My Dream 4A...

[JamesD]

...

This is a viable option - by all means though, let's not make the OS a "DOS-like" system, rather a Unix-like system .

Maybe the OS from TI's other 9900 based systems could be adapted. Then you might be able to run other languages and apps.

[+OLD CS1]

Actually, a built-in CF interface makes less sense these days as CF is becoming less mainstream and other flash memories are becoming less expensive for the same storage. SD and MicroSD are the dominant consumer storage format (much to my chagrin since my phones take the M2, and the only one I have that takes a MicroSD crashes when updating 6GB worth of media list from an 8GB stick!)

 

I have been putting together some ideas of my take on retro computing. I have been so tied up with class work that I have not been able to get it past the initial notes phase. Now that finals are done and I will turn in my last assignment tonight, maybe I can get something written.

[JamesD]

Actually, a built-in CF interface makes less sense these days as CF is becoming less mainstream and other flash memories are becoming less expensive for the same storage. SD and MicroSD are the dominant consumer storage format (much to my chagrin since my phones take the M2, and the only one I have that takes a MicroSD crashes when updating 6GB worth of media list from an 8GB stick!)

 

I have been putting together some ideas of my take on retro computing. I have been so tied up with class work that I have not been able to get it past the initial notes phase. Now that finals are done and I will turn in my last assignment tonight, maybe I can get something written.

For a phone... CF doesn't make sense. Size is more important than speed. But CF still dominates things like professional photography because CF is faster and supports greater capacity that SD cards. Have a look at any higher end digital camera if you don't believe me. Many actually support 2 CF cards. Only cheaper models that don't have a high frame rate for higher resolution modes or as many frames in high speed mode use SD. Which type of card a camera uses is actually a pretty good indicator of the frame rate it can sustain. CF cards are also used in a lot of networking hardware from companies like Cisco. CF is not going anywhere soon and is clearly still pretty mainstream. CF has also been around many years longer than SD so there are a lot of devices that already use it even if they weren't making new devices... which they clearly are.

XQD, a faster standard based on PCI Express, was established in 2010 and it's gradually starting to take over the camcorder market so if anything fully replaces CF it probably won't be SD cards but CF isn't going anywhere anything soon.

 

 

As for use in a TI-99/4A update...

When directly hooked to the CPU buss, CF requires some address decoding and some logic for buss timing but that's about it. SD uses a serial interface which requires bit shifting so some sort of UARTs are in order to save and load data, an additional clock for the serial interface, address decoding and some logic for buss timing.

CF can easily be done with 74LSXX parts. I've seen the MSX SD interface that uses 74LSXX parts. It requires a lot more parts and is a bit ugly in the serial logic for reading data.

Since CF is 16 bit it actually requires fewer parts to implement for a new TI than for an 8 bit computer though it would probably be just a few gates in a CPLD or FPGA since you'd probably use one for the rest of the system logic.

Since CF is 16 bit, it literally takes twice as many reads/writes for the 9900 to use an SD card instead of SD. Given how inefficient the 9900 is normally, I would think you wouldn't mind cutting out the hundreds of extra clock cycles that would be required for SD. At least unless you don't care.

If you could support UDMA mode you could transfer 1 word per clock cycle or 256 bytes in 128 clock cycles. Theoretically anyway.

Some sort of DMA interface for SD could also be implemented and you could support 16 bit reads and writes, but the complexity is pretty nasty at that point. Once you throw in an FPGA based 9900 with a more clock efficient mode and maybe a 25MHz mode such a serial interface is going to require a pretty high clock speed and I'm not sure if it's possible without placing it in it's own part running at 8 times the cpu buss speed. 8 times 25MHz = 200MHz. That's the maximum speed of an ultra high speed SD card. Even if you can get away with only 4 times the speed you are still at 100MHz and it's still an ultra high speed SD card. A 25MHz CF interface is no big deal.

When I suggested a CF interface instead of SD it was for those reasons.

 

FWIW, even an xD Picture Card interface would be better than SD. It uses an 8 bit parallel buss and you loose that whole serial I/O crap.

