Ed in SoDak

For my simple tests, I'm guessing there's nothing special about the TI SSSD drive that would make it a requirement. I'm using my regular DSSD drive setup off my PEB, moving the cable from it to the sidecar. I don't even have a disk mounted, I'm just looking for the delay while EXB searches for DSK1.LOAD or I'm trying OLD DSK1.<anyname> to see it the drive is selected and lights up. Since I had a couple new caps in my stash, I changed out C12 and C13 that filter the +/-5v lines. That improved the voltage drop I was seeing in my earlier tests, but still no joy. All along, I've been suspecting the 1771 controller chip, simply because it seems the most likely chip to blame. So now I'm debating dragging my second PEB out of the shed to "borrow" the 1771 chip to see if it gets this sidecar working. But it's way up in the loft and not easy to get to. I'm also unsure how easy it is come across a replacement chip (haven't looked yet) and if it's worth buying one on a guess it might help. -Ed

Thanks for the replies! I looked on Mianbyte, but only saw pics of the outside. Guess I missed seeing the schem. I knew about the SSSD-only, but I was just trying to get the LED access to light, I didn't even have a disk inserted except for one test. The drives are DSSD from a PC clone, but I do have original TI SSSD I can drag out if it has to be that. I gotta make a delivery of a couple tylosaur jaws, but I'll check into it more later today. Thanks again, it'll be neat if we can get it going! -Ed

My dad picked this up in the mid-80's. I don't think it worked then and sure doesn't now. Any schematics or common failures in these? The controller chip might be suspect as a common disk controller problem, so why should the sidecar version be any different? It has voltage, but the +5 is pulled down to 4.87 when connected to the circuit and when it is connected and powered, the -5 line goes a bit more negative compared to its disconnected reading. If that's a clue. This one is serial 1528133 and LTA0381. So early '81. I know how fragile the thin ribbon wires between the boards are, so I'm reluctant to do my usual disassemble and then give it my best baleful stare. The drive motor spins at powerup, but no light, head movement or anything other than a console error report. To try it, I just moved the outboard drives' 1&2 cable from my PE box to the sidecar and plugged it into the console port. I don't have a real use for it, but figure it's worth more working, if it's a fairly simple fix, such as locating and installing a new controller chip, assuming it's not unobtainium. Thanks in advance! -Ed

Could still do this with AOL dialup a year or so ago. I'd have the modem sound up enough to hear it, so I'd know when AOL dropped connection. Which was a lot! -Ed

In my own sojourn, I lept past my '030 accelerated SE20 to a Performa 636 bundle. The first of only two Macs (out of many I currently own) that were mine from new-in-the-box. The LC'040 in the 636 held sway for quite awhile till the spanking-new 500mHz Imac 2001 arrived. Somewhere along the way, a stray IIci joined the ranks, but i'd moved beyond it and it just seemed old and slow in my "pre-retro" days. Compared to a Plus, however, it was a real screamer! Good score and I like how you're fleshing it out with a few modern toys. -Ed

I saw this one-liner cat that included file type, reprinted in the V1#5 edition of Yesterday's News, that illustrious publication that is the fruit of Sparkdrummer's fertile mind! Flagrantly purloined below. -Ed

One trick is to lightly drop the tape from a few inches to help settle the winding. Fast forward or rewind it. Flip and repeat without stopping till the tape is done. If it was mostly used to record and re-record the same small stretch of tape, then reversed, then rinse and repeat, the windings get spread out from a nice, flat pack. Using a differerent machine than the one that it was settled into may cause a different slight wobble in how the tape lays on the reels. So you may want to acclimate it to the new deck's fit. The clue is how the tape pack lays when you insert it and how it winds after it's played a bit. If the layers shift up or down enough you easily spot it, winding the tape fully "around the clock" might help. I've used various methods to roughen the pinch roller a bit. You don't want to change the roundness, just get rid of the gloss and residue. A libation of alcohol for both technician and device is highly recommended. Use and abuse of the deck can bend the cams and levers that do the mechanical work of engaging the rollers, braking pads or slip discs. Spindles get slightly bent. Most often when about the fifth or sixth time, it don't work, so I slam the tape in and stab the play lever extra hard so it gets my point. My Canadian TI buddy Ian uses a hi-fi type deck with good results. I think he combined the two stereo channels to feed the TI. I once "archived" some of my computer tapes to reel-to-reel. Just sayin' it don't have to be some rinky-dink mono battery portable. Have you tried tweaking head alignment? The heads sometimes have tape guides bonded to their side. If it's kinda off, compared to tape travel, it can cause a wrinkle in the tape. Something's mechanically off, dragging or bent, to cause that sort of torsion or stress. I have some experience in this: Back in my bachelor days, we'd take a cheapy cassette recorder, tape down the buttons to keep them in the Record position, then heave it to one of our buddies. Who would "try" to catch it, pick it up and shake it around whilst saying clever witticisms. Then we'd play it back, laugh, and "fix" the recorder as needed. I don't think that tape deck would "fly" around my house any more, let alone any gathering of mature males that would concoct such an absurd idea. -Ed

