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  • Tiger Learning Computer Progress

    From David Schmidt@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 19 14:43:35 2023
    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!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From David Schmidt@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 19 14:42:34 2023
    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!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From D Finnigan@21:1/5 to David Schmidt on Fri Oct 27 02:25:15 2023
    David Schmidt wrote:

    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!


    Waiting a decade is part of what makes this hobby so fun.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)