Expansion Box Questions

[VicViper]

So the basement saga continues. I've pulled out the Peripheral Expansion Box, and i have a few questions.

 

1. How do i open it up to check the components? i understand the top comes off, what secures it on?

 

2. I don't have the AC, is it just a regular 3 prong AC like a i see laying around at thrifts all the time with no "box" attached? is it proprietary?

 

3. What should the inside of the floppy drive look like? probable sounds like an odd question, but are you really just supposed to chuck a floppy in there and hope for the best? looks a little, scary.

[+arcadeshopper]

Box is held closed by 2 latches one on either side of the rear that then the lid lips up from the rear hinging on the front side

 

Standard power cord used on every pc power supply

 

Which drive do you have? Pics?

 

Sent from my LG-H830 using Tapatalk

[+adamantyr]

1. The top comes off, there should be two metal releases you push towards the front to unlock it.

 

2. A standard 3 prong cord that is still in wide use today will work.

 

3. It should just be an empty metal case with a power cable. Dual drives required some mods, such as a splitter for the power and you had to drill holes in the top for securing the drive.

[Shift838]

So the basement saga continues. I've pulled out the Peripheral Expansion Box, and i have a few questions.

 

1. How do i open it up to check the components? i understand the top comes off, what secures it on?

 

2. I don't have the AC, is it just a regular 3 prong AC like a i see laying around at thrifts all the time with no "box" attached? is it proprietary?

 

3. What should the inside of the floppy drive look like? probable sounds like an odd question, but are you really just supposed to chuck a floppy in there and hope for the best? looks a little, scary.

 

1. There are two metal tabs (pressure tabs) that hold the top of the PEB in place. they are on the back of the unit. press both at the same time and pull up.
2. You can use any standard 3 prong PC power cable
3. The floppy drive if I recall is a standard 90k Shugart (belt driven) drive. The notch goes to the top.

 

Do you have a disk manager cartridge, Extended Basic (any version) or Editor assembler?

 

You will need a disk management program to be able to 'INITIALIZE' diskettes for use on the TI.

 

You should have inside the PEB for expansion cards a Flex Cable Interface card, this plugs into the side of the TI (a big firehose type cable) and a Disk controller. You should also have a 32k card, this will allow you to run probalby 99% of the programs out there if you have the right cartridges as mentioned above.

[+Lee Stewart]

So the basement saga continues. I've pulled out the Peripheral Expansion Box, and i have a few questions.

 

1. How do i open it up to check the components? i understand the top comes off, what secures it on?

 

2. I don't have the AC, is it just a regular 3 prong AC like a i see laying around at thrifts all the time with no "box" attached? is it proprietary?

 

3. What should the inside of the floppy drive look like? probable sounds like an odd question, but are you really just supposed to chuck a floppy in there and hope for the best? looks a little, scary.

 

1: There arer 2 spring clips at the back that hold the lid on. Depress those toward the front of the box and lift the lid up and toward the back to get it off.

2: Yes. It is a standard AC cord.

3: You should probably clean it with isopropyl alcohol first.

 

...lee

[VicViper]

Alright, I got it open. Here are the pics

Ti99-4/a expansion box https://imgur.com/gallery/oe12u

Of course, I haven't found any floppies. Yet. I have a finalgrom99 on the way, I could use that to test the 32K, But everything else, I'm lost.whats the RS 232?

Edited August 29, 2017 by VicViper

[+Lee Stewart]

Alright, I got it open. Here are the pics

Ti99-4/a expansion box https://imgur.com/gallery/oe12u

Of course, I haven't found any floppies. Yet. I have a finalgrom99 on the way, I could use that to test the 32K, But everything else, I'm lost.whats the RS 232?

 

The RS232 card has 2 serial ports and 1 parallel port accessible by 2 connections out the back. The manual is available on WHTech.

 

...lee

 

[Edited]

[VicViper]

 

The RS232 card has 2 serial ports and 1 parallel port accessible by 2 connections out the back.

 

...lee

Soooo, what do you do with it? hook up to a printer?

[+Lee Stewart]

Soooo, what do you do with it? hook up to a printer?

 

If you cannot find any, you may need to build cables to hook to the ports. The pinouts are in the manual you can find in the reference in my modified last post.

 

And—yes—you can hook to a serial and/or parallel (Centronics connector at printer end) printer.

 

...lee

 

[Edited]

[Omega-TI]

EXCELLENT... you have a TI RS-232 card!