Interesting stuff, thanks guys for the replies! I was very close to ordering a Geneve but held off to see if it would solidify as a platform. An opportunity came my way with an older Mac with a serial-port hard drive upgrade for just $200 and shortly afterwards an SE, so that's when I went dual-platform. I never really gave up the TI, just no longer did I have major expansion plans for it. At the time I had dual TI PEB systems up and running daily and they were crucial to my photography business. It wasn't until the mid-90s when hi-res scanning and printing came to the Mac that it finally took over. Even today I still have the majority of my TI stash but only one is currently set up. I and my dad spent frequently on software, ordering two copies. But we were also guilty of sharing some software we'd bought with the other. While I followed the MDOS buyout via the publicly released statements and reports, I wasn't that aware of the details. Had only the hardware and the software releases coincided, it would have benefitted Myarc to a much greater degree. It took so long, many Geneve buyers probably felt whatever they could grab oughta be theirs. -Ed

Juice is juice if it meets the power input specs. TI supplies should still be plentiful; most of us with even minor TI collections should have several on hand. The outboard supplies were also sold as surplus for years after TI stopped, besides those that came with every console sold by TI. Thus, no lack of genuine TI AC supplies. It's actually a dual voltage supply, with pins 1 & 2 supplying 18VAC and pins 2 & 4 carrying 8.5 VAC, so 19 VAC alone won't cut it. Hack-wise, I'd simply tap onto the connector on the rear or solder directly to the power port on the inside of the case and bring out your own wires. Specs for the power port are widely published, plus full schematics of everything, so it should be quite easy to find the pinout. And yes, the console did carry it's own supply board with regulators to convert the incoming AC. The only place in the TI99 to tack in "raw" AC would be on that board, and its AC input comes straight from the rear connector. Which would all be laid bare once you open up your console, with no need to open the clamshell covering the main board, just aim for the power board located beneath the cartridge port and its connector to the rear of the console and all will be pretty self-explanatory. -Ed

There's gotta be a backstory in all that. M'Pendium followed it all in detail as well. Only Paul Charlton or Lou Phillips could relate what caused it all to break down between them and end up as a buyout with Beery as our Hero. Has a similar sequence of events ever happened before or since? Anyway, what a lengthy route Myarc went through to slit their own throats on what coulda been the TI99's salvation at the "right" time in history for it to matter against the established survivors of the "computer wars" like Commodore, IBM, Apple and Atari. In retrospect, the market was already heading to the PC/Mac consolidation we know today, but with TI's marketing clout long gone by then, Myarc never could have competed in the broader market, no matter how swiftly or how well they might have met their self-announced goals. Even with their millions of dollars invested way back in '83, would TI have survived the industry-wide "Black Friday" blast to emerge as a player to shape what coulda been, had they gone ahead with all those delicious goodies on the verge of release? Someone (a certain TI CEO, perhaps?) shoulda stuck it out for one last Christmas season at least. The outcome may have been no different, but we would have much better toys to build on now! -Ed

I've been re-reading (for the umpteenth time) old issues of Micropendium. Back then, it was my (our?) primary news and info source. One by one, old newsletters and sources vanished, but M'Pendium remained till its own bitter end in '99. The internet was taking off and many formerly loyal subscribers had already departed for other pastures to browse upon. Reading in the 89-91 timeframe, a lot of new stuff was happening. But it wasn't all rosy. Seems to me some people had mighty thin skins and all it took was a seeming small slight that made its way into print might cause an author to drop the TI (only to come back later - or not!), some notable deaths that happened way too young (John Guion and John BIrdwell to mention two) and the on-going saga of when will MDOS get finalized? In one rather notable issue, April '91, John Koloen reported he had been taken to task ("Apology to a Reader") for accepting "fraudulent" ads from Myarc over their statement in their advertising for the HFDC that it supported streamer tape backup. John's letter to Lou Phillips resulted in a call from Phillips back to Micropendium where Myarc withdrew all support of Micropendium. And that was that. The loss of two full-page ads per month had to hurt, but John didn't kiss up or back down and it probably hurt both concerns, over one single phone call. And the month prior, someone was also raked over the coals online for releasing some MDOS .98h beta version he'd come across, and was just trying to share it. This many years later, it seems to this reader some folks had thin skins, but maybe their skins had been stretched far enough already. What could John Koloen do, but draw up his chin and continue in true journalistic fashion and try to keep his reporting as fair as he could. It must have been a challenge for him and Laura some months to keep that even keel. There was simply no way to please everyone, but they sure tried their darndest. Developing for or supporting any Orphan computer was in those days probably as much a labor of love as anything. Seeing (or not seeing) your name in print meant a lot and criticism usually stung a bit. The same might be true now as it was back then, but it doesn't reach the point where somebody takes his foot ball and goes home nearly as often. But, boy, things sure coulda turned out differently if some of those in-print conflicts could have been worked out more amicably! While I'm not actively purchasing new stuff for my ol' TI, I'm truly amazed at all the offerings today that have built on those foundations laid long ago. The new mantra of open-source and shared resources has helped in no small way, along with much better tools to work with. And it's easy to see many of the players from back then are still around and active here. One thing for sure, I don't see those thinly veiled barbs (real or imagined) and reactionary rebuttals being slung about now, like I saw in those old pages. No doubt, as heavily-financed small businesses succumbed to the reality of a dwindling market, it became more than personal to many. It must have been a stressful time in those years for anyone seriously trying to support the TI (and hopefully also earn a yeoman's wage doing it)! -Ed

