Please help me better understand serial connections between my TI and my PC

[sixsevenco]

Hi Everyone,

 

I never really got into BBS's when I was younger. By the time I discovered them, I was in college, and I was playing with FTP, news groups, gopher, and this crazy new & cool thing call Mosaic. I now have a 99/4 PEB with the RS232 serial card. I have a Trendnet TU-S9 RS232 to USB port/adapter thing for my PC. I have what I believe is a straight cable between the two. And I have TEII.

 

I'm using PuTTY on the PC. I can open a serial connection between both computers, and when I type on the PC, I can see the text on the TI. When I type on the TI, sometimes text appears on the PC, and sometimes it's a weird character. I've noticed that usage of the shift key seems to play a role if the character displays correctly on the PC.

 

I have no real goal here. I'm really waiting on my buttons to finish assembling my FinalGROM, which I believe I will need to do HDX stuff. I don't have CFHDXS1. While I'm waiting, I wanted to see if my RS232 card could establish a connection to my PC, and it appears that it can. I do have some questions:

 

1. How come the light for the RS232 card isn't illuminated when I have an active connection to my PC?

2. Is there a better open source/free choice than PuTTY for a Terminal Emulation app on PC?

3. While I'm waiting for my FinalGROM to be fully functional, is there anything interesting or fun that I can do with what I have?

 

 

Thanks,

67

Edited March 8, 2018 by sixsevenco

[Opry99er]

I dont believe TE2 has X-Modem ftp, so you wont be able to do file transfers easily... if you have a modem, you CAN do BBS dial ups... but only at 300 baud.

[+mizapf]

1. How come the light for the RS232 card isn't illuminated when I have an active connection to my PC?

 

What is an "active connection"? Connected cable? Handshaking signals? Ongoing byte transfer? Not easy to tell.

 

The LED is controlled by a separate CRU bit. That is, it won't light up unless there is a specific machine operation (SBO 7) to turn it on actively. It does not flash because of the activity of the UART chip alone. In the standard TI RS232, the interrupt reception lights up the LED for every received byte. If there are no bytes, the LED stays dark. However, if the reception is done by a specially designed, own reception routine, the author may not even have included code for operating the LED.

Edited March 8, 2018 by mizapf

[sixsevenco]

 

What is an "active connection"? Connected cable? Handshaking signals? Ongoing byte transfer? Not easy to tell.

 

The LED is controlled by a separate CRU bit. That is, it won't light up unless there is a specific machine operation (SBO 7) to turn it on actively. It does not flash because of the activity of the UART chip alone. In the standard TI RS232, the interrupt reception lights up the LED for every received byte. If there are no bytes, the LED stays dark. However, if the reception is done by a specially designed, own reception routine, the author may not even have included code for operating the LED.

 

Great explanation. Thank you.

[sixsevenco]

When I type on the TI, sometimes text appears on the PC, and sometimes it's a weird character. I've noticed that usage of the shift key seems to play a role if the character displays correctly on the PC.

 

 

So I figured this out. In the terminal session on PuTTY, I needed to change the "Data Bits" setting from 8 (default) to 7. This is now transmitting the correct ASCII code on both systems. Not sure why I'm troubleshooting this. I guess I'm learning. There's nothing practical here as far as I can tell...

[+9640News]

 

What is an "active connection"? Connected cable? Handshaking signals? Ongoing byte transfer? Not easy to tell.

 

The LED is controlled by a separate CRU bit. That is, it won't light up unless there is a specific machine operation (SBO 7) to turn it on actively. It does not flash because of the activity of the UART chip alone. In the standard TI RS232, the interrupt reception lights up the LED for every received byte. If there are no bytes, the LED stays dark. However, if the reception is done by a specially designed, own reception routine, the author may not even have included code for operating the LED.

 

And if I am not mistaken, the bit to turn that LED on/off is different between a Myarc and TI card. Not sure about a CorComp card. I forget where I saw that note this past week detailing that difference.

[sixsevenco]

I dont believe TE2 has X-Modem ftp, so you wont be able to do file transfers easily... if you have a modem, you CAN do BBS dial ups... but only at 300 baud.

The manual says you can press ctrl-4 to initiate a transfer. When you do, it will ask you to enter the device name to transfer from. The manual says you can use DSK1, DSK2, DSK3, OR CS1. None of these work for me. It will only let me type numbers, and then after I do, it gives an error, saying "invalid device". I doubt PuTTY would know what to do anyway. No biggie. I'm just goofing around until I get my buttons for my FinalGROM 99.

