin or ti.hex (depending on your version of v9t9 or TI Emulator) as the filename. For example:

          convert-ctg /your-path-here/v9t9/v6.0/roms/994a.bin
        

This will create the special TI-994A.ctg file that contains the console ROM, the system GROMs, scratch-pad RAM, and 32K memory expansion RAM. Without this file, ti99sim will not run!

There are three types of cartridges. The first is the special TI-994A.ctg file, the second are DSR ROMs, and the third are normal cartridges. The first two types are expected to be found in the 'console' directories, while the last is expected in the 'cartridges' directories.

DSR ROMs are special ROM cartridges that are associated with a particular peripheral device. These cartridges must be associated with a particular CRU address. The ROM in these cartridges is located at a different address than the ROMs normally found in a cartridge and without a CRU address, the CPU won't be able to see the ROM within the cartridge. To create a DSR ROM cartridge, simply use the --cru=xxxx option to convert-ctg. This will instruct convert-ctg to store the ROM at the special DSR memory range, and mark the cartridge with the correct CRU information. In order to use the disk emulation features, you need to create a cartridge from a TI disk ROM with the name ti-disk.ctg with the CRU address 1100.

When creating cartridges, convert-ctg will attempt to add a cartridge title by searching for valid GROM headers in the files being converted. If it does not find any valid names, or if you want to change the one it uses, you can specify a title on the command line after the base filename. ti99sim uses the cartridge title when saving/loading memory images to ensure that the correct cartridges are present when loading. If you intend to use this feature, please make sure that all of your cartridges have unique names.

convert-ctg will also allow you to dump the contents of a cartridge to a specially formatted hex dump file. This feature is useful if you want to see the contents of a cartridge's ROM/GROM code, or to patch the code and rebuild the cartridge with your changes.

Command-line syntax:

If you have old TI audio tapes hanging around, decode will convert them into binary files that can be used (in some future version) by ti99sim. It attempts to intelligently find sections of stored data while ignoring any other sounds it finds. This makes it easier to get all the data from a tape - just create a .wav file that covers the entire tape. There is no need to create a separate .wav file for each data file. Once it's done, you will have a separate file for each track of audio found on the tape. If you have a TI-BASIC or TI Extended BASIC program stored on tape, you can use the list utility to display a listing of the program from the file(s) created by decode.

Only .wav files are currently supported. Any .wav file stored using a standard format (i.e. non-compressed, PCM audio using integer samples) should work. decode can handle files at any sampling rate and bit depth. This means you can keep your recordings as small as possible by using 8-bit mono 8000Hz .wav files. If your file is not recorded in mono (i.e. stereo or multi-track), decode will only attempt to use data from the first channel (i.e. left (2,3), front left (4), left center (6), ...). Of course, a higher sampling rate or resolution may help the decoding process in cases where the audio is garbled. If you find that a file is not decoding properly, you may want to re-record the tape using higher settings. If you have the proper hardware, for example, you could record a 32-bit mono 44100Hz file (this will create a file over 20 times larger than the one mentioned earlier, so it should only be used as a last resort).

Command-line syntax:

The emulator allows you to use disks created by a TI-99/4A computer within the emulator. The emulator can read disks created using the dump feature of AnaDisk - with or without the optional 8-byte header for each sector. The latter is the format used by v9t9 disks. The emulator can also read disks that contain raw track data (the format used by PC99). disk can understand both single and double density disk formats.

The disk utility allows you to look at the contents of a disk image and optionally create native files from those in the disk image. This allows you to create files that can be used by convert-ctg to create cartridge files that you can use with the emulator. There are two output formats for files extracted from a disk. The first (default) format is the v9t9 FIAD format. This format contains a 128-byte header that preserves all of the original file information. The second format is a naked file. These files use only a filename extension to convey the original file format. The actual contents of the file are converted to a conventional file as best as possible. Files using this format may be readable on the host computer (normally, DISPLAY type files are readable).

the --sha1 option will display a SHA1 hash of the contents of each file. The SHA1 calculation only includes data belonging to the file (it ignores unused bytes at the end of sectors). This means that if a file has been copied to another disk, it should generate the same checksum regardless of how it was copied. The SHA1 value is useful for locating duplicate files across disks (or volumes on a CF7+ image) or determining if two copies of similarly named file are really the same.

CF7+ devices can be read/written using the disk utility. The syntax for accessing a volume on the device is: <device-file>#<volume>. Where <device-file> can be either the device node where the CompactFlash card is located (e.g. /dev/sdb on a Linux machine) or a file image taken from an actual device. The <volume> is a number (starting at 1) indicating which volume on the device to access.

The disk utility can also be used to convert disk images between formats. By specifying --output={anadisk|v9t9|pc99|cf7+}, a disk image can be converted to any format.

NOTES:

• If a CF7+ image is specified without specifying a volume index, the only options that will be honored are: --check, --layout, --verbose, and --sha1.
• In order to convert the format of a CF7+ volume, an output file must be specified so that all of the other volumes in the image are not destroyed.

Command-line syntax:

This program will allow you to disassemble any CPU ROM section in a cartridge file, a DISPLAY/FIXED FIAD file, or RAM from a save image file. Through the use of an external configuration file, you can assign labels and EQUs to make the disassembly more readable.