You may consider contacting Arcadeshopper to modify the RS-232 card so you can use the << HDX upgrade >>.

With it you'll be able to load and run things downloaded from the Internet using your PC as a server. It'll save you a lot of money from buying old diskettes. Greg may even be able to set you up with a diskette containing DM2K and DSK2PC.

 

 

[+arcadeshopper]

Soooo, what do you do with it? hook up to a printer?

 

OR you could hook it to a PC and use your PC as a hard disk .. have you checked this thread out? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/267055-new-to-the-group-ti-994a-faq-hardware-and-software-resources-read-first/

 

Greg

[VicViper]

EXCELLENT... you have a TI RS-232 card!

You may consider contacting Arcadeshopper to modify the RS-232 card so you can use the << HDX upgrade >>.

With it you'll be able to load and run things downloaded from the Internet using your PC as a server. It'll save you a lot of money from buying old diskettes. Greg may even be able to set you up with a diskette containing DM2K and DSK2PC.

 

 

Oh jeez, I am in waaay over my head Would this give me access to things that i could NOT run with a finalGROM99? I am a long time retro gamer who has just recently dove into Retro computers, starting with 800XL and C64. At 34, i never really "grew up" with these machines to the extent i did with consoles, so pardon my total bafflement.

[VicViper]

Just talking to my father, there is also a switch box that takes the signal and splits it into two?

[+jedimatt42]

Just talking to my father, there is also a switch box that takes the signal and splits it into two?

 

I would guess he is talking about the RS232 serial port splitter cable. Or maybe he built one as a box? The TI RS232 card has 2 serial ports on the 25 pin connector out the back. So it is common to have a cable that splits that into 2 ports.

 

Other things that split... it is common to have a little box or cable that splits the TI joystick port into 2 Atari or Commodore style joystick ports.

 

---

 

The disk system will let you access BASIC games, and assembly games, as well as data files for some of the cartridges. Generally faster and more reliable than cassette tapes. The productivity software typically centered around disk based software as well. If you want to take advantage of the floppy disk, you'll need to bootstrap some sort of file transfer system. The FinalGROM99 can help with that, and the RS232 card. Add a USB-RS232 adapter to your PC, and solder together the correct cable, and you can transfer files or entire .DSK images with DSK2PC or the unmodified serial port based version of DM2k called CF2k, see Fred Kaal's website http://www.ti99-geek.nl/.

 

There are other solutions for getting disk files over. I came back in, and went the Gotek USB floppy emulator route. So I could create disk images on my PC, and then load them on a thumdrive, that inserts into the floppy drive emulator. This was clunky. Still is...

 

I believe MagicFM is supposed to help somehow... But I have no knowledge of that solution. ArcadeShopper.com makes it available in on 90k floppy in the filetransfer section. He also sells the CFHDXS1 floppy disk which is the software solution from Fred Kaal. If you have the correct serial port cabling, this is the least clunky solution available today, that I know of.

 

The 32k card will allow running some of the newer cartridges that require the RAM to execute. Even with the FinalGROM99, there are several cartridge titles released in more recent history that require the memory expansion. Also there are many disk titles that have been converted to cartridge images that require the RAM.

 

Some people like the RS232 to relive/continue their dial-up style BBS days ( pre-internet )... You can also print to them, or use them for hardware hacking. You can hook up an RS232 to WiFi adapter, that gets you telnet like access using Terminal Emulation software ( TIMXT ) ... others use the RS232 card for the little 16 pin connector that is the Parallel IO port. ( printer port ) This has been demonstrated as a fun playground for hardware control... kind of like GPIO on an arduino, but not exactly.

 

You are probably going to be best off, exploring the cartridge software from the FinalGROM99, and then worrying about the other stuff as you get there. This forum has proven very helpful when you get to specific questions and use cases.

 

-M@

[apersson850]

It's frequently difficult to keep old printers running, and new printers don't have serial ports. I use an old laptop, running Hyper Terminal and connected to the TI 99/4A via a USB <-> RS-232 adapter. The Hyper Terminal program (once included in Windows) can act as a print server, so my TI can print on my Ethernet-equipped laser printer.

[Omega-TI]

Oh jeez, I am in waaay over my head Would this give me access to things that i could NOT run with a finalGROM99? I am a long time retro gamer who has just recently dove into Retro computers, starting with 800XL and C64. At 34, i never really "grew up" with these machines to the extent i did with consoles, so pardon my total bafflement.

