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ElectricLab

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Posts posted by ElectricLab

  2. Posted

    Debian is great, and I have done a lot of work with it, especially for hobby and home automation. I run CentOS on my servers, and my kids all have Ubuntu on their laptops. Ubuntu is more "Windows-like" and is easier for people who want to switch.

     

    I spend 90% of my time in a shell, where real work is done, and you have a history of all your previous commands which is extremely useful when you need to recall that clever thing you did two weeks ago. To me, a GUI is great for things you don't need to keep track of or ever need to script, and slows down many otherwise simple operations. For example if I need to search my email for something I know I received, it takes seconds to 'grep' through all my mail folders going back almost 20 years. Searching with a mail app is always orders of magnitude slower for stuff like that. Want to find all source files with certain text in them, no matter what level of directories they're in? It's simple to do from the command line. There are lots of cases where I reach for a terminal and get stuff done, especially corner-cases, that would take lots of hunting through menus to accomplish or would have to find some app to do. Hardcore UNIX people know what I'm talking about - it's just a different philosophy on computing. Using lots of simple single-purpose tools which, when chained together, do amazing and powerful things. Once you get good with these and can come up with the right incantations, there is no substitute.

     

    And NO way is the Windows CMD prompt or even Powershell even close to the sheer awesomeness of a real shell. At my current day job, I tried to get by with Powershell since they're a M$ shop, and you cannot BYOD. I had high hopes for Powershell but find it so cumbersome that I ended up installing CygWin and life was good. It's 2016 and you still can't resize a bloody Windows command prompt to use the whole screen, and want to copy/paste to/from it? NOPE. Powershell is a little better but is still weak compared to Bash and UNIX tools.

     

    My workstation of choice is a MacBook. Yes it's candy-coated UNIX, but it bridges the gap between my desire for a true shell and allowing me to run apps which keep me compatible with the modern business world, such as MS Office. I have OpenOffice installed as well, but it is never quite as good and doesn't render things properly sometimes. The last thing you want is to look unprofessional with clients, so I always recommend people to use MS Office proper if they can. And MS Excel is hard to beat for doing things beyond simple spreadsheet work.

     

    I find that most casual users (Not people like us) really think about applications, and couldn't care less about OS and religious fervor about it. They just buy a computer and use what's on it, mostly for watching cat videos and Facebook. Like Greg, I steer people that rely on/force me to support their machines to something like Ubuntu if possible. It's amazing how infrequent that it falls on its face compared to Windows.

     

    All these OSes have their place in the universe, and to each their own!

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

     

    Or see www.grc.com/never10.htm.

     

    "Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows updates, including

    the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583. Never10 simply

    employs Microsoft's documented and sanctioned configuration settings to

    instruct it NOT to change the installed version of Windows."

     

    I've run it on a couple of PCs and seems to do the job.

     

    Steve Gibson is the man.

    • Like 3

  5. Posted

    That's awesome Stuart! It hadn't occurred to me how useful that will be! People can now just buy one of those USB-RS232 adapters like these: http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-RS-232-Male-Serial/dp/B00J4N9T9C/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&keywords=usb%20rs232&qid=1465335742&ref_=sr_1_4&sr=8-4&linkCode=ll1&tag=atariage&linkId=fb41672bcfdf1077811f8f1dda900eba

    and get an 9-pin to 25-pin adapter and get online. Cheaper and less hassle than the UDS-10, that's for sure! Of course it means you have to have a PC/MAC around and on while on the TI but this is probably not a problem - most people probably have an old laptop they could devote to this function. Great stuff.

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    I've only experienced it truncating the display once or twice in chess. I don't remember it happening in chat.

     

    Ever since I changed my Lantronix to auto-increment source ports, I am not getting half-loaded pages anymore. I have had the chat program running all evening in my lab and it has loaded 100% each time - something it wasn't doing at all before. Sadly, I never seem to be on the chat when anyone else is :)

  8. Posted

    Omega, I think that's a great idea. Launching a rocket when it's your turn in a chess match sounds AWESOME! j/k :) I have thought about this and we could easily have the chess game do a refresh like the chat program does and beep when it's your turn instead of only emailing you. The problem I have is that the chat program experiences semi-loaded and truncated pages after a while. I thought it might be a buffer overflow but when I press H to refresh, it always loads OK. Have you experienced this?

