Got myself a "Tweener" pc for copying floppies. Need help.

[Dripfree]

So a while back I bought a 5.25 floppy drive to copy old floppies. I found out my PC was to new and the BIOS couldn't work with it. The other day I rescued a Compaq Deskpro 2000 from the curb and I stuck the drive in there. I popped in an old Lotus 1 2 3 disk and the thing works. Now I want to start copying some 99/4a roms onto some floppies but I'm not sure how to go about it. What software will I use for this? Do I want to use an emulator? This thing is running Win 98 and has no USB or ethernet so im probably going to have to burn cd's to bring files to it so I want to get this right without burning coasters. I'm hoping someone experienced with this can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

[Hatta]

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/howto/ti99pc.html

[82-T/A]

So a while back I bought a 5.25 floppy drive to copy old floppies. I found out my PC was to new and the BIOS couldn't work with it. The other day I rescued a Compaq Deskpro 2000 from the curb and I stuck the drive in there. I popped in an old Lotus 1 2 3 disk and the thing works. Now I want to start copying some 99/4a roms onto some floppies but I'm not sure how to go about it. What software will I use for this? Do I want to use an emulator? This thing is running Win 98 and has no USB or ethernet so im probably going to have to burn cd's to bring files to it so I want to get this right without burning coasters. I'm hoping someone experienced with this can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

 

 

I'm sure the link posted is probably a better option... but if you don't want to waste burning CDs and copying back and forth, one way that you can copy files is through "NULL MODEM" cable... basically, it's a serial cable that connects to the serial port on either machine, and it flips the receive / transmit wires. This allows you to use something like ProComm Plus or Telemate (from the old BBS days) and you can transmit files back and forth.

 

If both computers have a 16550 UART, it'll come over at 128kbps.

[ataridave]

I just noticed this thread, and I'm interested in the Tandy 1000 RLX, which has a 3.25" floppy drives. Most of the games come on 5.25" disks. How do you copy a game on a 5.25" disk onto a 3.5" floppy disk?

[Dripfree]

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/howto/ti99pc.html

 

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the download link doesn't work on that page but after a bunch of searching I found a working mirror. I did get it on my Compaq but haven't had the time to really play around with it, but it looks like it is exactly what I need.

 

 

 

I'm sure the link posted is probably a better option... but if you don't want to waste burning CDs and copying back and forth, one way that you can copy files is through "NULL MODEM" cable... basically, it's a serial cable that connects to the serial port on either machine, and it flips the receive / transmit wires. This allows you to use something like ProComm Plus or Telemate (from the old BBS days) and you can transmit files back and forth.

 

If both computers have a 16550 UART, it'll come over at 128kbps.

 

I did consider doing something like that but for now I'm gona just use some dollar store cd's. This is kinda just a temporary work around till I get a 3.25" inch drive for TI.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Dripfree

[Dripfree]

So I'm hoping for a little more help from someone experienced in the ti99-pc software. I've been playing with TI99-PC all day and I'm not having much success. I've made multiple disks but cant get any to load on my TI. All the games I have downloaded are in the V9T9.dsk format. Some are extended basic games while other are assembly games. TI99-PC has the option for V9T9 files so I of course I use that. It makes the disk and I can do a catalog and see the files on there. When I put the disk in my PEB I try to load with disk manager 1000. No matter what disk I use I get a long beep a blue screen and a crash. I've also tried loading the extended basic games from extended basic using old command. I just get I/O errors. I can catalog the disk within disk manager 1000 and see all the files on the disk but I cant seem to run them. My thought is that I see TI99-PC copy's the files as DS SD. I think that disk format is coded into the V9T9 file. I am using the stock original drive in my PEB which I believe only supports SS disks. I also may have no clue what I'm talking about. I'm learning as I go here so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

[Dripfree]

Well I finally got some working floppies. Wow it was quite the project figuring this all out. I just used trial and error. I finally found that I first have to record the floppy once normally and then rewrite the same floppy over it again but this time using the double step option. Not sure why I got to do it that way but it works. TI99-PC says the double step option is for drives that don't support single density. I thought my drive was single density. Its an Epson SD 600. Maybe the SD stands for something else in this situation. Maybe its something completely different but when I record with this method it seems to work every time so I'm happy.

 

And as a side note I'm really impressed with the TI port of Kaboom. It's the first working disk I made and graphically it's pretty spot on.

[IainGrimm]

Omniflop does support the TI99/4A format so you have another option with that one, I use it for ST & Archimedes discs and it hasn't failed me yet.

 

http://www.shlock.co.uk/Utils/OmniFlop/OmniFlop.htm

 

Took a little working out writing the Arc disks, had to rename the .adf to .ads so it would write both sides of the disc but after doing that wrote everything I have thrown at it perfect.

Edited August 21, 2014 by IainGrimm

[Charlie_]

Well I finally got some working floppies. Wow it was quite the project figuring this all out. I just used trial and error. I finally found that I first have to record the floppy once normally and then rewrite the same floppy over it again but this time using the double step option. Not sure why I got to do it that way but it works. TI99-PC says the double step option is for drives that don't support single density. I thought my drive was single density. Its an Epson SD 600. Maybe the SD stands for something else in this situation. Maybe its something completely different but when I record with this method it seems to work every time so I'm happy.

 

And as a side note I'm really impressed with the TI port of Kaboom. It's the first working disk I made and graphically it's pretty spot on.

 

Wow. That is cool you figured out to do that and it works.

It was always my understanding that the PC needed a floppy controller capable of single density. That can be hard to find these days. In my old Win98 PC I put an old Adaptec SCSI controller card in that has a floppy controller able to do single density on it. I use that PC for writing TI99 disks and Atari disks. I don't have to write them twice or anything though.. The stock disk controller for the TI only works with single density. If you got disks to work on a stock TI means that Compaq you have must be able to read/write single density.