Ed in SoDak

+1 on a bad keyboard as prime suspect. If you have a joystick, the Fire button may act like an F or J key. You'd still be dead in the water, but able to get past the Press any key screen. If you have the case opened, pretty easy to jumper some of the keyboard pins to check for the motherboard accepting anything. Trace out which pins are for the 1 or 2 key to get you to Basic or whatever module is installed. -Ed

I bought a second TI/PEB setup as backup but ended up setting both systems up. One I used to print or for disk copying or library chores. The seond might be online or used to pass the wait with a round of Parsec. They were set up in my photo darkroom and used near daily to time film and print development processes. In that situation, both systems had my Timer program running so if one crashed, I could simply switch to the second TI and keep going. Or use both to time two different process at once. It was also handy in programming, as I could just move a disk with work-in-progress to the other system for testing or making a quick backup without disturbing the programming session. Other than linking them by RS232, I never tried piggybacking the two together. -Ed

I think many of the TI sticks, even NOS, are failing due to foam rot or exudations from same corroding the contacts. I wondered about replacing the contacts with some modern miniature microswitches that might be easier to depress and more responsive. A hobby or craft store might have wooden spheres in various sizes that could be drilled to glue onto the stem for a better fit to the hand. But it's still a poor case design and hardly worth the effort. When I picked up a nice Prostick and Tac-II for cheap BITD, I didn't have the adapter, so I snipped the plug and cables from a worn-out pair of TI sticks and grafted it directly to the Atari wires, which gave me double-length cables. Not a bad answer, it was free, gave me a more comfortable seating distance from the console and has lasted lo these many years. Me, I apply the butter directly to my butt so I'm protected wherever I'm parked. Now, if only I could keep from sliding off the chair!

I had to do the same thing just a few days ago. Years ago, I "remapped" a TI99 keyboard to work on a Timex TS1000. I originally just hardwired a ribbon cable to it, but since that locked it to the computer it was wired to, I decided to add a connector to use the original TI's ribbon/connector. Within a few days of using it bare board, almost all the TI's ribbon conductors broke away, same as on yours, while my 30-year-old hack made with more flexible ribbon was still working fine. I trimmed back TI's stiff ribbon to where the individual conductors had the plastic removed from between them, so I could deal with stripping wires one at a time and resoldered that back onto the keyboard. All good so far. Not sure why it was built that way, but it was very handy to be able to shorten the cable. I don't know if doing that makes it too short to reconnect to a TI motherboard, since I was doing this to benefit my Timex and cable length was unimportant. For my male connector, I had some double-row solder-tail pin header connectors that matched the TI kbd connector's spacing. Bought 'em years ago in surplus from some catalog, long forgotten. I extracted the second row of pins from the plastic header with a fine needlenose, clipped it down to 15 pins and soldered it to my ribbon. Now my TI99/Timex keyboard hack is transportable. More relevant to the TI, I also did a similar thing to a surplus TI keyboard, where I added an extension ribbon from a second keyboard to the main unit and housed that in a compact wooden housing. That TI sported two keyboards, but one was on a long flexible ribbon that could be positioned on your lap or near to you on the desk, while the console and unwieldy firehose were way to the back and not subjected to jostling. -Ed

I always liked this version by Mike de Frank called Supertrek as the filename but Star Trek 1.2 or Super Star Trek 1.20 in the splash screens when you run it. This one was my favorite of the various "Treks" I found back then for the TI. A bit slow and tedious, but a game you can run while doing something else. When baddies pop up, Kirk always gets in the first licks. While Kirk, Doc and Scotty sip a few Romulan Ales, ship and crew sit patiently and await their orders. I put shields at 1500 and blast with phasers set around 500 to 1000. Usually clears the sector and a starbase is often close by to resupply. File size in emulation is 24k, all in XB. Here's a couple screen shots. -Ed

]I always liked this version by Mike de Frank called Supertrek 1.2 as the filename but Star Trek or Super Star Trek in the splash screens when you run it. This one was my favorite of what I found for the TI. File size in emulation is 24k, all in XB. Here's a couple screen shots. -Ed