 

*edit*

Actually, the 8 times speed was for only transferring 8 bits at a time. I can't remember if SD requires start or stop bits. Without doing any more math this early in the morning that comes out to reading or writing a word (16 bits) with DMA every 4 clock cycles if start or stop bits are required. (?) That may or may not keep up with a custom CPU if it's well optimized.

Edited December 14, 2013 by JamesD

[+OLD CS1]

For a phone... CF doesn't make sense. Size is more important than speed. But CF still dominates things like professional photography because CF is faster and supports greater capacity that SD cards. Have a look at any higher end digital camera if you don't believe me. Many actually support 2 CF cards. Only cheaper models that don't have a high frame rate for higher resolution modes or as many frames in high speed mode use SD. Which type of card a camera uses is actually a pretty good indicator of the frame rate it can sustain. CF cards are also used in a lot of networking hardware from companies like Cisco. CF is not going anywhere soon and is clearly still pretty mainstream. CF has also been around many years longer than SD so there are a lot of devices that already use it even if they weren't making new devices... which they clearly are.

 

The phone comment was an aside about the fact that while MicroSD is the defacto standard for phones, mine use the defunct Sony Memory Stick Micro (M2) format. The largest I can get of that is 16GB as I apparently missed the very short production period of the 32GB M2 which are not solely compatible with the PSP.

 

I can tell you that, yes, CF is leaving the mainstream consumer market. When the price between an 8GB CF and a 32GB MicroSD are the same, where do you think the consumer market is going? That high-end cameras and professional photographers in particular enjoy the advantages of CF (of which I fully understand) illustrates my point exactly. Go into any Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot, Walmart, Target, etc. and you will see the consumer electronics section is void of any reasonably-priced CF, if they have any at all. As well, four of five or even nine of 10 cameras in the same stores are SD-based.

 

To the average consumer, Juniper and Cisco networking products which use CF are esoteric at best, at the very least obscure. I feel this debate is the similar to those we had over SCSI versus IDE. The former was clearly a better product, but the latter was less expensive. We also had the same arguments over SATA versus IDE and PCIe versus PCI in regard to serial versus parallel. It turns out that serial really is faster than parallel when you have to take into account signal propagation on all eight or 16 lines of data, whereas the serial line essentially running like a network can pump data far more reliably with better integrity at higher speeds. In the case of our old systems such as TI, Amiga, Atari, and others, we really cannot realize the performance benefits of CF over SD technology, anyway.

 

Relying on Compact Flash for the long-term for our systems will be a liability and keep the cost of our hobby artificially high. Though, as I stated in another post, there are a number of SD-to-CF adapters popping up for anywhere between $5 and $15. Couple one of these with a small SD card and you can still beat the price of an equivalent CF on its own. In theory you should still be able to make a simple PIO-based, directly-addressible IDE circuit to drive your flash storage device.

[Omega-TI]

 

I can tell you that, yes, CF is leaving the mainstream consumer market.

 

When the price between an 8GB CF and a 32GB MicroSD are the same, where do you think the consumer market is going?

That high-end cameras and professional photographers in particular enjoy the advantages of CF (of which I fully understand) illustrates my point exactly.

 

 

In the case of our old systems such as TI, Amiga, Atari, and others, we really cannot realize the performance benefits of CF over SD technology, anyway.

 

Relying on Compact Flash for the long-term for our systems will be a liability and keep the cost of our hobby artificially high.

 

 

That is what is holding me back from buying another camera. I already got stuck with this

piece of obsolete memory for my current camera, I'd like to get a new digital body for my

Minolta Maxxum lenses as I never use the film camera anymore, but as you say, the high-end

cameras use CF cards. A 128MB card for my current digital camera is around $35.00..

and no I did mean MB not GB. I really do not want to get stuck with another obsolete

format, but speed matters when it comes to photography.

 

.

 

I totally agree with you, speed is not an issue on the TI, the additional support circuitry required for interfacing the SD format would be an added expense, if I understand correctly. At this point from just the money aspect, it may be six of one and a half-dozen of the other (a wash). Now from the size and coolness factor, I would prefer the micro SD myself. I've seen Matthew's F18A and how tiny things can get... I can imagine a tiny PCB with a micro SD CARD working as a solid state hard drive IN THE CONSOLE. From a more practical standpoint, it would be better as a thin sidecar design. If implemented properly, Nano-PEB users, TI-PEB users and even Geneve users could use one.

