Ksarul
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Posts posted by Ksarul
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And that doesn't even figure in the ping-pong movements. I've had packages bounce back and forth between widely separated sorting centers multiple times before they finally escaped the do-loop and made it to my mailbox. Weird is that the local sorting center is usually one of the end points of the ping-pong game. It is like they are tossing the inbound sacks of mail right back onto the truck that brought them in as it returns to the mail center where they started, all to avoid having to sort them that day for waiting customers. . .
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12 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:
Looks like an 8-track storage system. Is it? I cannot imagine it was special made for TI cartridges.
I've seen those cases before (I think I may even have one or two). They were intended for video game systems, but the cartridge slots worked perfect for the TI as well. The game machine sat on top of the cartridges and manuals went into the slots at either side.
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On 3/22/2024 at 8:57 AM, Gary from OPA said:
That one is from @humeur here on AtariAge. I have bought from him many times--he is a trustworthy seller.
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ISTR that @OLD CS1 had some really nice manual templates that he put up here a few years ago (both old and new style). I'm not sure if anyone has ever done a really good box scan. The hardest part will be the trays (if you plan on trying to do that). The Navarone-style boxes eliminated the need for a tray (and secured the cartridge with an internal structure) but still made the manual visible, so a single generic box could be used for many different releases. They are also about the same size as the TI boxes.
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The RS-232 uses the bog-standard TI9201 charger. They were (and still are) used all over the place and are readily available (in quantity, even). I think the printer-plotter used the TI9203, which is really HTF. There are a few substitutes out there using the same voltage output and connector though. The substitutes are a bit easier to find, but are still uncommon (not rare).
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6 hours ago, ti99iuc said:
Of course my intention Will be to Scan them. At a certain point, when all the scans are finished i will have to sell most of my paper stuff at least. if you want and before to put the stuff on ebay i Will give you a voice @Ksarul
That would be very nice, @ti99iuc. I would definitely be interested in any book I don't have a copy of yet.
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21 hours ago, ti99iuc said:
From your picture Instead there Is a TI-Multi LOGO cart that Is interesting too. Or maybe It could be the LOGO 1 but different label 🤔
That picture actually comes from a most useful TI website in Argentina. They also have a few books pictured on another page that I haven't obtained copies of yet.
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Actually, both are considered to be current, last I knew. Having two locations for the files is a good thing. . .a lot of work went into scanning those books.
I went hunting. Here are all four of his computer books, as found online today.
We just need to ask @acadiel and @Tursi to add them to their mirrors.
basic_computer_adventures.pdf Basic_Computer_Games_Microcomputer_Edition.pdf Big Computer Games.pdf More_BASIC_Computer_Games.pdf
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2 hours ago, humeur said:
I've never seen or found a LOGO 1 in French, and the LOGO II in French was already very difficult to find. A company called RAC la règle a calcul had the rights and was reproducing this module when TI had stopped.
JL
I have never seen (or heard) of a copy of the French Logo I cartridge in the wild either, @humeur. I have a manual for it--but that is all I've ever seen or heard on the subject. There aren't even GRAM files floating around for it (unlike the German Logo II cartridge, where I had the GRAM files but not a real cartridge until I found this one).
J’espère, ce n’existe pas.
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46 minutes ago, ti99iuc said:
This should be "TI LOGO I" in Spanish, right? probably, I still have never seen a Spanish TI LOGO II then
I have a lot of TI Logos but I am not sure what I have, still all in the boxes for the move and I don't remember all.
for example, I am pretty sure I have also a French RAC version of the TI-LOGO 2 maybe with manuals but I am missing a French TI-LOGO I, still... but maybe I will never have one, by now 😛
I have also to say that the LOGO in Italian is pretty rare too. I only found three of them in all the hunting years and only two with manuals.
It is written LOGO only but as you say it should be a LOGO II version.
On the Argentine Logo cartridge--yes, that one is Logo I. Here in this picture is a copy of the Spanish Logo II module (at about the center of the middle cartridge row).
It would probably be a good thing if we got all of the various Logo manuals scanned at some point, especially considering how HTF they are. Have you looked at the inside of the Mondadori or your Spanish Logo I cartridge to see if they are using real GROMs?
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It corrected a few bugs and added speech capability.
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The only English language books with Volume 2 in their titles were Compute's TI Collection, Creative Programming for Young Minds, Game Writer's Pack, Starter Pack, and Best of the Huggers. There were also a number of German, French, and Spanish titles that included Volume 2 in a series.