Chances are the mags were starved for fresh material and rushed listings into print. Probably not enough lead-time to have some staffer's spouse or kid type it in to see if the published listing would even RUN. Several of my own programs have a few bugs I never fully squished. I just made a note in my docs or in REM statements in case I tackled it again later. -Ed

Look at a few to a half-dozen or so following issues to see if the error was caught and rectified. Mistakes happened often enough most magazines would have a regular space or column heading for errata or omissions. Sometimes readers caught it and you'll see something in the Letters section. With long publishing lead times, it usually took several months to make it into the magazine. -Ed

Whichever drive is scrubbing oxide has a serious fault that cleaning won't safely help. You can shine a light in there with no disk inserted and slowly close the door while you watch for the heads. The heads are tiny nubs on the ends of skinny arms which swing towards the disk surface as the door is closed. They are mounted on springy copper or some such. I've seen heads bend out of whack or fall off and drag along or the raw edges of the arms themselves contact the oxide coating on the disk. One rotation of this action will wreck a floppy. Do any testing on blank disks or those you've already successfully transferred. Don't risk the others till you verify things are ok. -Ed

Welcome to the forum! Forward thinkers are continuing to drive development for the TI and other great vintage computers. I'm no way near what others are doing, but I have my hands in the TI99, the Apple II and Timex/Sinclair in a round-robin fashion. I'm using both hardware and emulation, porting programs back and forth just using the minimal hardware and mostly what I already have laying around. Breadboards are handy for prototyping small circuits or building a limited one-off add-on, but they aren't really well-suited to anyone hoping for a more plug'n'play approach to hardware upgrades. Perhaps someone proficient in the architecture of the Pi and advanced TI chipsets could potentially design a daughtercard that would insert into the breadboard, but the complexity of what would be required to "emulate" a TI in hardware on a Pi would likely tax the limits for power as well as sheer size and scope. 40-pin chips plus support circuitry do not translate well to a single plane and tiny breadboard. TI did not make it easy for outsiders to make major changes to any of its facets, this fact has hindered the TI since birth. Maintaining backwards compatibility to retain the nostalia also crippled the Apple II. Even the last and best IIgs continued to require that old 140k disk-based programs be used via a 5.25 floppy drive, even though the IIgs might have both 3.5 drives and a hard drive attached. All was done to maintain "backwards compatibility." I considered buying a Geneve when it came out and was finally gaining some support that hinted to me it might stick around awhile. I was very serious about my TI in those days and did all my computing on it, which was basically everthing I still do today. But when I took serious look, the $500 investment for the card alone was money I felt would be better spent going to a more capable platform. In my own case, I changed over to Mac, but I never forgot my roots and the TI has come along for the journey as much as I could muster via emulation on the Mac and connecting the two physical machines. It's a great germ of an idea that could take root. Maybe not quite as you envision, but these little Raspberry machines and their ilk are bringing these old dreams of a "Super TI" closer to perhaps being more than a pipe-dream. There's a lot of us out there still exploring the possibilities of this vintage hardware, no matter which brand(s) you happen to favor. Just keep making history. It gives historians something to do! -Ed

I'd have to venture a guess the rtc feature was not in high demand when these boards were made and sold, as reflected by the present disinterest. Why so many different makers if the market was so slim is beyond me. But I'd have to guess those who feel a need for one, do so strongly. Many projects get their start when the creator feels the need themselves or senses a market. In either case, they're aligned to want to bring the product to the market. The offshoot is likely one of two scenarios. Either the owners of these cards know what they have and are hanging onto them or they are blissfully ignorant of what the heck that add-on card in their PE box is. Neither scenario releases any to the open market except by chance at an estate sale or someone finally liquidating their collection. Sounds like you've set a high desireability factor but a low market value, which seems a bit incongruous. Either sit and wait and hope to get lucky or be more proactive. Put out wanted-to-buy offers to ebayers who seem to frequently list TI items or by craiglist, or pics and descriptions printed up and posted at the local grocery, local newspaper, etc. Put your top price in the ad and again you wait. But at least you got some feelers out. That's how folks who collect antique radios, or vintage cars parts, etc., eventually find what they seek. Touch someone who doesn't use ebay or the internet for that matter. $50 seems a bit on the low side for a card which seems so scarce in the wild (or highly valued by the current owner). Besides, we know you really, really want one! I'm more in the TI dispersal mode than making new acquisitions. If I had one, you'd be tops on my list and I'm not one to chase the proverbial ebay highest offer price as my low starting bid. Surely there's others who think as I do but are unaware of what they have or your desire. The clock's ticking, better get busy! (Sorry, couldn't resist!) -Ed

