A86: HOW I DUMPED MY ROM
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A86: HOW I DUMPED MY ROM
HOW I DUMPED MY ROM
By Stefano Bonora
Well guys, I've done it. I've dumped my ti-86 rom (V1.3). It hasn't been
difficult at all, no modem, no terminal programs, no specific software...
just
a little thing, a *real* OS: Linux.
Some days ago under the 'UNIX' directory at ftp.ticalc.org, i found some old
stuff for the 85 under Unix. I was curious so I downloaded the whole
thing...
Among the other things there was tidev.tgz, a linux module
managing the $4 and $5 link cable. I've unpacked, compliled and installed it
successfully, just by typing 'make all'. It creates some device in /dev/,
with a symbolic link (/dev/ti) referring at the one connected to your
calculator. To use theese devices you have to load the just-compiled kernel
module:
'insmod ti'.
Now your computer is ready to get the rom-image from the calculator, using
'ticat', a modified version of the classical 'cat' (even this compiled by
'make all'):
ticat /dev/ti > dumpfile
To send the image I've used rom86, hitting 2nd (send all).
...after 6-7 minutes it was all over...
Well... almost.
In fact the resulting dump-file was 4k smaller than the one it had to be.
I've tried to send some single page, same thing: every dump I made was 4k
smaller: the last 4k bytes weren't written on file.
I'm lazy. I did not try to figure out why this happened, I just completed
the
'partial dump' I made with (4k-1) bytes of $FF + one $1b byte (the last (F)
page of rom 1.3 is ALL filled by $FF, except last byte: $1b) using 'le',
an ascii/hex editor.
Now that i have my 262144 byte dump file... where I can find the 86-emulator
to use it?!?
Bye
Stefano
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ste-bon@freenet.hut.fi