Connecting TI 99/4a to Mac

[coolio]

What would be my best strategy for connecting my TI to my Mac for purposes of file transfers (both directions)?

[TheMole]

What would be my best strategy for connecting my TI to my Mac for purposes of file transfers (both directions)?

 

What is your setup? Do you have a PEB, or a CF7/nanoPEB? Sidecar extensions?

 

On a barenaked console there's really no way to set up a bi-directional connection (best I can think of is via the line-out of the Mac to the cassette interface of the TI and using an wav or mp3 player to play back cassette wav files... )

[coolio]

 

What is your setup? Do you have a PEB, or a CF7/nanoPEB? Sidecar extensions?

 

On a barenaked console there's really no way to set up a bi-directional connection (best I can think of is via the line-out of the Mac to the cassette interface of the TI and using an wav or mp3 player to play back cassette wav files... )

 

Sorry .. I have a PEB with the standard RS232/32K/Floppy compliment.

[ti99_forever]

And your Mac? What does it have?

[coolio]

And your Mac? What does it have?

 

Again, a standard Mac (USB, ethernet, etc).

 

I guess my question really is should I get a serial device server and connect the TI to my home ethernet network? Should I get a serial-to-USB connector and use that path? How about these CF card disk emulators? It would seem the HDX cards only have accompanying PC software, is there a Mac port (or at least a comm protocol specification that would allow one to be made)? What mac-side software should be used with any solution? Basically, what are my options?

[Omega-TI]

Leave a PM to << THIS GUY >> he makes transfer cables for the TI, has all the software on the planet you can think of. Knows damn near everything and... HE RUNS MAC'S.

[ti99_forever]

You could run a transfer program in dosbox on your Mac, using USB-Serial. There are many good TI programs for that.

[+arcadeshopper]

Hdx will run on a Mac using a USB rs232 and wine.. You can use it with a stock ti card with cfhdxs1 dusk mgr or modify your rs232 card to use Hdx in other programs

[+arcadeshopper]

Hdx will run on a Mac using a USB rs232 and wine.. You can use it with a stock ti card with cfhdxs1 dusk mgr or modify your rs232 card to use Hdx in other programs

[Ed in SoDak]

I set up my Mac and TI for transfers back in the Mac Plus days when Mac used a DB-9 serial port. The TI end used the standard DB-25 modem connector. When Apple dropped the original-style serial connector, I wired up a simple adapter to convert the Mac DB-9 to the little mini-db such as used on the SE and all later ADB-style Macs.

 

I used Z-Term on the Mac and Telco on the TI over a null-modem cable. Or the TI-equivalent, as its send/receive wires are already transposed as I recall.

 

To use that same setup on a modern USB Mac, I bought a Keyspan serial-to-USB adapter. This arrangement works for Os9/Classic on any USB Mac, For osX, I updated the Keyspan driver software and Z-Term to OSx and once I got the settings matched in the new version of Z-Term, I was good to go using Xmodem to transfer files same as I always have since the 80's.

 

So my cable's kinda odd, being able to connect to literally any Mac from the 128 to today's just by how many adapters are added on. Oh, there's a DB25 hanging off there too, to connect two TIs together.

 

It's easiest to first create an ARCIII archive if it's more than a few files, or just send 'em one by one. On an ADB or older Mac, all you need is cable and software. For USB, it looks like you'll need some piece of hardware on one end or the other to do it and the proper cable, which is easy to roll your own with only a few wires to deal with.

 

-Ed

Edited August 3, 2014 by Ed in SoDak