My darkroom Timer program uses a clock, either the one in SXB or a short routine Bruce Harrison wrote for me in the case the program is run under XB. The program looks for the version and loads the appropriate code. The clock runs until you reboot the TI, so any XB/SXB program would thus have a screen display of the time. Though it's not all that accurate over a day it was a help on my timer program to have a dual time display. The current time could be specified if one wished to write the XB for it and a date calculated as well. No need for any hardware, but of course it's pretty limited and won't keep time when the TI is turned off. But who runs a darkroom AND owns a TI these days? This clock was independent of my timer, so the code could be lifted and used elsewhere. I otherwise never had a need for date-stamping of files on the TI. I do use clock/date/time-stamping a lot on my Mac, however. -Ed

I tried resistance checks of the power pins and didn't catch anything. Either I missed it or it's to different pins. A couple months ago I bought a 1500 that would not boot. Voltages were good and subbing out the main chips didn't improve it, so RAM was suspected, but I didn't know which chip. I had eight used pulled 4116s in my junk drawer and I was piggybacking the used chips onto each of the 1500's and that's when I blew the transistor. I think this transistor provides the -5v. I'm pretty sure I wasn't shorting any pins, but that made me nervous about proceeding with that method. A friend provided a short software routine that tested each memory location by writing 0 and 255 and reading it back to see if it worked. The 1500 had one stuck chip discovered when the write/reads gave an error only on the bit that one particular chip controlled. I had one socket on hand, so I pulled that lone 4116 and socketed it. Now I didn't need to piggyback to test my used chips, so I tried them all in the socket. When I tried these two shorted chips, the transistor would immediately heat up. When I installed the socket, I had also substituted a much beefier transistor, and it was better able to handle the short. I kept one finger on it as I tried each 4116. When it became hot in mere moments, I shut it down and got the shorted 4116 the heck out of there. While "safer" than before, it was still a risky proposition. Turns out none of my pulls "fixed" the 1500, but they did produce a different screen display, so I knew I was on the right track. I ordered a spare transistors, a full set of sockets and sixteen 4116s, but as it turned out, only one chip was bad in the 1500, the one we had already removed and socketed. So now I have plenty of new spares, but I'm still curious to see if I can determine the status of my pulls with out of circuit tests. I plan to compare one of the new chips to the pulls and see what transpires. I don't have a current-limited supply, but do have a bare board Timex 1000 with RAM pack to act as the test base. The 1500 is too scarce and cool to risk any further, especially now that it is working. I do have a Radio Shack electronics trainer with a small breadboard that runs on batteries. I could probably rig up a test circuit on it to do a short check more easily than hand-holding chips and meter leads. -Ed

I got into a pissing match with the op and don't feel a need to continue it. He seems pretty consistent on his opinion, which I don't happen to agree with. I read the 2011 thread he started where he expressed similar disrespect towards another AA member who didn't happen to match his desires. I don't have an urge to satisfy his "request" with his lack of respect for other's ownership of the original copyrights, nor of my own right to treat my own copies as I feel is best. A bit more tact on the op's part might've had a different outcome. I await the flames... -Ed