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Logo II (and to a much lesser extent, Logo I) are very interesting cartridges from a linguistic standpoint. There are multiple localized versions of the cartridge in the wild (Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish), with printed TI manuals for some (French and Spanish), draft manuals (Dutch and German) and third-party manuals (Italian). I have been on a quest to complete a set of these very elusive cartridges for several decades. I eventually found copies of all of the varieties in the wild with one exception: Logo II in German. I knew it existed, as there were GRAM files for it floating around in Germany in the late 1980s, and I even found a prototype of Logo 1.1 in German with a draft manual, but no joy on any trace of a Logo II cartridge in German.
That search is now over, and oddly enough, the source was one I'd known since 1988 in Germany: Dr. Arnim Tölke. He and I talked at several gatherings while I was in Germany, but somehow, we never discussed the German variant of Logo even though I knew he was a Logo fan. His system was passed on to his son-in-law, who eventually decided to sell it on eBay. I saw a cartridge in the lot that I'd been looking for for ages--and apparently with a printed German manual. I won the auction after getting his permission to bid, as he did not want to ship things. I asked him to send me the things I was truly interested in (a medium-sized box) and once they cleared customs, I joyfully opened the well-packed box. Sure enough, the cartridge was really an original TI Logo II cartridge in German, made during the qualification run (normally 100-150 cartridges) that cleared them for a final production that never came. Two of the GROMs are identical to the ones used in TI Logo II in French, which suggests those two GROMs were probably in all of the language-localized variants. One GROM was unique to the German cartridge (and there was one unique one in the French cartridge as well), so that GROM is probably different for each language variant. I'll need to take a look in my other ones to confirm both conjectures--and to fill in some more blanks in my master GROM list.
The manual was the most interesting thing of all here. It was a German translation of the TI Logo II manual, but it had some extras. One of the appendices is a complete three-way cross-reference of the Logo keywords in English, German, and French. There is also a short epilogue at the back of the book that explains much about how these cartridges, and the book, came to be in the wild. The author noted that a small group of the qualification cartridges along with a draft of the manual were found at a TI facility in Switzerland during a clean-up/move in early 1984. The person who found them passed them on to the author for a nominal price instead of throwing them in the trash. The author then turned the draft into a print-ready book using TI Writer and sold the cartridges and the books to (mostly) Swiss users through advertisements in the Swiss Info99 magazine. I actually acquired a complete set of those magazines shortly before I left Germany. I took time to read them but I never thought to look through the ads at the time--as my life was in a bit of major turmoil about then. Now I have more fun things to dig into.
As to which localized cartridges exist:
Logo I in French, German, and Spanish. I still need confirmation of the French Logo I cartridge (no sightings in the wild and no GRAM files), although I do have the TI manual for it.
Logo II in Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. I have all five of these, and some form of manual for all except the Italian manual from Mondadori.
The French and Spanish versions of Logo II seem to be somewhat easier to find (easy when compared to the others, as all are exceedingly rare), with Italian being next. The only Logo I variant that shows up often enough to register is the Spanish one (both Logo I and Logo II in Spanish were somewhat widely released in South America but are nearly impossible to find anywhere else). There were several different sources for the French Logo II cartridge. @humeur graciously showed me pictures of his collection of the cartridges with different label variants several years ago.
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Digging around, I found some additional data on Heiner Martin's board (I received it from @Flottmann1 a while back) which might come in useful. I think the file describing the Type 2 board was a translation I did quite a while back. . .
I also included images of an EGROM board with Advertizer on it for comparison, along with the Advertizer manual, which is relatively hard to find. Note that this weird TI cartridge does NOT show up on the title screen--it just adds a bunch of routines to TI BASIC.
heiner_cartridge.pdf Heiner Martin Cartridge Board-Type 2 (English).pdf Advertiser.pdf
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13 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:
With you. I am always grumpy when I have to go through self-checkout, I give a one-star rating, and I always fill out the surveys and give feedback like, "I don't like being forced to work for you," or "I don't appreciate that no employee was willing to take my money."
I might have mentioned this before, but one of the hardest parts I have found about getting older is trying to make people understand I have always been like this.
My question there is: Since when did I agree to be your employee and why aren't you paying me for the "privilege" of performing said checkout work for you?
