cbmeeks

Thanks! I will look at my drives and see if they are on the list.

I just purchased a floppy disk controller (PHP1240) for my PEB. I read the MainByte page on it and it appears that I can only use an official TI disk drive. SSSD or DSSD drives. Is that true? I have a couple standard 1.2 MiB floppy drives but I'm guessing those can't work. What's my best option for a 5 1/4" drive? Thanks!

I wonder if this would have made any headlines at all if it wasn't an Apple based computer? Don't get me wrong, I love my many Apple II's but if this story had been a Commodore 64 or a TI-99/4A, I doubt CNN would have given it the time of day.

Who would have ever thought it? Who could have ever believed an Apple IIe computer would still work all of these years later? Thanks to CNN's top-notch reporting, we now learned that there exists in this world...an actual working....Apple IIe. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/17/tech/30-year-old-apple-computer-work-trnd/index.html Hey CNN....this just in....man drives 1970's era Volkswagen Beetle.....kid plays baseball with 40 year old mitt.....who'da thunk it!!! **EDIT** OK, sarcasm over....mother always taught me to look for the positives. OK...something positive....perhaps CNN's coverage of the Apple II would spark more interest in vintage computers? Wait, that might not be positive. Bad enough eBay scalpers have latched on...

Holy cow! Great work!

Right. I knew IEEE was an organization. I just assumed when Stuart mentioned IEEE he meant the RS-232 card. So there was an IEEE-488 card too?

No worries there. My machine has the 32K expansion. In fact, I plan on getting a SAMS card sometime soon. :-)

SWEET! So, once I'm able to burn my own carts, of my own software, I will literally have no reason to leave my house. Thanks!

Wait, does that mean I can write an XB program...compile it....and then take that compiled binary and convert it to a cart? So the end user wouldn't need XB to run it?

Well.....I saw a few of them on eBay and they were $100 or so. Except the one that was $39.95. So my gut told me to just buy it. Which I did. Looks to be in pretty good shape and it's from a seller I've bought from before.

I looked online and the cheapest I could find was $39 + S/H. Is that a reasonable price? There doesn't seem to be many of them around.

The Myarc sounds nice but I have a few other purchases ahead of it. 🙂 I'll search for the Wilhelm compiler. Will I need a disk system to use it? I was just going to save to cassette until I can get me a TIPI or real disk drive/controller.

That's a great question. I was thinking the joystick too but wasn't sure if any of the pins were bi-directional. I could just make the PET trigger the "fire" button of the TI and the TI could pulse a pin on the user port of the PET.

I'm thinking of working on a small project that requires the TI-99/4A and a Commodore PET to "talk" to each other. Normally, this would be a job for serial and while the PET has a serial port, the stock TI does not. I have the PEB but I have not obtained a serial card yet. What I do have is the 32K sidecar expansion that has some header pins. So, I was wondering, how difficult would it be to use some of those pins as crude I/O? All I would need is a simple triggering system. I don't need to transfer data. Just something like: 10 TI sends signal to PET 20 PET detects signal, runs script 30 PET finishes script, sends signal to TI 40 TI detects signal, runs script 50 GOTO 10 Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm learning TMS9900 assembly language. But it's a little slow-going at the moment. In the meantime, I'd like to tinker around with some graphics/sound on the TI using BASIC. The official Extended BASIC seems to be a popular choice but I read many times that it's slow. XB is probably fast enough for what I want to do for now but I wouldn't mind playing with something that is faster and maybe even be compiled. The most complex thing I would want to do with it would be along the lines of Asteroids or PacMan. I'll save the more complex programs for assembly. What do you suggest? Besides assembly, what are the cool kids using for graphics/sound on the TI? Thanks! PS, I wonder if there should be a sticky somewhere for this. Like a PROS/CONS of each language for the TI. I know there are a lot of them! Might help people make some choices.

I'll take one as well! While I don't currently own a TI disk drive, when I finally get one, I will have something I can load with it. :-) Sign me up for a copy.

That would be a neat trick. I assume you put them in reversed positions pointed at each other?

Call me crazy, but I'd love to track down and purchase a TI-99 Modem. http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/modem.html I've always loved acoustic coupler modems and what better system to use one than on the TI? Of course, I haven't had a land-line in about 12 years but why should that stop me? Are those things incredibly rare? Anyone willing to part with one for less money than a used Ford Pinto?

Agreed. As someone who has dabbled in getting a Propeller (160 MIPS micro-controller) to monitor the bus speed of a 6502, I can confirm that what they did in software is nothing short of impressive. Just proves my point...through enough cycles at something and you can do just about anything.

LOL!!! That wasn't just an internet saying...I actually did laugh out loud! That Leaning Tower of RAM is awesome. It clearly falls into that saying of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Hahaha

That's awesome! What all do you have in your sidecars? I'm not familiar with them. Are they various devices like RS-232, RAM, etc.? BTW...I'd love to have that acoustic coupler. Not that I could use it. But I want it really bad. :-)

The TI-99/4A is famous (infamous?) for it's expandability. We've all seen the pictures of the poor TI with a half-dozen devices out to the side. This is both hilarious and awesome at the same time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A#/media/File:Ti994_long.jpg So my question is, are any of you running a massively wide setup like this? Or, did you in the past?

FYI, it seems the daughter card is nothing more than an Orange Pi Zero. Or some variation of it. http://www.orangepi.org/orangepizero/ Chris Torrence posted a video on it and you can even see Linux (or something) boot up really quick when he powered on the computer. Doesn't really matter all that much but at least now I know what it is. Still want one.

I'm so old....lol When I was born, Nixson was still president. :-)

AH! I didn't know that. Well, that's good news I guess. Oh my...what kind of fan is that? Looks like something I'd put in my car engine. lol