Thanks for the reply. Sure, a known-good chip can help troubleshoot RAM that's soldered in the circuit. But how about for checking unknown pulls? When I was piggybacking some old chips removed from a TI99, I managed to blow a power supply transistor twice, because a couple of the chips were apparently shorted. But shorted in a way that I could not determine that fact beforehand with a DMM. Or I just missed finding the shorted pins. That discouraged me from using the piggyback technique for checking RAM when the working status of the pull was unknown. I wasn't trying to find the bad RAM in the Timex 1500, we had already determined that with a software program. I was hoping to learn how to test some old RAM chips which were already removed from a TI99 console. Hopefully without blowing more parts in the 1500. So I was looking for an Out of Circuit method that did not risk damage to the computer itself. Moot point now, since one new chip got the 1500 working, but I still have old RAM pulls it would be good to be able to test without risk to the computer. In this instance piggybacking using RAM of unknown working status just got me into trouble. I was able to determine that two of my pulls were shorted chips, since they heated up the transistor very quickly and would blow it in a matter of a couple seconds. These I discarded. So yes, piggybacking can help, but only if the piggy on top is in good health to start with, lol. -Ed

Thanks! That's good info. I have the System Utilities disk which includes an option to convert a ProDOS disk to DOS 3.3, maybe I'll try that to make a copy. Mail to Canada is slow and expensive, I was trying to avoid shotgunning Ian a bunch of floppies that may do nothing on his system but waste postage and our time. Maybe there's a Candian AA member reading this who might have a extra II+ DOS floppy laying around they could mail to Ian for a "known good" disk he could test with? -Ed

My bad on the model, don't know where I upgraded your II+ to an e. I recall have other disks with mine that have DOS 3.2 or 3.3 on it other than the factory disks. Would those be more likely to work on the 48k II+? -Ed

Your first comment to me was that I'm selfish. So yeah it did seem like a personal comment aimed at me, tongue in cheek or not. I guess we got off on the wrong foot after that and I agree we do go at things differently. So far, I've kept my stash out of the landfill. I consider that a positive. It's still mine to do with as I choose. I consider what you do for preservation as you see best to also be a positive. I see that many of the sites that host pdf files of vintage magazines also have Google ad links or display ads or other links which I presume generate some income. So there's another gray area, were they investing or preserving by having ads on their site? Sure there's time and costs involved, just as there are with your or my methods. I admitted to hoping for some return eventually, but it'll take effort to realize much, if anything, no matter how I approach it. I have no idea what I'll do about my junk/stash/hoard, if anything. The magazines are way broader in scope than just computer-related publications and the magazines taken as a whole are just one category in the shed, so to speak. But nothing to sneeze at, I assure you. It looks like we both continue to acquire more hardware as well. What is the "best" eventual dispersal of that collection? All just things I muse on as I realize I need to do something with it all eventually or I force the wife to deal with it if she survives me some future sad day. All I can say is I'm working on it, and am trying to get the old vintage hardware out to those who can make good use of it. The magazines, due to the large effort in copying, have not been a priority. I probably have a greater attachment to those than the old computers, etc. and I suspect the largest monetary cost as well. I don't have a document scanner even if I wanted to strip off the spines to use it. Looking ahead, magazines of any given title are much more likely to be something the wife might know what they are, rather than some sort of hardware dingle to some unknown whatsit. -Ed

Now that Ian has his newly-acquired IIe going, I planned to help get him some basic software on floppies for it. I have a IIc and most if not all the "factory" disks. I planned to either make copies or send him a couple of the backups I have that came with my machine. Only problem is the IIc is 128k and he has only 48k on his IIe. One of my flioppies is marked ProDOS for 64k, the rest say 128k IIc. Would these even work on his unit? I have an Apple Legacy CD that included some Apple II software as DiskImageMounter/Disk Copy img files. I can't seem to open these, while all the other Mac-specific img files work fine. My alternate hope was to use adtPro to makes floppies of these, but if I can't open them on the Mac itself, not sure how I can extract the files to put on a floppy. So I seem kinda stuck at this point trying to help him out. I don't want to waste effort, as my IIc is currently boxed up and I've never run adtPro to make sure my cable would work, etc. Any suggestions for other ways I could provide what I might have? Or should he just go for the audio port as the easiest way at this point? -Ed