NOTE: This program is a work in progress and does not always create good listings.

Command-line syntax:

Ever wondered what the code behind that game looks like? This program is similar to dumpcpu but disassembles the GPL code in the GROM cartridge. It uses the standard GROM headers to find starting addresses and strings.

NOTE: This program is a work in progress and does not always create good listings.

Command-line syntax:

Here is a utility that can help you analyze the contents of your speech synthesizer's ROM (spchrom.bin). This program will create a text file, spchrom.dat, which contains the contents of the ROM that can later be used by mkspch to create a new speech ROM. It can create files in two different formats. The first (default) is a simple hexadecimal listing of the speech data for each phrase contained in the ROM file. The second breaks down the raw data into a 'parsed' format that exposes the individual LPC-10 speech frames. Each speech frame represents 25ms worth of sound. If you're feeling adventurous, you can edit the speech frames in the generated .dat file, create a new spchrom.bin file, and see how things sound!

For those that are interested, the parsed speech frames are of the form:

          STOP CODE      S                - Signals the end of the speech data
          ZERO CODE      Z                - Indicates 1 frames worth of silence
          REPEAT Frame   Pxx Exx R        - Repeats the previous frame using the indicated pitch and energy
          Unvoiced Frame Pxx Exx <Kxx>4   - An unvoiced (fricative) frame with 4 reflection coefficients
          Voiced Frame   Pxx Exx <Kxx>10  - A voiced frame with 10 reflection coefficients
        

NOTE: If you create a file using the 'spch' format, the resulting file will only contain the valid speech data. The actual TI speech ROM data contains a few extra bytes following several phrases. The parsed output file will not include this extraneous data. A spchrom.bin file created from the generated spchrom.dat file will not match the original ROM byte-for-byte, but will be a completely functional copy.

Command-line syntax:

This utility can be used to list TI-BASIC (and TI Extended BASIC) programs. Files can be either a native file that has been extracted from a disk image (using 'disk -d xyz.dsk'), or a file inside a disk image (using xyz.dsk:filename, or cf7#5:filename). Find the file you want listed (i.e. HELLO) and type 'list HELLO'. If you have selected a valid BASIC file, a listing similar to the one printed by the BASIC interpreter should print.

Command-line syntax:

If you have a directory full of ROM files for a large collection of cartridges (or even a single file), mkcart can help create a set of cartridge files from them in one quick pass. It was designed to be a simple tool for mass cartridge conversion and does not have all the features of convert-ctg but does a much better job when faced with a large set of files. It also understands the TOSEC naming convention, so the cartridges created will usually have a more descriptive title.

NOTE: mkcart can only create 'normal' cartridges, it cannot be used to create device DSR cartridges or the system ROM cartridge.

Command-line syntax:

If you can't find a copy of spchrom.bin, you can use this utility to create one that can be used by the ti99sim. The spchrom.dat file located in the console directory contains the information required to create a stripped down speech ROM. This file does not contain any actual speech data, but instead contains the bare minimum number of phrases required for the proper operation of TI Extended BASIC's CALL SAY logic. If you have your own LPC-10 coded speech samples (I have no idea how you would create them - yet, so please don't ask), you can use this utility to create a speech ROM using your own voice samples!

Command-line syntax:

Do you miss being able to type CALL SAY("HELLO") and hear the TI's speech synthesizer? Well, say is your answer. This program attempts to mimic the behavior of the TI Extended BASIC routine SAY. It will look through the spchrom.bin file for the indicated pattern and do it's best to produce synthesized speech. Some phrases in the speech library contain spaces. If you want to say one of these ("Texas Instruments" for example), you will need to put quotes around it on the command line, otherwise say will look for two or more separate words that are probably not present.

Command-line syntax:

A simple text-based version of the emulator. It includes an interface, similar to Miller Graphics' Explorer, which allows you to step through code at the assembly or GPL instruction level. It has two modes: command and run. While it is in command mode, the CPU is paused. You can edit any of the register values, clear the PC breakpoint, load/save memory images, exit... In run mode, the CPU is running and all keystrokes go to the TI. Pressing <Esc> will stop the CPU and return to command mode. Since its text-mode only, it does not support graphics or sprites. If you just want to see what the computer is doing, this is the program to do it with.

Command-line syntax:

NOTE: If you try to load a memory image, you must make sure that any cartridge(s) that were running when the image was made are also specified.

The SDL-based emulator

Command-line syntax:

NOTE: If you try to load a memory image, you must make sure that any cartridge(s) that were running when the image was made are also specified.

There is no GUI yet. The following keys are defined:

• ESC - exit
• F2 - Save memory image
• F3 - Load memory image
• F10 - Reboot

For those of you that don't have easy access to the TI-99/4A keyboard or overlay, here is a summary of the special function keys:

Disk support

CF7+ support

            disk --output=cf7+ --filename=image.cf7#30 blank.dsk     (Copies an existing disk image 'blank.dsk' to volume # 30 of a CF7+ image file name 'image.cf7')
          

RS-232 support

Gram Kracker™ emulation