Print Page - Revival of the TI-81

Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: critor on February 18, 2012, 03:30:56 pm

Title: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 18, 2012, 03:30:56 pm

TI-81 enthusiasts, it's the great day for you! ;D(http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif)

The TI-81 was the first TI graphing calculator, released in 1990.

With the TI-80 (http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=8323&view=unread), they were the last non-Nspire graphing calculators to be "opened (http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4748)" for dumping, emulation and assembly support.

Like the TI-80, the TI-81 didn't have a link port, so you had to type all programs by hand.

(http://i43.servimg.com/u/f43/13/23/13/53/photo_10.jpg)
(image source: http://www.thepcmuseum.net/calculators_details.php?RECORD_KEY%28calculators%29=id&id%28calculators%29=80)

Moreover, the first TI-81 produced in 1990-1991 didn't even include the backup Lithium battery.
So you had to replace batteries before they were too low, one by one, and quickly.

(http://herve.guillemot.free.fr/IMG/jpg/site_Texas-Instruments-TI-81-1st-version_1.jpg)
(image source: http://herve.guillemot.free.fr/spip.php?article48 )

The last TI-81 produced in 1995 and running the V2.0V ROM were using a different PCB: a TI-82 PCB (model which had just been released at that time) with lower capacity RAM/ROM chips and with all the linking electronics removed.

(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=10&image_id=178) (http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image_page.php?image_id=178)
(on the left one of the last TI-81 with ROM V2.0V from 1996 - on the right, one of the first TI-82 from 1994)

Knowing that, I developped a trick (http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4752&view=unread), which let you emulate the TI-81 V2.0V with a TI-82 emulator by just concatenating severall copies of the ROM.

The problem is that this emulation was not accurate. You couldn't install the Unity kernel and run assembly programs.

We needed a true TI-81 emulator.

TilEm source code has been including TI-81 emulation for 2 years, but no updated binaries were ever released. You had to compile by yourself...

And now comes the good news.

On TI-Planet, we have added an online TI-81 emulator based on the above trick.
But more than that, its makes the impossible possible!
You can load programs although the real hardware doesn't have a link port.
We just hot-write the programs in RAM, which is not complicated at all as the TI-81 has fixed offsets and no VAT.

(http://i43.servimg.com/u/f43/13/23/13/53/81emu10.gif)

You can launch it from each TI-81 program (http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=3950) available on TI-Planet.

It will be available for every TI-81 program you upload to TI-Planet, if you use the official 81P file format which is very similar with the 82P/83P format (severall 81P DOS tools were distributed by TI to use with their old PC/Mac TI-81 simulator).

But there's another good news for TI-81 enthusiasts! ;D(http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif)

I've contacted WabbitEmu's author, and now you get a new WabbitEmu with TI-81 support! :)

(http://i43.servimg.com/u/f43/13/23/13/53/wabbit10.gif)

So unlike the above emulator, this time, in theory, it's possible to install the Unity kernel.
But, as the TI-81 does not have a link port, you can not sent 81P programs for now...

Sources:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8776
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=120899#p120899

Links:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=3950&play=1&mode=81
http://wabbit.codeplex.com/releases/view/44625

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Yeong on February 18, 2012, 03:51:05 pm

O.O
Good job! :D

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Stefan Bauwens on February 18, 2012, 04:28:19 pm

Hooray! Well done. :)

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: apcalc on February 18, 2012, 05:50:19 pm

Great news! Nice to see this accomplishment for the TI-81! :D

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: TIfanx1999 on February 18, 2012, 10:14:50 pm

Awesome work guyss! :D

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 18, 2012, 10:38:34 pm

Wow, someone actually managed to get all this!

I'm still sad that no one seems to know about the rom version "V2.00"
Everyone knows "V2.0V" But not mine XD

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 18, 2012, 10:58:31 pm

Wow this is awesome. But does the WabbitEmu version you have there has the ROM built in or not? Also, I wonder how do we make a 81P program, assuming we have Windows 7 64 bits? I'm curious because in 2008 I made a TI-81 port of Illusiat 1, which uses all 37 available program slots and the entire user RAM.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 19, 2012, 12:48:34 am

Yeah this is pretty awesome indeed. Glad to see more calcs integrated in WabbitEmu.