 

Honestly, using the disk drives would give you very little in the way of added utility as Retro Gamer. Most decent assembly language games have already been converted to run out of the faster loading FinalGROM 99. Unless you wanted to do any programming or things that require data storage or the saving of game data you could easily get by without using a disk drive.

 

You are not the first that has needed the ability, but I still have hope that someone someday will make it possible for people like you to use a FinalGROM to transfer programs to a TI's floppy drive. While it's technically possible, it's not yet happened.

[Sinphaltimus]

I'

 

It's frequently difficult to keep old printers running, and new printers don't have serial ports. I use an old laptop, running Hyper Terminal and connected to the TI 99/4A via a USB <-> RS-232 adapter. The Hyper Terminal program (once included in Windows) can act as a print server, so my TI can print on my Ethernet-equipped laser printer.

I'd like to see a Topic on this with a write up - could print to PDF this way no?

[apersson850]

You can print to any printer that's installed on the PC. If you have a "printer" that instead creates a PDF, then that works fine. The computer I'm using is running Windows XP, so Hyper Terminal is included in the operating system. But the Hyperterm.exe and Hyperterm.dll files can be copied and just stored in a folder, then run from there. No specific install required. Then you can run that program on newer versions of Windows too, where it's not included.

HyperTerminal has a feature called Transfer/Capture to printer. You select the printer you want to use and set margins as needed on the PC. Set the connection to the COM port you use on the PC, and set the printer port on the TI to match baud rate etc.

Then you select Capture to printer and everything you print will show on the screen on the PC and be forwarded to the printer. In the old impact printer days, lines were printed one at a time. Now entire pages are printed one at a time. To feed the last page out, if you print 3½ pages, turn off Capture to printer and the page will be terminated. Turn on Capture to printer to continue.

[VicViper]

Just want to say thanks for all the in depth replies guys. I don't always know what your talking about, but I DO appreciate it ? one of the driving reasons I dug out the ti99 was because of what a great community there appears to be. You guys are great.

[Shift838]

Also with your setup you could connect it over to a PC serial port or a raspberry Pi serial port and get out on the internet to call BBS'. It's a cool retro feel. Utilizing a compiled version of tcpser I have compiled which also allows file transfers.

 

If you are going to use it and want a nice upgrade. I recommend the F18A video upgrade. This allows you to run some newer programs that have expanded graphics and some other cool utilities. It's also a very easy install. No soldering required.

 

 

F18A HERE

 

they are out of stock right now, but you can signup to be notified when back in stock.

Edited August 29, 2017 by Shift838

[VicViper]

Alright, so i found an AC, got everything hooked up. I had two carts that seemed relevant; Disk Manager 2, and Terminal Emulator 2. Using these, i believe i was able to "test" the different components. I used the disk Manager to run a disk test, that ofcourse failed as i have no disk. However, the light turned on and it spun up. I also got to the TE 2 screen, witch i don't believe i would be able to do if it wasn't working. I just have to wait for my finalGROM99 to test the 32K. I'm still on the wait list for the 32K sidecar, as this thing is waaay to big to be practical in my game room. It is also quite noisy.

[Omega-TI]

Alright, so i found an AC, got everything hooked up. I had two carts that seemed relevant; Disk Manager 2, and Terminal Emulator 2. Using these, i believe i was able to "test" the different components. I used the disk Manager to run a disk test, that ofcourse failed as i have no disk. However, the light turned on and it spun up. I also got to the TE 2 screen, witch i don't believe i would be able to do if it wasn't working. I just have to wait for my finalGROM99 to test the 32K. I'm still on the wait list for the 32K sidecar, as this thing is waaay to big to be practical in my game room. It is also quite noisy.

 

Oh yeah! Those original fans ARE loud. You might want to << CLICK HERE >> for a solution.

I have the same space issue at my place. I ended up using the P-Box like a tower to save space, and I actually think it looks BETTER that way!

[VicViper]

Is it safe to put on its side like that? definately preferable. Also, my lord Omega that is quite a setup. I think your TI99 has more capabilities than my laptop!!

Edited August 29, 2017 by VicViper

[Omega-TI]

Sure, it's plenty safe.... IF you get some of those little 'stick on feet' for the side of the case. If you don't use the feet, the screw on the side will scratch the surface.

[Shift838]

that's how I have mine setup is on it's side.