[+arcadeshopper]

Terminal emulator 2 only works with terminal emulator 2 transfer protocol nothing supports it on the PC side you need a terminal with X modem like Fast term or mass transfer or Telco or term 80 or others that exist that will do more than 7 bits will usually be set to 8n1 just like buddy starts out as.

 

There's a fastterm binary for the finalgrom and I believe there's a mass transfer floating around as well I know cuz you put it on the xb27 Suite but frankly if you use HDXs don't need to have any software other than HDX on the PC and HDXs on the ti

 

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

[FDOS]

It seems to me that you will have to have mass storage on your TI at some time. Otherwise, you will will have to use the PC for that purpose, so a RAM disk or floppy disk system, would suffice, not to mention memory expansion. I know the FG99 is great and powerful like the Great OZ, and you will be very happy with it, as I am, but if you want to do your own programming, you will need local storage space, and a minimum of 32K memory. If you want to load and save TI BASIC and/or XB programs from VDP memory to the PC, you will need the HDX mod to your RS-232 card. Which way to go? Something to think about.

[sixsevenco]

It seems to me that you will have to have mass storage on your TI at some time. Otherwise, you will will have to use the PC for that purpose, so a RAM disk or floppy disk system, would suffice, not to mention memory expansion. I know the FG99 is great and powerful like the Great OZ, and you will be very happy with it, as I am, but if you want to do your own programming, you will need local storage space, and a minimum of 32K memory. If you want to load and save TI BASIC and/or XB programs from VDP memory to the PC, you will need the HDX mod to your RS-232 card. Which way to go? Something to think about.

You're totally right. I think I'm on the right track. In my PEB, I have the 32k upgrade, disk controller & floppy, and RS232 card. I have some floppies ready to go, but I don't have any way to format them. I think with FG99, I should be able to run a disk manager to do that. I've been looking at the HDX mod. I know arcadeshopper sells them, but I think I'd rather try to DIY instead of buy. The wife has put me on a spending freeze, so that might need to wait...

[FDOS]

Yes, the FG99 along with the download from the image repository, will provide you with all the utilities you'll need to manage your floppy disk collection, programming languages, and games galore. Fun and excitement are coming your way very soon!!!

[Ed in SoDak]

I have a similar PEB setup, just more floppy drives. When you have nothing but blank, unformatted disks, TI's Disk Manager cart will give you formatting, cataloging, copying, deleting; the basic things you need.

 

Once you have a floppy formatted, you could write a simple program on the TI and save it using SAVE DSK1.MYPROG or whatever. Then with the TEII cart, you could send it to the PC. Another alternative is to use the Basic or Extended Basic plus the RS232 and "print" the program's listing to the PC. Type LIST "RS232" on the TI with your program loaded, and it should appear as a listing on the PC's text capture (log) screen (same as you're playing with now to send characters back and forth.) I think the default speed is 1200 baud. Save that to a text log file. Copy the listing to the PC's clipboard.

 

You can then use Classic99 on your PC to paste into the TI99 emulator. TaDah! You just ported a program from the Real Iron to your emulator.

 

Similarly, you can send a TIFILES type program file using Xmodem from the PC to the TI, and the Terminal program on the TI will save it to disk as it downloads (using the filename you provide like DSK1.MYXFER).

 

Instead of TI's Term II slow 300 baud module, using Telco (once you have that program on floppy) I was able to transfer at 9600 baud or faster, which only took a short while to send a program from my TI to my Mac or back the other way. Using Archiver on the TI, you can take a whole floppy and turn it into a single file that only takes one longer transfer session and save naming and sending many files one by one. Then use Archiver to expand the file on the other machine.

 

 

Of course, the FG99 will streamline all that, but that, in a nutshell, is how I've always done it since forever, since I don't presently own an FG99 or other similar add-ons.

-Ed

Edited March 10, 2018 by Ed in SoDak

[+arcadeshopper]

You're totally right. I think I'm on the right track. In my PEB, I have the 32k upgrade, disk controller & floppy, and RS232 card. I have some floppies ready to go, but I don't have any way to format them. I think with FG99, I should be able to run a disk manager to do that. I've been looking at the HDX mod. I know arcadeshopper sells them, but I think I'd rather try to DIY instead of buy. The wife has put me on a spending freeze, so that might need to wait...

 

I sell the daughterboard you need to do the hdx mod as well, you can build it all yourself that way