On Dec 19, 2020, at 3:35 PM, Scott McDonnell <mcdonnell.j...@comcast.net> wrote: > What I would like to be able to do: > Replace the main ROM
REX Classic supports this, but the more current versions of REX do not. > Custom menu Whatever main ROM replacement solution you choose would be how you approach this aspect of the project. I’m not doing ROM hacking so I don’t have much to add here. > My apps not stored in RAM dependent on battery REX is great for this. it allows you to dump the contents of main RAM to flash and restore from it arbitrarily. It also has a facility for retrieving individual files from within various RAM backups. Note that REXCPM is a battery backed device while the others are flash based. My 102 is a daily driver for me as much as a retrocomputing toy, and my REX is a major component of making the system useful for a broad variety of tasks on a daily basis. > Autolauch a program at power on (and preferably be able to exit out to menu > if wanted) I am very interested in the solution you come up with for this. The IPL command doesn’t provide the facility to use the menu at will since any access of the menu will immediately trigger the IPL program. In fact it’s pretty easy to lock yourself out of the menu with careless use of the IPL command. Ask me how I know! > Ease transfer of files back and forth with a PC (TPDD emulator or Trashtalk) The common case for many users here is a REX (of whichever kind) with TS-DOS as one of the option ROMs, paired with a TPDD emulator like mComm, mComm Python, LaddieAlpha, or dlplus on the host end. Of these, LaddieAlpha is perhaps the most featureful while mComm is a common choice for Android hosts that are often used for portable battery-backed TPDD emulation. mComm Python and dlplus are pretty portable to various platforms and have fairly compact codebases. LaddieAlpha runs pretty much anywhere Mono does in my experience. There are a number of TS-DOS option ROM images floating about from which to choose. I prefer Kurt’s “4.10” version as it’s the version closest to the vanilla ROM but it has an annoying UI bug fixed. It’s also the TS-DOS version used in the SARDOS option ROM. I do a fair amount of writing in both plain text and LaTeX on the 102, and transfer to larger machines for storage and typesetting is a big part of my workflow so this subject is near and dear to my heart.
