T3 goes into space

[Sarah]

Just thought I'd share a bit of silliness with you all!

I've been away from the Dragon scene for quite some time. Nevertheless, those of you with long memories (what am I saying - this is a Dragon website, so members obviously don't forget the past very easily, lol) might recall an MS-DOS based emulator called T3 written many years ago. Much has changed since then, including the proliferation of Microsoft Windows, so I doubt that many people are still using it now!

Anyway... a few months ago, I was given the opportunity to submit files for loading on-board the NASA space shuttle Atlantis for its final mission (codename STS-135) to the International Space Station and back again. After a little thought, I prepared some photos to send and also for amusement created a new and unique build of T3 specially to fly into space (including the full source code; which has never been released). It blasted off earlier today and is scheduled to return from its mission, back to earth, on 20 July 2011. After that, I understand that the little "space capsule" containing T3 will be returned to its owner bound in lucite and could be donated to the Smithsonian for possible display.

Of course this is all completely pointless... yet still kinda fun!

Here's a little piccy:

[admin]

Nice one.....

[sixxie]

Neat

Next we need someone to actually run an emulator up there, maybe play a game of Moon Cresta. Kinda hard to imagine anyone being able/allowed to run a) DOS, then b) arbitrary code on space station machines though

[zephyr]

I still use T3 quite frequently but have always been frustrated by the break key bug. Is there any chance you could release a T3 v1.10 with break key bug fixed?

Regards,
Steve

[Sarah]

Oh, um... you mean the '3' that appears when running in 64K BASIC mode? Is that the bug?

Anyone know what's going wrong to make that happen?


Edit: Looks like this issue was reported back in 1999 by Stephen Woolham, so it's already on the request list for T3 although probably still unresolved.

[zephyr]

Oh, um... you mean the '3' that appears when running in 64K BASIC mode? Is that the bug?

Yes! The same thing happens in 32 mode when the keyboard auto-repeat is enabled, and with all CoCo ROMs.

This bug is not present in T3 v0.8.

[Sarah]

That's interesting, so hopefully the problem is a fault rather than a design issue. I had a quick look before that earlier post to see whether I could still understand the code and spot anything that looked erroneous -- didn't find anything. The BREAK and 3 keys map to different rows and columns, although they are processed consecutively when the keyboard state table is refreshed; the same is true of ENTER and 1, also CLEAR and 2 but AFAIK these pairs of keys don't have issues? I'll have another look later anyway...

[zephyr]

I dont know how how helpful this will be to you but I have written a little machine code program (attached) to try and help diagnose the problem. The program reads the keyboard row state and displays it in hex at the top right hand corner of the text screen. Pressing the right joystick button clears the text screen and returns to BASIC.

When this program is run on a real Dragon 32/64 or XROAR Dragon 32/64 emulation it always returns $BF when the break key is pressed. Under T3 Dragon 32/64 emulation it always returns $BE.

EDIT: Attachment removed.

[Sarah]

Hi Steve!

Good news, I actually found the problem yesterday but was unable to update the topic as the forum was offline. Anyway... in the end, the issue was right back where I first started looking, caused simply by a pesky "and" that was supposed to have been a "mov"; as a result the 3 key flag was being corrupted by the BREAK key flag!

Here you go:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=566

[zephyr]

Thanks Sarah! Will try v1.01 tomorrow.