acadiel

That helps me out. I'll buy a new jack (yes, the jack inside the unit is broken) from Mouser that's 5.5mm (OD) and 2.1mm (ID). Thanks, Matthew!! Just FYI, I finally got around to ordering a replacement jack. Mouser URL Datasheet I'll let you know how it works out.. pinout looks identical, but I don't have a micrometer handy, so the spacing might be off. Stay tuned.

There was another ROM version for the TI Controller (the Guion mod). See attached and unarchive. There should be a README. Permission from the creator's father: I hereby give my permission to copy the code of my son, John P. Guion, as used in the Texas Instruments Disk Controller modifications. It may be copied for personal use only and may not be sold, resold or used in a product for sale. In other words I grant this license for free and I expect the fruits of using the code to be, likewise, free. Louis I. Guion Dallas, Texas June 10, 2001 JPG_Prom.exe.zip

500+ TI cartridge boards? I'd say that's way, way, way, way low. Unless thousands of people have filled up thousands of trash cans with them. Remember, there were an estimated 2 million consoles built. A conservative estimate would be 5 cartridges produced for every console. Do the math on that, but the question is "How many are left?" I'm talking about the Guidry cartridge boards here

I'm thrilled that there are 500+ cartridge boards out there now and they are being used for stuff like this.... shows you that our community is far from being dead!!!

I just bought one of these on eBay, and boy, someone was fighting me for it... drove up the price pretty high.. ugh I want it to study it and learn how the logic chips are emulating GROM - I know Tursi and others have FPGAs and stuff to do that, but I want to learn from the ground up; otherwise I never will.

Nice!!!!!

All the ones in mine are socketed. In fact, there were some .3 16 pin "spare slots", I'm guessing for some of the 74LS chips that John Guion might have thought would go bad (and that you would want spares for). IIRC, make sure the battery is good first, and load the DSR (i.e. "initialize the card"). A picture is here: http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/peb/pgram.html

The PGRAM+ isn't that too terribly complicated - shouldn't take that much to fix it. Just a bunch of 74LS chips as well as some 32Kx8 and 8Kx8 lower power SRAMs that house the GRAM and the DSR. It would probably really be inexpensive to buy new SRAMs on Mouser or somewhere else and drop them in to see if it fixes the issue. If not, most of the 74LS chips should be easy to find.

I vaguely remember there being many different versions of the Print Shop for the IIe... I know there's the original Print Shop (B&W, doesn't seem to support the ImageWriter II that I have), but wasn't there another IIe version that did support the color ribbon in the Imagewriter II? I'm really looking for that version...I don't know what it's called, but all the disk images that I've transferred to the IIe via ADT that have been called "Print Shop" are identical to the original that I have from the mid 80's - the one that doesn't work in color. Thanks

Did Triton SEB only use an EPROM with all the code in it and GROM emulation circuity? (I'm asking - I don't know...)

Awesome, Matthew! Great article! Makes me want to learn about FPGA's (at least after I get all these darn insurance exams out of my way.)

That helps me out. I'll buy a new jack (yes, the jack inside the unit is broken) from Mouser that's 5.5mm (OD) and 2.1mm (ID). Thanks, Matthew!!

While we're at it, can anyone measure the ID and OD of the DC jack? I need a new one but don't know what ID and OD to order from Mouser.... Thanks

The HxC floppy emulator (USB version) is read only. The HxC floppy emulator (SD Card version) is read-write. I have both, and both work great. SDCard version Youtube Video

Portal in BASIC! Awesome, just awesome!

Bill Gronos had written some ingenious stuff in the Disk Fixer manual that talked about hex modifications to XB programs that would basically lock out or corrupt the machine if you tried to LIST or SAVE it after unprotecting it. There were other programs, like DiskIt (Maple Leaf Software) that would read from CS1 and save as a PROGRAM file for you - either XB or assembly. No matter if it was protected or not. :-)

@sometimes - yep, he got those from me. I can make them too. . Matthew also now has the EPROMs in his collection as well.

Can I have fries with that?

I posted the 2010 International Chicago TI Faire Pictures on a public Facebook album if anyone wants to see. Great job everyone! This has been one of the most interesting faires since I started attending! http://goo.gl/bvhil

Wow. I'm blown away, Matt. Awesome work!

I don't have a manual with mine either. I don't recall anyone ever volunteering one when asked in the past, so I'm not sure if one even exists for Killer Caterpillar.

I keep meaning to put a link to it on my site.. along with Arcturus. Probably will put Miner 2049er and Espial up there as well. BTW, one interesting bit of trivia about these carts that plugged into the side. They mapped themselves to the 32K memory expansion memory addresses (>2000 and >A000)

There's not that many of them out there, I'm sure. Here's a picture of mine.. Killer Caterpillar

That's what I was thinking... there has to be a jailbreak exploit. :-)

So, how do you eventually get the pins to stay the same on the GAL so you don't have to change the PCB layout? :-)