Wow, what a board! Your per chip cost so far is 8.33c each for the six you've harvested. Some people might flame the backside with a propane torch and harvest the lot with a bang against a tub to catch the dropping chips. Just in case some day you do learn it's some kinda rarity, mark the 74LS number of the chips you've removed, since there have been only six so far. -Ed

Not sure my stance. It depends. Don't get me wrong, I've done my share of preservation, free sharing, hosting etc. for decades. But it's been largely historical photographs or documents of my local area. While I've authored several publications which I sold for modest profit or made reprints of these photos for the reproduction fee, I've spent months at a microfiche, scanner, camera and research to do so. I honor any request for these images and the background research at no charge, as I've done for as many years. I've seriously done my part of preserving history, it just hasn't been in your particular area of interest. My "profit" has been one of exceeding reproduction cost/printing. It has no way come close to paying me for the time and investment in equipment. But I had other more profitable uses for the same gear and can you blame me for taking on projects and hoping to get a little jingle for my efforts? My magazine collection was begun decades before any easy or cheap method of copying them existed. I bought them for my own enjoyment, but saved them as they had a value to myself and I hoped one day to others as well. If you want to fault me for doing as I've done for 40 years primarily to please myself, more power to you. Sorry if I don't leap right onto what you think I should be doing instead. Prior to my commenting, you weren't even aware I existed, nor my pile of rags. I was kinda considering where these old Pop Computing issues might be buried in the shed to dig them out for a status check, but wow. I didn't expect to be taken to task over owning them. I don't find the response I met, second-guessing my intentions too encouraging for me to want to dig into any of it. -Ed

My! I didn't intend to hijack the discussion, but in a way it's on topic. I'll take the "selfish" comment as tongue in cheek. If it weren't for us who stash old things (avoiding "hoarder" here, lol) there would be hardly any old magazines, catalogs or old documentation. Any website online is subject to closure, change or disappearing without a trace, subject to the whims or finances of the site owner. I purchased the vast majority of my collections, paying anywhere from 50c to $4 an issue used or regular subscription price when new. Plus over 40 years of keeping the stuff safe, dry, flat and as mildew-free as I can. If I'm being selfish for keeping it for myself or hoping for a return on the effort and investment, so be it. I'm actually willing to share, but do not wish to destroy the original. I am by coincidence a pro photographer of several decades. I have the proper gear to copy flat art by multiple methods. Now we get to the time issue as others in this thread have noted. Nor do I want to put that much use on my spendy digital camera which I need for work more than archiving arcane subjects at no cost to those who did not make the effort to acquire originals for many years as I have. I was considering archiving the earlier Popular Electronics or Electronics Illustrated. Meanwhile someone with more tima nad money that I has already done both titles and placed them online. I'd hate to get into the effort of doing a collection, only to be superceded by another. I generally have other things on my plate to take up my time anyway. Someday I'd probably list these various titles for sale. Magazineslike Computer Shopper would be a spendy item to ship, no doubt much higher than the value of the magazine itself. If I should die first, my wife is as likely to dumptser the works, she's told me as much even though I have told her there's likely several thousands worth of used magazines if she'd take the trouble. I'm located about as far from anyone who gives a shit as I could be. Hmmm, hmmm and hmmm. A conundrum to be sure. -Ed

I have a huge untapped stash of this sort of ephemera. Boxes and stacks of Computer Shopper, Nuts & Volts back when it was actually a shopper, etc and etc. I applaud those who undertake the monumental task of scanning and organizing such collections online. Though to me, the only drawback is the issue's binder must be removed to allow scanning with a feeder. The original is essentially lost to the process. I still enjoy turning the pages and rereading them from time to time, that's kinda why I kept all these for decades. Last winter we had a 5-day power outage and my magazines read just fine by candlelight. Try that on your pdf! -Ed

Great job Ian! I was rootin' for you. Only a one-day setback from picking it up, too. WTG! Now, I wanna see a pic of that magic donor board that provided the 74LS04 and previously helped us both out with other chips. -Ed