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The Logo II cartridge also came with a German manual, published in Switzerland in late 1984. I had never seen that book referenced anywhere, so it is one more for my bibliography of TI books. It also had a handful of other Logo books in German, but they weren't TI-specific (although some did reference it).
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12 hours ago, TheMole said:
Are the Ubergrom PCB files publicly available?
They are not--but I provide bare (or assembled) boards for a very reasonable price (PM me).
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10 hours ago, Gary from OPA said:
yeah, i used to have a couple of these myself, i had a prototype TI Invaders one on a EGrom board.
I just received one in the mail today built up as a TI writer cartridge with only English and German as selection options. . .along with a Logo II module in German--with real GROMs, so it was a qualification run cartridge. Interesting that I received one of each type of TI proto along with a fully built-up Heiner Martin board the day after I posted some data about the various types of cartridge boards. . .LOL
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Oddly enough, TI actually made and sold GROM simulation cartridge boards to developers (EGROM boards). I have a pair of the bare boards squirreled away somewhere. A lot of the true prototype cartridges in the wild are also built on these boards.
Mr. Martin's board was definitely an outgrowth of those TI boards, as one of the most common modules built on them were the Advertizer cartridges circulating in Germany.
Most other cartridges identified as prototypes are actually from qualification runs (100-150 examples in a run) made to test the production equipment and parts before initiating full production. I have a couple dozen of this type, but only 3-4 of the ones built on the EGROM boards.
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On 3/15/2024 at 7:27 PM, Tursi said:
The easy answer is to just buy the board Jim made.
It's only a couple dollars more on the AVR but everything's done, tested, and working.
And I stayed with Thru-hole parts so that the boards could pretty much be assembled by anyone with a bit of soldering skill. The PLCC flash chip was a design decision based on a chance buy of a couple of thousand of the flash chips I used on the board for an insanely low price (bought sometime before I ever started working on the board with Tursi and Jon). I've used most of those up over the years for this and other projects, but they were a definite motivator. The plethora of options are the result of our brainstorming sessions and the desire to make the board do pretty much anything it could do without the designer having to resort to board surgery. We met that goal. . .and it was a definite team effort from beginning to end.
I had a similar parts-epiphany when I found a whole bunch of 27C4000 EPROM chips (512Kx8) for about 30 cents each. Almost nothing out there can program them--but a few programmers will program their 27C4001 sibling which uses the same programming algorithm. One IC adapter later, I can program them on one of my programmers (the other one that says it can program the 27C4001s fails, but the BK Precision 844 works fine) and a few minor mods to the 512K red boards later and I can use them at will (current Red boards have this capability built-in). It is for weird experiments like this that I have 7-8 different EPROM programmers. . .
Last but not least, a major shout out to Tursi for writing the software that made these boards so versatile. There is actually a pretty steady demand for the boards, as they are a completely different use-case than the FinalGROM or the various GRAM solutions. Sometimes, you just need that purpose-built cartridge, and the Blue boards with Tursi's wonderful software implementation meet that need quite well.
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14 hours ago, dhe said:
Would you mind giving a mini tutorial on how it works or is that documented else where?
The complete explanation for how it works is in an early issue of TI-Revue.
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On 3/14/2024 at 11:26 PM, mrvan said:
Any chance you have a lead on more of these HEXBUS RS232 peripherals?
You might want to contact mdude on eBay, as he seems to be the last source of NOS HexBus peripherals out there.
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So which prototype TI cards are in the odd PEB? It would be interesting to see if any of them are cards we haven't otherwise seen in the wild lately.
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Here is a set of complete schematics for the board--to include the connections for the ribbon cable to the 9918A socket. . .I did these in Visio, so they should be nice and clear, no matter how much you blow them up. The A3 size is close to the North American 11x17 size. . .so it is already a useful size without blowing it up.
A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P1.pdf A3-Mechatronic 80-Column Card-P2.pdf
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TI-99/4A - Some keys not working.
in TI-99/4A Computers
Posted
That suspiciously sounds like either dirt or bad clearances inside the switch (the problem symptom will usually be the same for either). One way to test for that is to select the key 40-50 times in a row to see if the movement clears the problem for that key--as that will often clear a dirty set of contacts. Other than that, you "could" try disassembling the key switch to clean it, but I have never done that with the Futaba switches, so I can't give much advice there. Most of the other mechanical switches have the contacts conveniently visible once the key cap is removed, so cleaning them is pretty easy if you are gentle about it.