I haven't installed XB256 yet to try your program, so I can't help with any suggestions. Hope somebody else chimes in! -Ed

I'm not sure if this is a viable workaround for you or not. I have a little catalog/run/file-read routine I liked that I would include as part of a program's code. I'd simply merge it in and add it to the program's menu so it would be there while running the program. Then I could also have niceties, like listing file type as well as name and size or even running another program or reading the docs from there. That helped make my little group of programs and utilities into a "suite" of programs I could move from one task to the next with just a few keyclicks and never need to drop out for some mundane task, like finding a disk with empty space on it to save a file before quitting. But back to the "Tinygram" type of cataloger, I'm sure Micropendium had several they published. I'm reviewing old issues now looking for one (and the fun nostalgia of re-reading this venerable old rag that was our mainstay before the internet took over). -Ed

The design specs for those ancient and large ports were hammered out in detail. No doubt by committees. Every line on a Centronics parallel or RS232 serial had a defined purpose. When it came to supporting different peripherals like printers, modems, plotters, data acquisition, etc. over the same port, it was good to have that built-in and ready. Back then, computers were larger and it just wasn't necessary to reconfigure the ports down to what was actually used in the majority of cases. That, and most of the peripherals themselves used those same ports, so it was a case of one hand washing the other. And then there were those companies like Apple, who simply had to be different, and that included their choice of connectors. Forcing third-party builders to make two versions to support Apple and the Rest of Us. And us poor Mac folk to have to upgrade because the old forn factor got dropped like so much old news. My old homebrewed TI99 to Mac RS232 cable has no less than three connectors/adapters I added to the Mac end, to suit their ever-evolving sense of purpose and form. -Ed

CP/M pretty much lived only on Z80-based systems as well. Expansion cards for other systems that provided CP/M to those platforms included a built-in Z80 chip, essentially placing two different computers in one box. -Ed

Hey, glad you're having some fun with it! Wish I coulda/woulda fleshed it out a bit. I got around the ice rink effect by stopping the tanks after a short distance if you let go of the stick. At least on the small/slow option. Bombs go on till you fire again or they hit something. Bombs also track downwards a bit, eventually wrapping back to the top. -Ed

Detecting collisions in XB is an adventure. In Tanks, I got it working but it wasn't too accurate. Narrowing the detection zone just made it miss too often. I guess that's about when I just turned it into a mess of silly. I wanted to add barriers and make it challenging but it never got that far. It does at least keep score! I'll attach a text listing if you want to have a peek. It's two players, each with a Bomb to let loose. Your bombs will only explode on your opponent, not yourself, and the same goes for the second player. -Ed TANKS.TXT

From my failed "Tanks" game, I always thought the explosion routine was the best part. I extracted it and made it into a sub. Use it or abuse it. The chardefs and other setup code should be relocated from the SUB so it doesn't reload each time the SUB is called. You can see it uses speech to add a little something "extra" to the explosion at the end. I just experimented with the gibberish I placed in C$ at line 10200. Lines 100 and 110 just call the sub over and over. Enjoy! -Ed 100 CALL BOOM 110 GOTO 100 10000 SUB BOOM 10010 CALL CLEAR :: CALL SCREEN(2) 10020 CALL MAGNIFY(3) 10030 CALL CHAR(136,"0000000000392A2A3A2222210000000000000000003AAAAABAA2A022") 10040 CALL CHAR(132,"0020100804020102AA01020408102000000408102040806A40804020100804") 10050 A$(1)="004020110E0810111110080E11204000000204887010088888081070880402" 10060 A$(2)="031C20225C4780CCB082426444340E01C03816224A81014131094502220C30C" 10070 A$(3)="000248000022000101001000000420000400001000000980800010000042" 10080 A$(4)="000000000000020001040000000000000000000000000040000040" 10090 CALL POSITION(#4,ROW4,COL4) 10100 CALL DELSPRITE(#4) 10110 IF ROW4=0 THEN ROW4,COL4=10 10120 CALL SPRITE(#12,132,16,ROW4,COL4) 10130 CALL SOUND(-1200,-5,9) 10140 FOR I=1 TO 4 10150 CALL CHAR(132,A$(I)) 10160 CALL DELSPRITE(#1) 10170 CALL SOUND(-540,-7,12+(I*2)) 10180 NEXT I 10190 CALL SPRITE(#13,136,14,ROW4,COL4) 10200 C$="`GJG/T/4/WGO3979=09LPKAW" 10210 CALL DELSPRITE(#12) 10220 CALL SAY(,C$) 10230 CALL DELSPRITE(#13) 10240 SUBEND Here's the program in TIFILES. Remove the ".txt" extension to use. BOOM.TXT