Quote from: AzNg0d1030 on February 18, 2012, 10:38:34 pm

Wow, someone actually managed to get all this!

I'm still sad that no one seems to know about the rom version "V2.00"
Everyone knows "V2.0V" But not mine XD

Unknown version? You should send it for examination to someone who is able to dump the ROM.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 19, 2012, 06:25:35 am

Quote from: Juju on February 19, 2012, 12:48:34 am

Yeah this is pretty awesome indeed. Glad to see more calcs integrated in WabbitEmu.

Quote from: AzNg0d1030 on February 18, 2012, 10:38:34 pm
Wow, someone actually managed to get all this!

I'm still sad that no one seems to know about the rom version "V2.00"
Everyone knows "V2.0V" But not mine XD

Unknown version? You should send it for examination to someone who is able to dump the ROM.

I've sent you a PM AzNg0d1030.

Yes, TI-81 ROMs are quite hard to dump as there is no link port.
You need to type a huge assembly program by hand without any error and use some trick to make the TI-81 launch it. This will output the ROM content on the screen.
Then you need to record the screen for something like 30mins with a cam, and use some OCR on the video.

I've allready made the video (although I didn't perform the ocr step myself) for both ROMs 1.1K and 1.6K.

The community has now dumped 1.1K, 1.6K, 1.8K, and V2.0V.

With your report, we can extend the list of existing undumped ROMs to:
1.0, 1.1, 1.5K, 1.6V, V2.00

And as far as I can say, for some reason those are rare ROMs.

If you own such a TI-81, I think the best way would be to send it to me for some weeks.
I've allready been sent severall prototype/rare calculators by various TI community members and by the Datamath museum without any problem.

I'm ok to pay for the shipping cost.

It might seem unimportant to you, but if you have an undumped TI-81 version, you might be holding in your hands one of the last working TI-81 with that version in the world.
So if we don't dump it now,we might loose it forever.

Thanks for your report.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 19, 2012, 12:04:52 pm

I'll take a picture of the screen as soon as I can for a preview. As of right now, I can only say that the heading on top of the screen (the part that says TI 81 and Texas Instruments) is reminiscent of the 1990 and 1991 TI81 versions. The rom is version 2, which seemed to only appear on later models (V2.0V or 2.0V) (according to DataMath).

I do not have the serial number since before I obtained this calculator, the number must have been ripped off.

Yes, it does have backup battery slot (it's not that old).

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: MillionCalcs on February 19, 2012, 12:14:12 pm

There is such a thing as a V2.00?

XD I don't know much about 81s. I only have an 84+

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 19, 2012, 12:45:33 pm

Lol if I can find the dang attach file button... :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

edit: seems that I can't. The attach button isn't present.

Here:
(http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/3782/photonlw.jpg)

Critor, as far as I can see, you should have seen another person with the V2.00 on an old UnitedTI forum.
http://www.unitedti.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=8926
On the 4th post, BrandonW mentions a "V2.00"

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 19, 2012, 02:41:55 pm

Hmm if the LCD has missing LCD lines, then dumping the ROM is impossible I think, because the screen needs to be filmed then a software is used to read the characters through the video, which are not completely visible in your case. That's unless the image reader thing actually checks the last row only and that every line of numbers appears at the bottom at least once.

As for the attach button I think your computer is messed up AzN because it's not the first time you report problems that no one else has. You have to click Quote or Reply then there's a file upload form on that page. If it's not there then it's a problem on your computer or browser(s) end.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Spyro543 on February 19, 2012, 02:58:26 pm

Would it be possible for the dumper to only write to the last few lines that still work?

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 19, 2012, 03:29:47 pm

Probably you could make the dumper not dump in the last column of LCD. TravisE on that UTI thread said he got a defect LCD as well and managed to still dump the ROM. So yeah you might want to consult BrandonW for help.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: FinaleTI on February 19, 2012, 05:19:57 pm

Awesome! Glad to see the 81 getting some more attention. Now I can try out Unity without screwing up my real 81.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 19, 2012, 10:30:02 pm

Well... Seems that there always has to be problems eh.
:\
First no serial number, now dumper may not work. :banghead:'

MESSAGE: Using the prgm editor and the instructions that Critor gave me on TI-Planet, I have successfully made the calculator print out the rom :D

Now I just need to record and hopefully the rom reader can somehow read it...

