Very Computer

I've bought exactly one game in my entire life for my computer:
Pinball Dreams.  It's an awesome pinball game.  Highly recommended.

About two weeks later, I bought an 8088 Bridgeboard and installed it
on my 3000.

Pinball Dreams no longer works.

According to SysInfo, the Bridgeboard maps into memory at about
$2000000 (SysInfo calls this the board address).

Is there someway to disable a bridgeboard without unplugging it from
the slot?

Could I hack a "power switch" onto the bridgeboard that would cause it
to appear invisible on the bus (and invisible to the rest of the
system)?

Could I use the MMU to map out the bridgeboard address space, making
it appear invisible to Pinball Dreams.  In that the MMU would probably
be reset upon reboot (Pinball Dreams requires booting from their
disk), would it be best to get a boot-loader program which basically
reads and executes the boot block from an installed floppy (after I've
run my little program which reprograms the MMU)?

Where can the HD installable hack be found?  I do own a legit copy
of the game.

Any ideas on how I can get this thing to work on a 3000 with a
Bridgeboard.

Thanks -

Kevin
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shoot the programmers.

Quote:>According to SysInfo, the Bridgeboard maps into memory at about
>$2000000 (SysInfo calls this the board address).

yep.  unless you put another card with zorro II memory in front of it.

Quote:>Is there someway to disable a bridgeboard without unplugging it from
>the slot?

>Could I hack a "power switch" onto the bridgeboard that would cause it
>to appear invisible on the bus (and invisible to the rest of the
>system)?

step 1:  yell at the people who produced pinball dreams.  it obviously
believes the bridgeboard (and likely an ethernet card also, if you happen
to put one in the system) is memory.  this is sort of true, except that
in the bridgeboard case, it's never refreshed unless the janus.library
gets loaded.  the RAM on the ethernet card is static, so maybe it would
work.  in any case, the program isn't paying attention to the system
memory lists and is instead "feeling around" for memory.  this is *not*
correct.

step 2:  this won't work for your 3000, but if you could put another board
in between the bridgeboard and the rest of the system to break up the
memory space, maybe the game wouldn't pay attention to the bridgeboard.

step 3:  extreme case.  only do this if you don't mind potentially damaging
your machine and/or bridgeboard.  find the CONFIG IN and CONFIG OUT traces
on the bridgeboard (should be easy to follow from the pin numbers in the
hardware manual for zorro II cards) and install a 2-pole 2-throw switch
on them such that in the "normal" position, the lines are connected as they
were originally.  in the "out" position, the CONFIG IN line to the bridgeboard
should be tied high, the CONFIG OUT line from the bridgeboard should go
nowhere, and the CONFIG IN from the bus should to to CONFIG OUT to the bus.
if you'd rather hack the backplane card, you would then have the ability to
disable any ol' card, no just your bridgeboard.

  --Scotty
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

It BROKE when you just plugged in a bridgeboard?!?!?!?!??

[sorry about that]

There is no way to do what you're asking.

Glenn Doiron
--
Amiga UUCP+
Origin:  uunet!starpt!doiron     (Organization:68K Software Development)
         BIX: gdoiron
** Not enough memory to perform requested operation.  Add 4 megs and retry.

[Kevin Autrey writes]

Quote:>I've bought exactly one game in my entire life for my computer:
>Pinball Dreams.  It's an awesome pinball game.  Highly recommended.

>About two weeks later, I bought an 8088 Bridgeboard and installed it
>on my 3000.

>Pinball Dreams no longer works.

     Don't activate the Bridge Board and see what happens.  I'm still
playing the demo version of PDs, and I get a GURU if the BB is activated
when I run it.

     //  -Dave.

  \X/  Pinball Dreams is great.

Thank you Glenn for this most intelligent response to the question
(the "intelligent response" part is sarcasm that you probably won't
understand).  If you just want to see the words that you type in a
public forum, please post to one of the test.xxx groups and get the
hell out of the technically-oriented groups.

Anyway, to followup on the problem (and the solution):

This came from Scott Drysdale (designer of the bridgeboard):

Quote:> step 1:  yell at the people who produced pinball dreams.  it obviously
> believes the bridgeboard (and likely an ethernet card also, if you happen
> to put one in the system) is memory.  this is sort of true, except that
> in the bridgeboard case, it's never refreshed unless the janus.library
> gets loaded.  the RAM on the ethernet card is static, so maybe it would
> work.  in any case, the program isn't paying attention to the system
> memory lists and is instead "feeling around" for memory.  this is *not*
> correct.

  I downloaded BOOTMENU from MtRoyal, booted my 3000 up under 1.3,
installed BOOTMENU, rebooted the system with the Pinball Dreams disks
installed in the drives, disabled all expansion cards (which the only
one I have is the Bridgeboard), selected PAL mode, and Pinball Dreams
did in fact come up and run without incident.

Another option suggested involved switching CONFIG_IN and CONFIG_OUT
to cause the expansion cards to be ignored by the system.

Anybody know of a BOOTMENU that runs under 2.0 (rather than only 1.3
like the version I have)?  I may get motivated (yeah, like I have time
to get motivated!) and try to mod the BootMenu code myself to make to
2.0 compatible.  

I'll e-mail or post all responses I received to The Pinball
Dreams/Bridgeboard question if there's interest.  Thanks to all who
passed along *useful* information (and especially to Mark Tomlinson
who told me about BootMenu).

Quote:>Glenn Doiron
>--
>Amiga UUCP+
>Origin: uunet!starpt!doiron (Organization:68K Software Development)
>BIX: gdoiron

Kevin
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I'm working on it, but at the moment it's kind of hard since the RKM:libraries
manual isn't available as yet, and I need info in it to do the screen mode
switch in a legal way. Also, from disassembling the 2.04 ROM and hacking around
it looks like I'm going to have to come up with some new way to kill all
expansion cards as my code on coldcapture seems to not work under 2.04 (whether
this is due to the weird way expansion library gets in before execbase builds,
or just because coldcapture isn't supported any more I'm not sure)

Quote:> I'll e-mail or post all responses I received to The Pinball
> Dreams/Bridgeboard question if there's interest.  Thanks to all who
> passed along *useful* information (and especially to Mark Tomlinson
> who told me about BootMenu).

You mean Mark actually said something _nice_ about BootMenu!! that's
a first :-)

--
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| o    (Depart)mental Programmer,Chemistry Department    o |
| o  University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand o |

i didn't *design* it, i did the software and helped sort out what new
hardware features would be useful.  i did a fair amount of hardware
debugging, too.  mostly i lost a lot of hair over the flipper hardware...

to add to this whole pinball dreams/bridgeboard thing, i have an A2386SX,
and pinball dreams works just fine with it in my A2500 with 1.3 KS ROM,
in either 68000 1.3, 68000 kickited 2.0, 68030 1.3, and 68030 kickited 2.0.

pinball dreams is indeed wonderful.  highly *ive.

  --Scotty
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: I'll e-mail or post all responses I received to The Pinball
: Dreams/Bridgeboard question if there's interest.  Thanks to all who
: passed along *useful* information (and especially to Mark Tomlinson
: who told me about BootMenu).

Hi; what's BootMenu?

Jim