Heh, I recall one month I racked up about $120 for one month on Delphi on dialup. Whoops, big surprise! We wnt for the unlimited plan for $20 a month after that and I really went nuts. Not many BBS's here in those days that had a local number, but I was active on one of them. Ran my own Flat Earth BBS for a short time on my TI99 with three floppy drives and 32k. Good memories, I saved a lot of logs of online chats or posts from back when the TI99 was in its first heyday after being dropped by TI. We did a spoof on Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989, so it wasn't too long after) that was priceless. It kept getting added onto with every new post. I spooled the whole thread off to print and still have it somewhere. -Ed

I'm still using photoshop 2.5LE from '94, came free with a scanner. I have several newer versions, but stick with 2.5. No bloat, no layers nor fancy drag menus all over the place. Of course this means my whole Mac setup is pretty much retro itself. Also still using Findfile from System 8, even when we search the wife's MacBook Pro over wifi. AOL Press from '96 handles my websites. Pagemaker 5. And other abandonware for other tasks. For writing, now that I'm not publishing newspapers or writing much about local history, TextEdit works fine or I have ClarisWorks for anything fancier. In the late 80's, we used Funlwriter on a TI99, an Osborne Model 1 with Wordstar and an Apple II clone (don't recall the WP) at the end of the chain that drove the Compugraphic phototypesetter. I wrote at home on the TI, put the files on a TI BBS, called it up from work on the Osborne and grabbed 'em as BBS text downloads. I could bang out a story on the TI's keyboard quicker than I could with any of the other systems, I was that used to it. Especially once I put the keyboard in it's own enclosure connected via ribbon cable. Even today I think I could type faster on that TI than I can on this Mac keyboard. -Ed

Sidecart Flux Capacitor? (Seein's how Fritz already nailed it)

Just going from my old memory, doesn't Funlweb's EA loader do something like Rich's REA and display the program name? I do remember the trials of discovery. "oh. It isn't START. Let the guessing begin!" -Ed

EZ Keys included one you could enter with a keystroke. I'd bet it's that same line shown above. It would enter itself as Line 1, RUN and then DELETE itself. Pretty neat to watch! Then there's the one in SXB: CALL CAT("DSKn.") -Ed

Not as of yet on my G4 PPC. I have had issues getting a correct Java to work on that platform. The thread I started back in 2014 (linked to above by Lucien) goes into a lot more detail, and you were there to offer a bunch of help. It was good to revisit that thread and I jotted down some things to try. I know more about it all now than I did back in '14, but I'm still not up to speed on any of it. -Ed

Aw shucks, Opry! To run MacV9T9, you'll have to upgrade from your Mac Plus. I haven't tested FIAD Extractor on a Plus yet. I first came across MacV9T9 when I was using a Performa 636 with the LC040 chip and it ran perfectly, actually better than it does using Classic 9.2 under osX on a fast G4 PPC. From the ReadMe file: >>>MacV9T9 - Read-Me 0.2.1a2 - 11/07/1999 Hello ! Thanks for your interest in MacV9T9. I advise you to read the first three paragraphs before running MacV9T9 for the first time. Description : MacV9T9 is a TI99/4A emulator for the Macintosh. It is based on V9T9 6 for PC (and to a lesser extent, on the new V9T9 in C - never released) by Ed Swartz. System requirements : MacV9T9 needs approximately 1 Mb of free memory. It requires system 7 and Color QuickDraw (and therefore a 68020). I am not sure it will work with system 7.0, or QuickDraw 8bits, since this was not tested. Furthermore, it seems that MacV9T9 is not fast enough on a 68020 or 68030 to be really useful. (Nota : It should not be too difficult for me to make MacV9T9 work with system 6 or basic Quickdraw. But I won't do so unless I have reports that the speed is decent on 68020/68030 computers. (I might still do this, because it would be funny to have MacV9T9 run in vMac, which only emulates a Mac Plus...)) <<<