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Stuart:

     

    I checked and I don't have this setting in either of my UDS-10 devices. I've not had the timeout problem, so maybe mine has this set by default and it isn't changeable?

     

     

    [[email protected] ti994a]$ telnet 192.168.0.242 9999

    Trying 192.168.0.242...

    Connected to 192.168.0.242.

    Escape character is '^]'.

    MAGTEK ETHERNET INTERFACE UNIT

    Serial Number 2450745 MAC address 00:20:4A:24:C6:39

    Software version 04.5bB (010903)

    Press Enter to go into Setup Mode

    *** basic parameters

    Hardware: Ethernet Autodetect

    IP addr - 0.0.0.0/DHCP/BOOTP/AutoIP, no gateway set

    DHCP device name : not set

    ***************** Security *****************

    SNMP is enabled

    SNMP community name: 80

    Telnet setup is enabled

    TFTP download is disabled

    Port 77FEh is enabled

    Web Server is enabled

    Enhanced password is disabled

    ***************** Channel 1 *****************

    Baudrate 38400, I/F Mode 4C, Flow 00

    Port 10001

    Remote IP Adr: --- none ---, Port 00000

    Connect Mode : D4 Disconn Mode: 00

    Flush Mode : 00

    ****************** Expert ******************

    TCP Keepalive : disabled

    Change Setup : 0 Server configuration

    1 Channel 1 configuration

    5 Expert settings

    6 Security

    7 Factory defaults

    8 Exit without save

    9 Save and exit Your choice ? 1

    Baudrate (38400)

    I/F Mode (4C) ?

    Flow (00) ?

    Port No (10001) ?

    ConnectMode (D4) ?

    Remote IP Address : (000) .(000) .(000) .(000)

    Remote Port (00000) ?

    DisConnMode (00) ?

    FlushMode (00) ?

    DisConnTime ( 00:00) ?:

    SendChar 1 (00) ?

    SendChar 2 (00) ?

    Change Setup : 0 Server configuration

    1 Channel 1 configuration

    5 Expert settings

    6 Security

    7 Factory defaults

    8 Exit without save

    9 Save and exit Your choice ?

  11. Posted · Edited by ElectricLab

    Very cool - thanks for sharing!

     

    Stuart's right, the output of the cassette motor control is a transistor, it'll only work one way. I just peeked at the TI's schematic and I see that the motor control is the emitter and collector of another NPN transistor which is opto-isolated from the 9901. You might be able to drive a small relay directly from the output. I'd suggest a current limit in series with the relay to preserve battery life.

     

    References:

    http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/man/ti99_tech.pdf

    https://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/TI-99/4a_Cassette_port

  15. Posted

    Cschneider - I'm anxious to see if this fixes your issue as well. It sounds like some NAT devices may disallow new connections using the same source port, until that "connection" is timed out. The connection is a state that the NAT maintains for your internal IP address to the outside world, so when it gets responses from the remote end, it knows where to send them internally. Auto-incrementing the source port for each new connection is like how your PC works. I just confirmed this on my MacBook by hitting one of my websites which watching in the terminal and showing my connections.

     

    First I simply hit my website myti99.com with Safari and ran netstat -t in a terminal:

     

    Coreys-MacBook-Pro:~ corey$ netstat -t |grep myti99

     

    tcp4 0 0 172.20.10.3.52184 mail.myti99.com.http ESTABLISHED

    This shows I have one connection established with the remote server, and my source socket (IP address + Port) is: 172.20.10.3.52184

    Simply refreshing the browser causes a brand new connection or two to be created, on higher local port numbers:

    Coreys-MacBook-Pro:~ corey$ netstat -t |grep myti99

    tcp4 0 0 172.20.10.3.52187 mail.myti99.com.http ESTABLISHED < NEW!

