David Schmidt
2023-10-19 18:43:35 UTC
In case you hadn't see it elsewhere (github, slack, a2central) - some
renewed efforts are now going on to extract and understand more about
the enigmatic Tiger Learning Computer.
I cooked up a scheme to bit-bang at the joystick port to send data to
it, and managed to shoehorn a hybrid audio/joystick version of ADTPro
into the machine so we can finally get a good view of the volumes it
manages as well as the underlying operating system drivers/shims it uses
to talk to the cartridge ports via both DOS and ProDOS. I've
transferred "disk" images of the boot volume, both flavors of RAM disks,
and several of the cartridges. Folks have been pitching in to help
disassemble code and whatever else interests them.
I'm attempting to gather information in some semblance of order in a
github wiki, attached to the repo:
https://github.com/david-schmidt/tlc-apple2/wiki
Ideas for how to help are in the issues:
https://github.com/david-schmidt/tlc-apple2/issues
There is a branch of ADTPro that does the hybrid communications, which
includes a grub bootstrap loader that was expertly code-golfed to less
than half its original size by Kent Dickey and Peter Ferrie:
https://github.com/adtpro/adtpro/tree/tlc-grub
Progress has been slow with the TLC for a verrrry long time, but I'd say
this recent progress is a pretty decent jump forward. Hop on now, or
you may need to wait another 10 years!
renewed efforts are now going on to extract and understand more about
the enigmatic Tiger Learning Computer.
I cooked up a scheme to bit-bang at the joystick port to send data to
it, and managed to shoehorn a hybrid audio/joystick version of ADTPro
into the machine so we can finally get a good view of the volumes it
manages as well as the underlying operating system drivers/shims it uses
to talk to the cartridge ports via both DOS and ProDOS. I've
transferred "disk" images of the boot volume, both flavors of RAM disks,
and several of the cartridges. Folks have been pitching in to help
disassemble code and whatever else interests them.
I'm attempting to gather information in some semblance of order in a
github wiki, attached to the repo:
https://github.com/david-schmidt/tlc-apple2/wiki
Ideas for how to help are in the issues:
https://github.com/david-schmidt/tlc-apple2/issues
There is a branch of ADTPro that does the hybrid communications, which
includes a grub bootstrap loader that was expertly code-golfed to less
than half its original size by Kent Dickey and Peter Ferrie:
https://github.com/adtpro/adtpro/tree/tlc-grub
Progress has been slow with the TLC for a verrrry long time, but I'd say
this recent progress is a pretty decent jump forward. Hop on now, or
you may need to wait another 10 years!