(typing all that in was a pain... XD)

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 20, 2012, 12:56:44 am

When the stuff on the screen starts scrolling up, does it start from the very bottom row or does it start at the top? If so, then reading the first few rows might be a problem. :/

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 20, 2012, 05:59:47 am

The dumping starts at the horizontal cursor position, uses the whole scren and scroll line by line.

So the horizontal blank lines shouldn't be a problem.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 20, 2012, 09:08:08 am

What about the vertical blank lines though?

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: TravisE on February 20, 2012, 09:38:54 am

Vertical lines might be a problem. I can't remember whether or not it makes each line overlap bytes in ROM. I think that it encodes the starting address on each line, so it probably wouldn't be difficult to modify the dumper to give some sort of less-than-one-screen-line offset if it doesn't already, so that each byte would be shown at multiple vertical positions. Unless the lines are close to the left side where the address is encoded; then that could be a problem.

With all my calculators, my missing lines always seem to go away after some use for some reason. Maybe just playing around with the calc for an hour or two might make one or more lines come back long enough to try a ROM dump.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 20, 2012, 10:01:58 am

Quote from: DJ_O on February 18, 2012, 10:58:31 pm

Wow this is awesome. But does the WabbitEmu version you have there has the ROM built in or not?

WabbitEmu does not include any ROM.

The modded TI8XEMU on tiplanet.org does automatically load the TI-81 V2.0V ROM somewhere, yes. But the url is neither visible in the HTML source, nor in the flash swf file.

I asked Juju before newsing here and he said it was ok.

Quote from: DJ_O on February 18, 2012, 10:58:31 pm

Also, I wonder how do we make a 81P program, assuming we have Windows 7 64 bits? I'm curious because in 2008 I made a TI-81 port of Illusiat 1, which uses all 37 available program slots and the entire user RAM.

It would be great to have your Illusiat 1 port run in the TI-81 emulator.
Would clearly be the best game run in a TI-81 emulator ever! :P

You need to download the old TI-81 PC simulator and use it with VirtualBox.
Just type your program in the imulator, and then choose 'export' in the tools menu.
This will generate a 81P file.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 20, 2012, 10:41:29 am

So your emulator can load all 37 programs required to play Illusiat, but what about matrices? There's 2 matrices you have to type out as well and I think there's no file format for them.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 20, 2012, 10:44:08 am

Quote from: Juju on February 20, 2012, 10:41:29 am

So your emulator can load all 37 programs required to play Illusiat, but what about matrices? There's 2 matrices you have to type out as well and I think there's no file format for them.

We could still figure out what would have been a 81M file format.

81P is just the equivalent of 82P/83P/8XP/85P/86P.
In those formats you have a small header with program size and name, and after that the raw data which has to be written to the RAM.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 20, 2012, 11:46:31 am

critor, how long do you estimate the video length to be?

From how I did it, the lines began appearing at the bottom of the screen.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 20, 2012, 12:16:32 pm

Quote from: AzNg0d1030 on February 20, 2012, 11:46:31 am

critor, how long do you estimate the video length to be?

Half an hour should be more than enough :)

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 20, 2012, 12:23:07 pm

Quote from: critor on February 20, 2012, 10:44:08 am

Quote from: Juju on February 20, 2012, 10:41:29 am
So your emulator can load all 37 programs required to play Illusiat, but what about matrices? There's 2 matrices you have to type out as well and I think there's no file format for them.

We could still figure out what would have been a 81M file format.

81P is just the equivalent of 82P/83P/8XP/85P/86P.
In those formats you have a small header with program size and name, and after that the raw data which has to be written to the RAM.

