Ed in SoDak

Thanks for investigating and preserving this! Typical TI-overbuilt, even for a prototype. 16 gauge ground jumpers? And a Golden 9900. True eye candy. -Ed

Got a link? Maybe archive.org has it.

Wow! The ultimate TI shoot-em-up game. Fire real Redstone rockets!

Woot! Congrats on getting it working. That manual is not the epitome of clarity. Axiom made this for several computers, the manual was probably kept generic on many small details. -Ed

Well, yes. The printer is part of the equation and the TI/Axiom is expecting a "ready" signal from the printer. Lacking that signal, it will just sit there waiting. I found a picture of the circuit board clear enough to tell it has a 7805 voltage regulator. The specs for the 7805 specifies the minimum input voltage for regulation to kick in is 7.5 volts and the absolute maximum it can handle is 35 volts. So you're safe to try 9 or 12. -Ed

I did some more searching on the Parallax. And I read the manual! You can use the 9 volt setting on your wallwart. Maybe even the 12 volt, if 9 doesn't work. The Parallax uses a regulator chip to bring that down to the 5 volts the circuit uses. Power the Parallax first using the wallwart. The power the printer and last the TI. Now type in the program Kasurl posted on the first page of this thread. Or, if you hold down the space bar when turning on the TI, it makes the printer perform a Self Test. That should verify it's getting voltage and talking to the printer. Oh, the printer is Online too, right? The CF7 has a parallel printer interface but also provides disk emulation on a compact flash card. It may also provide the 32k memory expansion. I don't know if it works from just console Basic. Getting some flavor of Extended Basic or the FInal-Grom cartridge would also be a good upgrade. For now, just learning your way around your TI is a good start. -Ed

If you did try the Parallax with your wallwart, maybe the wallwart is bad? Too many unknowns for long-distance troubleshooting to say for sure what's going on. -Ed

22.5 turns of wire? TP I draw a blank. Thermal Paste? ThermoPlastic? ToothPaste? Toilet Paper? -Ed

It's not taking power from the TI at all, so I don't think it should matter one bit if the speech is in the chain or not. If that were an issue, the Parallax manual would have made mention of it. Since the speech does use console power, it just makes sense it should come first. For now, just leave it out till you get the printer working to remove it from the list of unknowns. As I mentioned in your other thread, the Parallax factory setting is for use of a wallwart. It states that in the manual. I would try it using your variable voltage wallwart with it's TIP on the + and set to 4.5 volts. Since changing the Parallax to use printer power did require opening it up and doing some soldering, chances are it is untouched and still set to the factory default of requiring an external 5 volt wallwart. 4.5 volts should be close enough. There is a regulator inside, so if 4.5 doesn't kick it into gear, try 6 volts, but with my precautions in the other thread about perhaps overpowering it without first verifying things using a meter. I'm only trying to help avoid making smoke! -Ed

Looks right to me. Just make sure the TV and modulator are both on the same channel. Might need to adjust the TV fine tuning. The screw terminals are for the old antenna on the roof. To watch regular TV, push the switch from modulator to TV antenna. For the TI to show, it should be switched to modulator, just as you have it in your pics. Does the TV work otherwise? These days you need a convertor box to watch broadcast TV, but a VCR or DVD player with VHF output should still work. You could try feeding the TI into the VCR and sending that to the TV. Next up is another TV or get a Composite cable for the TI with the "tulip-shape" RCA plugs to try that way. EDIT: Haha! The pic was dark and I didn't even see the switch on the TV! That's to change between built-in rabbit ears or some external antenna. Oh well, maybe my reply will help someone else. -Ed

Hopefully you'll find the polarity info on the case similar to my phone. Sometimes the jack polarity diagram is right next to it on the rear. That would remove the doubt about how to fit the matching plug onto your multi-voltage wallwart. If you install the wallwart's removeable plug so + goes to +, it "should" be putting positive on the center tip like I show in my pics. You can check the wallwart's case for info as well. But I always like to verify these things with my DMM/DVM and avoid making smoke! Oh, and I think you're correct about the daisy-chain order of the TI first to the Speech, then the Parallax. -Ed