 

As for memory, USB sticks are coming way down too, one can easily pick up a 32GB stick for $20.00 or a 64GB stick for $40.00. This format looks promising to be around awhile.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Kevan

[+OLD CS1]

I do not believe CF will become obsolete any time soon. There is far too much advancement on the standard and it has been widely adopted by the high-end stuff. I read not long ago that newer CF cards will have a SATA controller built into them with fall-back to UDMA and ATA compatibility for older equipment. After consulting with a couple of professional shutterbugs and numerous hobbyists on the matter, none of them are concerned about buying new stuff over storage formats. All considered, I think CF is a safe bet for you if you want a new camera.

 

Oh, and you are not just whistling Dixie on the USB sticks... 32GB and 64GB USB3 are VERY inexpensive. They make great boot devices, too. I have built a couple of Hyper-V and VMware servers using them. And for small system backups -- fantastic!

[Omega-TI]

I do not believe CF will become obsolete any time soon. All considered, I think CF is a safe bet for you if you want a new camera.

 

That's good to know, thanks.

[JamesD]

 

That is what is holding me back from buying another camera. I already got stuck with this

piece of obsolete memory for my current camera, I'd like to get a new digital body for my

Minolta Maxxum lenses as I never use the film camera anymore, but as you say, the high-end

cameras use CF cards. A 128MB card for my current digital camera is around $35.00..

and no I did mean MB not GB. I really do not want to get stuck with another obsolete

format, but speed matters when it comes to photography.

 

.

 

I totally agree with you, speed is not an issue on the TI, the additional support circuitry required for interfacing the SD format would be an added expense, if I understand correctly. At this point from just the money aspect, it may be six of one and a half-dozen of the other (a wash). Now from the size and coolness factor, I would prefer the micro SD myself. I've seen Matthew's F18A and how tiny things can get... I can imagine a tiny PCB with a micro SD CARD working as a solid state hard drive IN THE CONSOLE. From a more practical standpoint, it would be better as a thin sidecar design. If implemented properly, Nano-PEB users, TI-PEB users and even Geneve users could use one.

 

As for memory, USB sticks are coming way down too, one can easily pick up a 32GB stick for $20.00 or a 64GB stick for $40.00. This format looks promising to be around awhile.

I had an MP3 player that used those. The problem was the standard didn't support large capacities and anyone using the technology in a product would be stuck having to adopt a new standard if higher capacity cards became available. It was a flaw built into the smart card design from day one but not something that CF suffers from.

 

Edited December 15, 2013 by JamesD

[JamesD]

I do not believe CF will become obsolete any time soon. There is far too much advancement on the standard and it has been widely adopted by the high-end stuff. I read not long ago that newer CF cards will have a SATA controller built into them with fall-back to UDMA and ATA compatibility for older equipment. After consulting with a couple of professional shutterbugs and numerous hobbyists on the matter, none of them are concerned about buying new stuff over storage formats. All considered, I think CF is a safe bet for you if you want a new camera.

 

Oh, and you are not just whistling Dixie on the USB sticks... 32GB and 64GB USB3 are VERY inexpensive. They make great boot devices, too. I have built a couple of Hyper-V and VMware servers using them. And for small system backups -- fantastic!

The only problem with USB is that it requires a smart host controller to handle the network protocol. It's easy enough to do with a microcontroller but it also requires additional software for the microcontroller.

CF and SD only require the drivers on the main computer.

[TI-Sissy]

my dream is to someday have a real pbox. b4 that happens i'll have to be able to get a hard drive that goes into the pbox. will it ever happen?

[Omega-TI]

my dream is to someday have a real pbox. b4 that happens i'll have to be able to get a hard drive that goes into the pbox. will it ever happen?

 

I dunno if that will ever happen. But it would sure be cool. I bet there are even some people (one I know for sure) that think this would be a great idea... IF IT COULD BE ON THE SAME CARD AS AN UPDATED "SAMS DEVICE".