The 81M file format might be the name ([A], [B] or [C]), size (6x6) then the raw data to write in the appropriate section of RAM.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 21, 2012, 04:50:46 pm

I have uploaded a video of the ROM print for anyone who wants to see! Thie file is enormous (28 min, probably shouldve compressed the video, zip, winrar).
Here is the link: *removed*
Password to download is "ti81calc" w/o the quotes.
Happy...watching? XD

edit: link removed due to possible violation

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 21, 2012, 05:51:46 pm

Great you could make that video so fast! :)

Unfortunately, seems 30mins weren't enough. Seems your TI-81 is running the dumper slower than mine...

The 4 first charaters on the left encode the ROM address.
The dumping is finished when you alphabetically cross LAAA.

So could you make a last attempt and let the dumping program run for something like a hour?
Thanks.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 21, 2012, 06:17:47 pm

ok I'll try that. Is the video quality enough and do the screen lines hinder your program?

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 22, 2012, 09:04:31 pm

It might be a good idea to maybe remove that link from your post afterward, though, just in case *glares at Omnimaga rules*, because after all this is a ROM dump, although in a rather unconventional form :P

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: aeTIos on February 22, 2012, 09:06:52 pm

lol

Title: [spam]
Post by: skadaysnose on February 22, 2012, 10:34:31 pm

apcalc: Deleted explicit content.

Yunhua98: this is just weird

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 23, 2012, 02:04:01 am

O.O

Why does spambots seem to like this thread so much? ??? It's the 2nd one that posts right here in one night! D:

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on February 26, 2012, 05:48:42 pm

I'm happy to tell you that the rare TI-81 1.5K ROM has been dumped, and saved from being lost forever.

Many thanks to the person who sent me the calculator, and to Floppus Maximus who performed the OCR on the videos I've been recording for hours.

(http://i43.servimg.com/u/f43/13/23/13/53/ti811510.gif)

Unfortunately, as it is not a v2 ROM, it cannot be added to the TI-Planet online TI-81 emulator :(.

But you can use it directly with WabbitEmu.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on February 26, 2012, 05:50:33 pm

Awesome :D, also I like how clean that TI-81 skin looks like. :D

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on February 26, 2012, 08:01:22 pm

There should be a different skin depending on the ROM version since the newer 81s started having different designs XD
But then again that is slightly overkill.

As for my 81 ROM dump, have to wait a bit more sorry!

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: TIfanx1999 on February 28, 2012, 08:34:07 am

Hmm... I think I've asked this before somewhere, but after poking around for a while I can't seem to find it. What is the key sequence to check the ROM version on the TI-81(I'd like to check mine)?

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Juju on February 28, 2012, 09:14:27 am

2nd+Math+Alpha+S I think.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: TIfanx1999 on February 28, 2012, 09:34:10 am

Yep, that was it. =) Thanks!

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on March 01, 2012, 12:25:45 pm

And what's your version ?

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on March 01, 2012, 05:13:30 pm

By the way I was messing around with my TI-81 1.1K right now and funnily enough, filling the screen with black using Line( was actually faster than on a TI-83+. ;D

Also one thing I liked about the 81 is how when you used STO> it automatically turned ALPHA on so you don't have to manually press it to type a letter afterward.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: critor on March 01, 2012, 05:17:21 pm

Quote from: DJ_O on March 01, 2012, 05:13:30 pm

Also one thing I liked about the 81 is how when you used STO> it automatically turned ALPHA on so you don't have to manually press it to type a letter afterward.

Yes - The TI-85 used to do that too. :)

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on March 01, 2012, 09:36:58 pm

I'll be recording tomorrow critor. Just wait a bit longer :)

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: Mighty Moose on March 01, 2012, 11:22:51 pm

It's cool to see that there is still some interest (at least among community members) in the TI-81. I got my hands on one recently, but it wasn't anything special in terms of ROM version (1.6K, made in August '91 without a backup battery :P). It's great to see that people are preserving what is left, especially the rarer ones.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: TIfanx1999 on March 02, 2012, 07:43:58 am

@Critor: It was 1.8. I didn't mention it since it has already been dumped.

Title: Re: Revival of the TI-81
Post by: AzNg0d1030 on April 29, 2012, 09:39:36 pm

Critor, I'm going to resume trying to record. Can you check your inbox to see my suggestion on the recording? Thanks.