JB

RIP, cute little tape recorder.

Oooooh. Print preview makes me wish I'd had a Geneve.

That's a pretty 99-looking tape recorder.

https://books.google.com/books?id=DSsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false Google's print piracy program has that issue.

At least we're not on CommodoreAge.

I used to use Funnelweb to type up my homework. Given my handwriting, the teacher appreciated it. These days, I don't do much text editing on the 4a.

That cart expander demonstrates excellent taste in games.

TI was rather proud of their chess program back in the day. They put an awful lot of work into making a "skilled" computer chess player.

I'm just disappointed that the thread isn't titled "Intrigue Software's intriguing history"

I only see one thing wrong. -Everything.

My best guess is the gut speccing the PBox system was freshly transferred in from the military hardware division, and was still designing hardware that could withstand a russian bombing.

Never found the calipers. Internet says that THIS is a match for the Genesis, and that's got dimensions. Seems like you wouldn't even really need a 3D printer. Just a sheet of plastic the right thickness to cut chips off of, and maybe a drop of superglue to lock it down. Though I suppose that when you got one, you may as well use it.

That's a really good idea, and I don't know why I didn't think of it!

Probably not. Two reasons. A. TI worked in imperial. B. 2.5 mm is a weird pitch that's basically only used in the NES. The Famicom uses 2.54mm connectors, which is 0.1 inch and quite standard for through-hole electronics. That said... famicom cart connectors are almost perfect. It looks like they aren't thick enough, though. I just did a board comparison, and while FC carts and PBox cards use the same pin count and .1" pitch... PBox boards are about twice as thick as FC carts. (I KNOW there's calipers in this house to get actual board thicknesses, but I cannot find them.) Frustratingly, GENESIS cartridges are the right board thickness, but have four more pins. That's close enough to be really tempting, but wildly dangerous for any card that isn't mechanically guided into place. No naked PBox board would ever be safe, and I wouldn't place bets that all clamshelled boards would fit tightly enough to land on target in the connector.

The TI expansion port can't supply much power. At the time, the speech synthesizer was really all it could do. All the other sidecar peripherals DID contain their own power supply(hooray for power strips). So there was no point to a power passthrough on the syntesizer. Here in the modern era, of course, 32k of RAM is basically nothing, and can probably be powered by good intentions alone.

I've long turned the system off to change cartridges. You're SUPPOSED to be able to hotswap them(which would make the Disk Manager\Extended Basic\Editor/Assembler shuffle less annoying), but it seems highly dubious in practice.

Yeah. CC40 may not be the most useful system, but it is definitely up there in sex appeal.

I got nuthin', so you can't have my SCSI card either.

Additionally, if people start making add-ons that try to power themselves from the expansion bus, this introduces incompatibilities with an unmodified 4a. USB cables means the "standard" for power is something that everyone can use easily. Plug into a hub on the back of the TI if you have a power mod, or a random phone charger if you don't. PicoATX does sound like a good replacement power supply to me. The lack of -5V is disappointing, but easily rectified, and the other advantages seem to outweigh it.

I gotta admit, if you're upgrading with some modern parts, having a supply that can source you a few extra amps of +5VDC for accessories is a nice convenience. Host-powered Genesis controller adapters , TIPIs, memory sidecars, NanoPEBs, etc.

Is it? I never got the impression it was a particularly hungry device. It runs cool(not even slots in the case for passive ventilation), and is among the few things the expansion port can be trusted to power. I thought pretty much anything else you could do with that bus used more power than the speech synth.

Sort of like the Commodore community's "Mega 65" project(more or less a resurrection of the unreleased C65)?

If it takes 12V, you could use the power line on the AV connector.

The time and money to dedicate to my hobbies.

As I put it when doing a 99/x history summary for someone when I got to the whole market implosion thing... "Bill Cosby then sued TI for damage to his reputation. Cosby would later do far more damage to his reputation than TI ever could."