There may be a way to tell on the case itself. Here's the circuit board from the manual. It can be powered either from a wallwart or the printer, depending on how J4 is set. From the factory it is wired to use the wallwart. One trace is cut and a jumper soldered on. I circled it in green. Near as I can tell, the "tip" of the power jack is + Positive. I marked that in red. Many devices will have this info molded into the nameplate info on the case itself. Here's a couple pics of my cordless phone, for example. On the right side of the info, you'll see a pictogram showing the center pin (the Tip) is Positive, while the Barrel (the metal sleeve) is Negative. It also states the voltage and current requirement and model number of a compatible wart. Last pic shows the plug and jack for this phone and how they're wired for Positive and Negative. Harbor Freight sells a stupid-cheap digital volt meter (DVM) and sometimes it's free with a coupon. Well worth having just for checking things like this or batteries to see if they have any life left. Since your wallwart doesn't have a 5-volt position, I'd try the 3.5 volt setting first. Many times these cheap wallwarts are not regulated and have a higher than listed voltage. They require the load of a device to drop the voltage down. The 250mA load of the Parallax might be high enough it would load this wart to work on the 6-volt setting. That's where your new Harbor Freight meter would come in handy to check that. But you'd likely have to open up the case of the Parallax in order to get the meter probes on the power connections. Once it's open, you could check the status of J4 and if the trace has been cut or not. If the thing doesn't seem to be alive on the wallwart, it may already be set to get power from the printer. Perhaps not all printers provide the 5-volts though. You may have to enlist the help a technical friend to lend a hand with figuring it out. -Ed

Thanks for the additions/clarifications. My list of "official" disks was on the short side. I wasn't aware of all the Plato courseware disks. I did know about the p-code card software but didn't mention every example. Neither of those packages are very mainstream among the typical TI owner, though they do deserve a mention. It's all just a fraction of the TI catalog, compared to the hundreds of third party offerings. -Ed

TI released companion/support disks for several of their cart programs such as TI-Writer, Editor/Assembler, Multiplan, etc. So no, there's not much of it. Most of their published software (that I know of) was strictly in cartridge form or on cassette. Most disk-based software was third party or user-written.

If you plan to discard the desoldered chips, you can snip the legs off and remove each pin individually. Probably much safer to the board traces as well, since you can observe them as you work. Much easier than trying to get all of the pins on a chip clear and free, then pull it intact. The only advantage of this method is you could possibly reuse that chip if it was still good. Or to be able to test it by substitution in a socket with a known good chip, and perhaps discover if it was actually bad or not. You could do one chip/socket at a time and retest. Starting with the socketed chips. Maybe you get lucky and find the bad chip right away. And if your work creates a new problem, you catch that in time to correct your last couple of steps. If you do all before testing any of it, you may not have a clue where things went awry. -Ed

One use is to connect to BBS over Telnet.

See my edit above. I was typing it wrong, just like they told me too! Once I figured out you just enter the new baud rate fully, i.e., 9600 instead of just 96, it's easy to change. My TI has done 19.2 pretty reliably. I have the ESP set for that now on my Mac. The ESP is supposedly set to 115,200 at the factory. This module was defaulted to only 300, but Ian upgraded it to 2400 when he built it and shipped it to me. BTW, that made my experiments plug 'n' play for the most part, with just a couple obscure gotchas to make it interesting. -Ed

Eureka! I revisited the link I posted just above and solved my 2400 baud limit. All we needed to add were these two commands: at&p0 and at&k1 after which we can type at$sb=96 to set it for 9600, higher is also possible. Next change your term program to match and bingo! I can now test 9600 and see what my TI's limit is above that. Edit: It's even easier. The internal listing has an error. Instead of typing at$sb=96 as it says to do, I "accidentally" typed "9600" and was surprised it worked. Tried that again, typing "at$sb=19200" and was able to connect. at? WIFI SIXFOUR BUILD 20160621182048 BY @PAULRICKARDS BASED ON GITHUB.COM/JSALIN/ESP8266_MODEM AT COMMAND SUMMARY: DIAL HOST.....: ATDTHOST:PORT SPEED DIAL....: ATDSN (N=0-9) SET SPEED DIAL: AT&ZN=HOST:PORT (N=0-9) HANDLE TELNET.: ATNETN (N=0,1) PET MCTERM TR.: ATPETN (N=0,1) NETWORK INFO..: ATI HTTP GET......: ATGET<URL> AUTO ANSWER...: ATS0=N (N=0,1) SET BUSY MSG..: AT$BM=YOUR BUSY MESSAGE LOAD NVRAM....: ATZ SAVE TO NVRAM.: AT&W SHOW SETTINGS.: AT&V FACT. DEFAULTS: AT&F PIN POLARITY..: AT&PN (N=0/INV,1/NORM) ECHO OFF/ON...: ATE0 / ATE1 VERBOSE OFF/ON: ATV0 / ATV1 SET SSID......: AT$SSID=WIFISSID SET PASSWORD..: AT$PASS=WIFIPASSWORD SET BAUD RATE.: AT$SB=N (3,12,24,48,96 >>> Wrong. Type the actual commect speed, i.e. 9600. 192,384,576,1152)*100 FLOW CONTROL..: AT&KN (N=0/N,1/HW,2/SW) WIFI OFF/ON...: ATC0 / ATC1 HANGUP........: ATH ENTER CMD MODE: +++ EXIT CMD MODE.: ATO QUERY MOST COMMANDS FOLLOWED BY '?' OK Another link for those wishing to delve deeper: https://www.esp8266.com -Ed

