horizon2374

I’m very sorry for your loss Kevin. I reached out to your Dad many months ago but saw he was going through some health challenges. I saw one of his posts years prior about a project he worked on in which Plato software on the TI was made available in a condensed format. I was able to download these files and confirm that they worked nearly perfectly - a testament to his knowledge and expertise! I’m sure this was one of many other projects he worked on, making many other great contributions. God Bless you and my condolences to the family. Thank you.

If it is true, 415 buyers for FinalGROM is impressive. The case on this one looks good! No SD card included, but easy to obtain. As I would be new to FinalGROM, I imagine you download from whtech? Are there any limitations for QI consoles (I have 1981 ROM)?

OLD CS1, it’s crazy on eBay over the past few years. It’s a con for sure, prices are inflated super high… most items are untested - those items should be offered for LESS money, not more! Where do they come off with these crazy high values?? Like that $2,500 light gun??? Which by the way, the seller offered $200 off what a bargain at $2300?!?! Then they bring the price down to $1,999??? How about you start with the original offer price of $30.00 as a starting bid? Only then will you discover the ‘real’ value, or at least after a bidding war what someone is willing to pay!

Looking for Dig Dug cart, anyone have one for sale? Thank you!

I have my cards arranged as follows: 1 - Flex cable interface 2 - 32K memory expansion 7 - RS-232 interface 8 - Corcomp DS/DD disk controller …this way it balances the cards out side-to-side, but I think I should move the RS-232 to slot 6 and the Corcomp controller to slot 7 to make it easier to remove the floppy cable if needed when removing the controller card. But come to think of it… do you think it’s better to give space between each card to promote better air flow and produce less heat between them? If so the card arrangement would be: 1 - Flex cable interface 3 - 32K memory expansion 5 - RS-232 interface 7 - Corcomp DS/DD disk controller Then there is that elusive UCSD Pascal card… 😊😊

Out of curiosity, what is the Myarc cartridge saver?

Prices vary widely - as cheap as FREE or at least $50 on eBay. Can go upwards of that. Try to find one that is tested - that's hard enough in and of itself!

I can tell you that's one of the oldest 5.25" drives I've ever seen. That flat door cover is probably from 1979-80, I believe it was used in some the original TI external drives (PHP1850C) as it is shown in the manuals that accompany it. That being said, your termination pack and resistor packs look like they are setup properly. The fact that your drive cable is not original shouldn't be an issue as it looks like it is not twisted in any way. But that drive is OLD. The belt is probably gone - check underneath the drive and inspect the condition of the belt, I'm almost certain it is probably frayed or stretched beyond repair. Repairs are not easy on these drives. Replacement belts are somewhat hard to come by. If you are able to find a replacement belt, next step would be to lubricate the 2 rails that the head moves back and forth on - the stepper motor won't function if properly if rails are not lubricated properly. To get to the rails, you may have to remove the top board out of the way or find your way in with a q-tip. Best advice would be to find a replacement drive - preferably a TI disk memory drive from Shugart. But keep in mind a lot of these drives have issues, and unless they were well-cared for, stored properly, and/or used within a respectable amount of time, most of them fail in some way. I hope this helps!

Do Funware carts work with QI models with the original ROM (non-v2.2)? I recently bought a Funware cart it’s not working only shows 1 FOR TI BASIC. All other 3rd party carts (Atarisoft & Parker Brothers) working fine.

Current Setup: - Corcomp DS/DD Controller - MPI Micro Peripherals 52S drive (internal) I've given up! I even bought another drive from eBay (Magnetic Peripherals BR8B1A), and same results (will format drive but no boot sector read). Drives I've tried with external connection: - MPI Micro Peripherals 51 - MPI Micro Peripherals 52 - Magnetic Peripherals BR8B1A None work correctly. I thought maybe it was the controller on the external side causing issue - but when I tried to connect them to internal connection, same result. Next step would be 2 half-heights (Matsushita?) with custom drill holes. I do have an internal drive cable that will work with 2 drives (connect to internal drive connection on Corcomp controller), but would need power Y-cable. It's been a tiring project though - think I'm gonna stick with the single drive! Unless someone can send me drives that are known to work!! Hahahaha. Aesthetics are important to me - nice-looking, matching, beige colored drives with red LED lights would be perfect. 😉

Thanks for the replies. I broke apart the cartridge to inspect it, knowing it is done. Upon close inspection, found a couple of the contacts corroded, one of them traces to a capacitor on the opposite side. Since it's not getting the voltage due to the contact issue on the cartridge itself, the capacitor gives out after a short time. As arcadeshopper's cartridge had a handrwitten label 'POP TI', my label said 'QB TI'. When I peeled the label back a bit, there was a circular window a bit translucent, hard to tell anything, but nonetheless interesting.

Crazy thing happened with my Q*Bert cartridge yesterday, it was playing fine then all of a sudden when I did a FCTN-QUIT it stopped working. Dead - blank screen on power on. Thought maybe one of the chips or capacitors fried? I tried it again today and it worked fine - then died again. Also one thing I found out was when using Parker Bros carts, the Navarone cartridge expander doesn't work properly. Something in the cartridges is interfering with how the expander works. I could select an empty cartridge slot on the expander (in this case I had Q*bert in Slot 2, Popeye in Slot 3), and Parker Brothers Game comes up on the selection screen on Slot 1, but then justifiably doesn't work. Weird huh? Guess I'm gonna need a new Q*Bert cartridge! Cartridge port on the TI-99 and module contacts are fine with all other cartridges. And yes, when troubleshooting the Q*Bert cartridge I inserted directly into the console.

Thank you, it doesn’t appear or sound to be slipping, but I’ll take your advice and put a new belt on it. Could be out of tolerance like you mentioned. Got one coming from eBay in about a week. Will let you know what I find out.

Thanks yes I cleaned the heads extensively and lubricated the rails. The stepper motor is functioning properly, as, oddly enough, the drive will perform an initialize of the disk but will fail when it finishes the operation since now it is looking for the boot sector / root directory. The drive needs to be repaired, not sure how or what to do but could be some type of adjustment. Easy to say just replace the drive but they are hard to come by, go for a sizable amount of money, and most of them are untested.

Thank you! You have better eyes than I do! 🤣 I followed your directions, and moved the pins on the shunt pack. This fixed an issue I was having with drive 2 turned off, drive 1 motor would keep running and couldn’t be accessed. 😊 Unfortunately drive 2 still isn’t cataloging the disk or reading/writing the boot sector/file directory. For testing purposes I tried hooking the drive to the internal cable and it still wouldn’t work (confirms this is not an external cable issue). So the drive needs to be repaired or try a different one.