    tcp4 0 0 172.20.10.3.52186 mail.myti99.com.http ESTABLISHED < NEW!

    tcp4 0 0 172.20.10.3.52184 mail.myti99.com.http CLOSE_WAIT

    There are now 2 new connections, with source ports 52186 and 52817. The reason for multiple ports being present is that web browsers will launch multiple TCP connections to fetch things like JS libraries, images, etc in separate threads to speed up page rendering. This is not the case with the TI of course :)

    The Lantronix devices are usually put in place for simple comms for a specific purpose on a LAN, and we're asking more of it sending it through a NAT device.

    I could be talking out my reverse port, but this is what I think is going on.

    -Corey.

  16. Posted

    JediMatt: You're welcome to use my logic analyzer anytime you want it. It's a Gould K205 and I do have cables and pods for it, as well as its manual. I haven't used it much, but it's a capable little box. It was 50% off on "black Friday" a couple of years ago at Surplus Gizmos. It had a RAM error during POST which went away when I reseated all the RAM in it.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    We'll get together soon Joseph - I just wish you lived a bit closer! What do you think about heading out West? I live a couple miles north of the end of the MAX line. We could spend a Saturday afternoon hacking away at all of these things, and making cables/mods and all that jazz. I have a well-equipped bench with a soldering station. I have access to SMT tools as well.

     

    I think I have a spare 5v supply for that nanoPEB if you don't have one. Why the designer didn't tap the 5 volts available RIGHT THERE ON THE SIDE PORT is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it was to keep people from depriving it of power during writes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    Chris,

     

    I think we could get to the bottom of the issue with a packet sniffer like Wireshark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireshark) which would let us see where the communication breakdown is. We should be able to home in on which side, Lantronix or the server, is not responding to the other.

     

    I keep a small hub and laptop around for just this sort of thing. I used this for figuring out some issues earlier on in the Browser development.

    You need a hub and not a switch in order to do this. If you want to give this a try, I'll me know and I'll give you more detailed info as to what I did, if you're interested.

     

    Thanks,

    Corey.

  22. Posted

    That screenshot looks like a bad request was sent by the browser, and pressing H to reload the page might clear that up. Sometimes depending on my Internet connection, I get half-loaded pages and I'm pretty sure I've gotten the error before that your screen shot indicates. I'd just try refreshing to see if it reloads.

     

    At least we know that you're able to connect to Stuart's server to resolve the IP address of his domain, which happens before a page load. If you're getting that far, I think you're just experiencing glitches due to lack of buffering and flow control with the TI's RS232 hardware. Do you have another Lantronix device to compare results to?

  24. Posted

    Omega - Thanks for making this happen. I sure had a great time meeting people in person and seeing what ideas people have cooking, and learning just how much local knowledge there is out there about our beloved TIs.

     

    Thank you Joseph for tagging along with me and making the ride much more enjoyable with great discussions about anything and everything. I hope you dust off that AtariAge account and join in on the fun.

     

    Thank you Greg McGill for patiently burning eproms for the four new cartridges that I just had to have. My son and I played Robotron for hours last night :)

     

    Thanks to everyone who did a demo. I'm amazed with what you guys are up to, and I can't wait to see more. RXB was something I'd heard about, but seeing Rich demo it and explain some of what it does - wow. Had things like this existed back in 1983, TI would have been hard to beat. And I really have to build the USB keyboard adapter that JediMatt designed. It never really struck me just how awesome this project it until I saw it up close. I've been thinking about BJ's barcode demo and thinking about its possibilities. Scanning data in/out of the TI in this way could have some seriously cool uses. Being able to transfer a file and save it to a disk right on the TI with a few QR code scans might be a great way to get and try new programs right on the real iron. Emulators are cool and all, but playing with the original hardware is way more fun to me.

     

    I feel so overwhelmed with new things I want to do and try, my Project-ADD is going to go into hyperspeed.

     

    I hope to see you all again soon.

    -Corey.

    • Like 7
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