 

Personally I would rather have a memory chip than a hard drive, as it would be smaller, faster, be less to go wrong and take less power, no to mention be easily replaceable if anything went wrong. A SAMS/SSHD on a P-Box card... works for me!

[+OLD CS1]

The only problem with USB is that it requires a smart host controller to handle the network protocol. It's easy enough to do with a microcontroller but it also requires additional software for the microcontroller.

CF and SD only require the drivers on the main computer.

 

Thierry has a USB card designed, but like you say it needs a stack and there is no DSR written (so far as I recall, or at least not a fully classed one.) I certainly do not see 64GB USB3 attached to a TI -- the practicality simply is not there.

 

my dream is to someday have a real pbox. b4 that happens i'll have to be able to get a hard drive that goes into the pbox. will it ever happen?

 

 

 

I dunno if that will ever happen. But it would sure be cool. I bet there are even some people (one I know for sure) that think this would be a great idea... IF IT COULD BE ON THE SAME CARD AS AN UPDATED "SAMS DEVICE".

 

Personally I would rather have a memory chip than a hard drive, as it would be smaller, faster, be less to go wrong and take less power, no to mention be easily replaceable if anything went wrong. A SAMS/SSHD on a P-Box card... works for me!

 

As someone with a SCSI card and hard drive in his PBox, I find it kind-of "meh." While a flash device would be faster (and smaller,) again I do not see the performance difference on the TI. Since the WHT SCSI card DSR never implemented DSKx emulation I cannot test it against the CF7+. I fought like hell to get one in my box (old SCSI drives are stupidly expensive) and now I cannot realistically see a great purpose for it. I do not use anything which would benefit and, in fact, have considered either replacing the hard drive with a SCSI Zip drive or putting the second floppy back in. If I had a Geneve (one of which got picked up for a steal at the Faire this year) I could see more of a use.

 

I have wondered if I can use a hard drive for assembling with E/A or other utility.

[JamesD]

 

The phone comment was an aside about the fact that while MicroSD is the defacto standard for phones, mine use the defunct Sony Memory Stick Micro (M2) format. The largest I can get of that is 16GB as I apparently missed the very short production period of the 32GB M2 which are not solely compatible with the PSP.

 

I can tell you that, yes, CF is leaving the mainstream consumer market. When the price between an 8GB CF and a 32GB MicroSD are the same, where do you think the consumer market is going? That high-end cameras and professional photographers in particular enjoy the advantages of CF (of which I fully understand) illustrates my point exactly. Go into any Best Buy, Staples, Office Depot, Walmart, Target, etc. and you will see the consumer electronics section is void of any reasonably-priced CF, if they have any at all. As well, four of five or even nine of 10 cameras in the same stores are SD-based.

 

To the average consumer, Juniper and Cisco networking products which use CF are esoteric at best, at the very least obscure. I feel this debate is the similar to those we had over SCSI versus IDE. The former was clearly a better product, but the latter was less expensive. We also had the same arguments over SATA versus IDE and PCIe versus PCI in regard to serial versus parallel. It turns out that serial really is faster than parallel when you have to take into account signal propagation on all eight or 16 lines of data, whereas the serial line essentially running like a network can pump data far more reliably with better integrity at higher speeds. In the case of our old systems such as TI, Amiga, Atari, and others, we really cannot realize the performance benefits of CF over SD technology, anyway.

 

Relying on Compact Flash for the long-term for our systems will be a liability and keep the cost of our hobby artificially high. Though, as I stated in another post, there are a number of SD-to-CF adapters popping up for anywhere between $5 and $15. Couple one of these with a small SD card and you can still beat the price of an equivalent CF on its own. In theory you should still be able to make a simple PIO-based, directly-addressible IDE circuit to drive your flash storage device.

Relying on CF for the "long-term" for the TI is a liability? CF has been selling for way more years than the TI did and the cards have probably outsold the TI by over 10 million to 1. There are probably more CF cards for sale on ebay right now than working TI-99/4As in the world. If you are so concerned about the long term viability of CF, buy several when you get an interface. A CF card that can hold everything ever made for the TI several times over can be had for under $7 on ebay. Breakfast at McDonald's cost me that much yesterday. I'm not seeing too big an issue here. We are talking about a product that, at best, would sell in the hundreds, not a digital camera 5% of the teenage girls in the US will be carrying around. The CFFA card for the Apple II is probably the most popular such device made to date and I don't think the guy has sold 1000 of them yet.

