MAME

MESS (Multiple Emulator Super System) is a multi-system emulator which emulates more than 400 computer systems, many of them from the good old days of the Home Computers. Among them are also a number of TI platforms:

• TI-99/2 (not working)
• TI-99/4, 50 Hz and 60 Hz
• TI-99/4A, 50 Hz and 60 Hz
• TI-99/4QI, 50 Hz and 60 Hz
• TI-99/8
• Geneve 9640

A number of peripherals are also emulated, ranging from various disk controllers (up to HFDC), to serial interfaces, USB interface, IDE interface, HSGPL, and also SGCPU.

I would be happy to see more people from the TI community helping to improve the TI emulation in MESS.

The emulator is currently available as version 0.153 pre-built for Windows systems, and as a source zip archive for all platforms. If you want to build MESS from source, do not forget to download the corresponding MAME source package first, unzip it, and unzip MESS over MAME. You get MAME from http://mamedev.org/. A good location for that is the MESS message board.

You can download and work on the MESS source codes, but MESS is not an open source project in the GPL sense. If you want to contribute, download the sources, and get in contact with the maintainers.

Important changes in the latest version

• Since MESS 0.145, hard disks are stored in CHD version 5 format. You must use chdman to convert your hard disk image if they are stored as version 4 or lower.

• Since MESS 0.145, the HSGPL stores the contents of its Flash ROMs as separate files. You should reinstall your HSGPL; alternatively you must split the file into four pieces at offsets 0x000001 (DSR), 0x080003 (U4), 0x100005 (U1), and 0x180007 (U6); each file is 512K + 2 bytes long. Start MESS and close it again to find out how the files are named.

• Since MESS 0.145, configuration has considerably changed. The expansion cards are plugged in as separate devices that you either specify on the command line (like -peb:slot8 hfdc) or by using a frontend like QMC2 where you can specify "slot options".

Installing and setup

• Building MESS from source
• Installing on Windows systems
• Installing on Linux systems
• Alternative front-ends
• Configuring
• Getting the ROMs
• Setting up the HSGPL for MESS
• Setting up the Horizon Ramdisk

Using

• The Official MESS User's Manual
• General MESS features
• Features of the TI and Geneve emulation in MESS
• Working with the TI/Geneve emulation
• Tools
• Cartridges
• Media handling
  • Using your TI/Geneve hard drive in MESS
  • Formatting disks
  • Setting up a blank hard disk
  • Upgrading CHD version
  • Using the IDE HD controller
• Built-in debugger
• TIImageTool - a GUI-based image manager

Questions and Troubleshooting

• Some help for MESS Troubleshooting.
• Frequently Asked Questions related to the TI/Geneve emulation in MESS.
• Change MESS menu mode key from Scroll Lock to another key
• Important changes to consider when updating MESS

Details

• Basics: Emulation and Simulation
• Get a look under the hood of MESS NEW
• The cartridge system of MESS version 0.131 and later
• The MESS cartridge system of versions 0.140 and later
• Programmer's Guide to MESS
• MESS version history with features, fixes, and regressions list
• MESS issues
• RS232 emulation
• MESS Work in progress