You can do a lot more with one of these ESP8266 flavors. The one I have seems to be the ESP12E which breaks out the ESP8266's pins on a larger board for easy access, plus adds quite a bit of support hardware. The software can be up to the individual user and their comfort/experience level. Mine has some features "hidden" or beyond my understanding on how to access the flash memory. All I can find on my board is "modem" software. Reflashing with new or edited software uses simple tools on PC, Intel Mac, Linux or Arduino. What to reflash it with is the question. A good jumping off point to learn more about 'em is here: https://1200baud.wordpress.com/2017/03/04/build-your-own-9600-baud-c64-wifi-modem-for-20/ It seems like the one featured there for Commodore is very similar to mine. It's a whole 'nother world I've never dabbled in, but have been curious. The Internet of Things.... -Ed

It's easy to use Telnet with this little board. For the TI with PEB and standard TI RS232, a 3-wire connection is all that's needed. TI DB25_____ESP DB9 RX 2 _____ 2 RX TX 3 _____ 3 TX Gnd 7 _____ 5 Gnd Yes, I have RX to RX and TX to TX. A quirk of how TI set up the serial connector on the RS232 card. I'm just using solder-pin connectors and a ribbon cable, so it's easy to make or modify. I seem to be locked at 2400 baud since I'm unable to edit the setting in the ESP. I believe Ian <TMA-1> used his Arduino to access it from the USB connector side. From a term program over the RS232, typing "AT$SB=96" it goes through the motions, but doesn't change. I simply lose contact with it till I reboot the ESP and change the term prog back to 2400. Oh well, 2400 is plenty fast to read or send messages, which is all I've done so far. And as noted in my prior post, the wifi itself must be set to WPA or WPA2 security. Myself, I use WEP, so must change the wifi before using the ESP board. All I got onscreen otherwise was "Error." Though I could call up the ESP's default list, I could not connect to Telnet. Hope this saves some grief for someone who uses WEP as I do. Here's a pic of my TI setup. Too bad I accidentally cropped out the ESP board! It's getting power from my Mac over USB. I'm using an unmodified copy of Telco set to 2400 8N1. Not real convenient at the moment. The console is sitting sideways to the old, blurry TV and PEB on the floor in "tower" mode. I'm mostly using it to port my floppy collection over to emulation as I find the time and inclination. Typing messages right now is strictly hunt and peck. If I start using Telnet more, I'll rearrange things or just use the Mac to connect. Blasphemy! Another couple pics show how I connect it to the Mac. I have Keyspan's Mac DB8 serial to USB adapter and an old Mac modem cable. Connect power to the mini-USB port the Keyspan to the Mac also via USB. The keyspan driver is a simple install, with a program to choose which of two ports to use. Set your term program to match the port, and connect at 2400 8N1. And there you have it! Cheap and pretty easy way to get on Telnet! Maybe Ian will add how he's able to edit the ESP's defaults. -Ed

Sorry I derailed this thread. I was feeling little squirrely.

You didn't see it because it never saw wide release. I may have been the only user. I took several small XB utilities and glued them together into one large pot of spaghetti code. I had TI-Base and wanted to use it to maintain a database of my TI disks and wanted to semi-automate the catalog creation. CatLib was in my collection but didn't use it. That program may have been some inspiration for Catman. Or not. So long ago I don't remember. My version of a Disk Librarian lets you add where a disk is stored, gives each disk an auto-incrementing number and includes space for notes and comments on a disk and each file. Multi-session, new additions are appended to a pair of associated files. I also created several TI-Base files to sort and use the data, so you'll see options for that within Catman. Sadly, it didn't play well with MacV9T9 but worked fine on the iron. I haven't tried it much in other emulators. Here's version 2.14, first as TIFILES, then in V9T9 and my last version 2.2 in V9T9 format. Also my disk library created by the program converted to normal text. Enjoy! Or delete, as you see fit. I liked using it and spent a lot of time working on it. I still refer to the master disk listing it helped me create. -Ed catman214 CATMAN21.4 CATMAN22 TI disk libprg 91.txt

I hate those bright LEDs myself. I'll cover them with a bit of masking tape and maybe a dark color Magic Marker over the lens to dim them. You could install a higher resistance resistor to dim it that way. My EXB cart has gotten pretty flaky. The other day I took a small square of a green dish scrubber, sprayed some CRC contact cleaner on it and rubbed down both sides of the contacts and also shot a bit into the cart port as well. That helped as much as anything I've tried. CRC would work on the switch as well. It's cheap and found in many hardware stores. I use that stuff instead of DeOxit. Once I switched to a firehose extender cable, my sideport contact issues disappeared. -Ed

Hmm. I'm rusty on Funnelweb, but somewhere there's an option for choosing which drive to use for certain things. That setting might be global and that's carrying forward to the SL. I configured the menus, but that's about as far as I got with customizing. I never tried the script. -Ed

My Mom had one kinda like this one. As long as you kept the stylus in the correct slot, it worked quite well. -Ed