 

BTW, there are more CISCO devices out there than there ever were TI's so I'd be careful what I call esoteric.

 

Your entire discussion about serial vs parallel is a moot point. You are talking about custom ASICs that sell in the thousands or even millions, not a project designed in a garage built with cheap programmable devices that will sell a few hundred units at best. It's totally unrealistic. No standard SD devices take advantage of those higher speeds anyway.

 

*edit* Why has the forum software suddenly started removing blank lines between paragraphs in our posts?

Edited December 16, 2013 by JamesD

[+Lee Stewart]

...

*edit* Why has the forum software suddenly started removing blank lines between paragraphs in our posts?

*

Kind of irritating isn't it? It doesn't seem to happen for everything—just before/after things like code blocks. It's a PITA, but easy enough to get around. I just put an '*' on a line by itself and change the text color to white. Like I said, a PITA, but it works for now.

 

...lee

[+OLD CS1]

 

 

I really wish you would pay closer attention to my posts. You are taking my very specific and narrowly-tailored examples and expanding them into generalities. I am not going to continue conversing with you on this subject as I cannot be any more clear than I have been, already.

[Omega-TI]

 

I do not use anything which would benefit and, in fact, have considered either replacing the hard drive with a SCSI Zip drive or putting the second floppy back in. If I had a Geneve (one of which got picked up for a steal at the Faire this year) I could see more of a use.

 

 

To me, the TI really has no 'practical' purpose, it's my hobby, I love the thing, as it was my first computer. It will always remain special to me. Back 'In The Day", before I stupidly got rid of it, I was on a never ending quest to expand it, see how far I could takeit, see what the old girl could do. The TI is my "Vger" (Star Trek reference). I want to see how many goodies I can eventually hang off the nucleus console. It'll be fun, it may take years, but the journey is part of the enjoyment, but here is where I'm at now:

 

The HDX will be great for getting things into the TI, and I'll use it to hold most everything, as I really do not want to mess with '20th century' diskettes. Eventually, I'd like to get a larger DEDICATED storage device for it, other than a PC that I'll have to boot up just to use a server. I'd love to have EVERYTHING available with quick access via 4A DOS or by a push of a button using the BOOT menu. With diskettes one is just so limited on how much they can have available at one time.

 

Now everyone has a different vision for their personal TI, and that really is part of the fun.

[JamesD]

 

 

I really wish you would pay closer attention to my posts. You are taking my very specific and narrowly-tailored examples and expanding them into generalities. I am not going to continue conversing with you on this subject as I cannot be any more clear than I have been, already.

Ok... so what button did I push here.

 

You said CF is leaving the mainstream, etc... I basically ignored that part.

 

On the high speed serial buss, I guess I thought you were somehow implying SD was better because it was serial.

 

 

 

It turns out that serial really is faster than parallel when you have to take into account signal propagation on all eight or 16 lines of data, whereas the serial line essentially running like a network can pump data far more reliably with better integrity at higher speeds.

What you said is certainly factual for a modern serial bus but it just doesn't apply to the serial interface used by SD.

 

As part of that comment you stated old systems can't take advantage of the greater speed of CF anyway. I missed that comment.

Since you were replying to one of my posts and I already mentioned the advantage of being 16 bit you could be accused of not paying attention to my posts.

Old systems can take advantage of greater speed with CF simply because CF is 16 bit. On processors that support 16 bit reads or writes, you can use half the number of read or write instructions. That alone makes the driver software faster. This includes the 9900, 6809, 6309, 6803, 6303 and 65816. The Z80 is faster for 8 bit due to block read/write instructions and with the 6502 it probably doesn't matter.

 

The CISCO comment about esoteric... I was pointing out CF isn't going anywhere soon in the post you replied to. Was I not supposed to point out that there are even fewer TI's?

 

Your part about CF being a long term liability... I thought you were off base. Supply isn't a problem. There are more cards than will ever be used for the TI in the appropriate size required. Price isn't a problem (look up the price of a 128MB card) either. If you want to attach a mega GB flash drive to your TI-99/4A then yeah, it raises the price vs an SD card of the same size. But this is the TI... 128 or 256MB cards are cheap and will hold everything out there for the TI or that is likely to be out there for the TI in our lifetime. Worst case you buy another card and split up you're collection.

 

 

I did a little reading and SD is basically capable of transferring a byte in two clock cycles of the SD interface in 4 bit mode. CF is capable of transferring 16 bits per clock cycle so it's about 4 times the speed if you can drive it that fast.

It should be possible to interface an SD card to a 25MHz CPU using a 50MHz clock for the SD interface with zero wait states. That is the speed of SDHC.

 

I also looked up CPLDs and there are devices that handle up to 166MHz if you don't mind the price.

You might be able to achieve 50MHz for under $10 *if* the circuit will fit but the devices look pretty small.

I found many SD cores but none listed the number of macrocells required so I don't know if any would fit.

There seems to be a jump in device size and price after that.

Edited December 16, 2013 by JamesD

[idflyfish]

Is this the pre-order thread? Put me down for 2.

 

Thanks

[Omega-TI]

Part of my DREAM 4A has come true, after 2 1/2 decades without a real TI-PEB...

 

Now I just have to figure out what to put in the empty slots...

[+OLD CS1]

Part of my DREAM 4A has come true, after 2 1/2 decades without a real TI-PEB...

 

 

Now I just have to figure out what to put in the empty slots...

 

I bet a SAMS would go nicely in there. Or a SID Master (been waffling on one of these,) SCSI card (disappointing per another of my posts, but possibly useful.) Are you foregoing the 5 1/4" drives?

[Omega-TI]

 

I bet a SAMS would go nicely in there. Or a SID Master (been waffling on one of these,) SCSI card (disappointing per another of my posts, but possibly useful.) Are you foregoing the 5 1/4" drives?

 

Yeah, I'm going to pass on the 5-1/4" inch drives. I have two nice nice matching 3.5's, but they will be getting very little use because the HDX is so easier and convenient to use. An AMS may be a possibility in the future. I'm still hoping for a clock too!

 

This image from my gallery shows the whole setup as it is now.

[RobertLM78]

Looking nice Kevan . You and me both now need a SAMS and some sort of hard disk controller .

[Omega-TI]

Looking nice Kevan . You and me both now need a SAMS and some sort of hard disk controller .

 

Yep, the sAMS will be on my future list. And I'd love to see a hard disk controller, but to be honest the HDX setup is the closest thing to it.

In this first photo you can see the part of the listing of HDX1...

I have so much space available the TI is unable to catalog all of it!

 

On the PC-side I run this program...

This program functions just like a hard drive controller. One can run it minimized and not even be aware that it's running in the background.

So far the only problem I've run across is a lack of time to organize all the goodies!

[RobertLM78]

So what's with that HDX? And, is there any way to make any RS232 do that? I wonder if there's some sort of Linux replacement for the PC utility though - I could see the 'COM#' being problematic.

[Omega-TI]

So what's with that HDX? And, is there any way to make any RS232 do that? I wonder if there's some sort of Linux replacement for the PC utility though - I could see the 'COM#' being problematic.

 

Hi Robert,

As far as I know only the original Texas Instruments RS-232 can be modified with the little HDX device. It is set to use RS-232/2. If you plan to use another device such as a mouse, modem or serial printer you would also need a Y-Adapter.

I have no RS-232 on my laptop, so I'm using a "Serial-To-USB" adapter (pictured below)...

With the HDX device I'm using a cable with a 25pin RS-232 connector on the back of the TI to a 9pin connector for the converter. The converter then has a USB connector that plugs into my computer (pictured below)...

Once it goes into the PC the computer assigns it as COM5. So, no issues there.

 

Now it your case, I do not believe there is a Linux version. As far as I know Fred Kaal only did this for the Windoze environment.

 

You can find out more information on the HDX BOARD <<< HERE >>>

 

Have FUN!!!

Edited January 14, 2014 by --- Ω ---