Raspberry Pi as a potential interface to other devices

[DrawsACircle]

I don't know if it has been considered using a Raspberry Pi as an interface between the Ti99 and other devices, or even as a device itself (emulating disc drives, RS232 interface, usb, ethernet, wifi, printer port, ??)

The Pi has several interfaces, USB, HDMI and Ethernet, but also some general purpose I/O's described here: http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals

I read a question on the TI99ers group on Facebook - how to connect a printer to your Ti99 if you do not want to invest in a PEB? Then you need a NanoPEB, connect it to your pc, run TIPrint on your pc.

Why not attach the Raspberry Pi to the NanoPEB, all you need is a MAX3232 and some capacitors to convert the 3,3v levels on the Pi to RS232 levels, then some linux/python/?? programming to forward what is recieved from the Ti to the USB port on the Pi.

You might even be able to use a WIFI dongle on the Pi's usb port as an interface to your printer (the Ti would then appear on your network :-))

I have not (at least not recently) checked what is needed to interface directly to the Ti99, but consider this as an input to a potential (cheap) solution to what might seem impossible.

[UKRetrogamer]

I'm pretty sure there's an Arduino to SIO interface being developed for the Atari 8-bit range, mentioned in the reverent forums. I'm sure a Pi could do so much more. Sounds plausible.

[+arcadeshopper]

I don't know if it has been considered using a Raspberry Pi as an interface between the Ti99 and other devices, or even as a device itself (emulating disc drives, RS232 interface, usb, ethernet, wifi, printer port, ??)

The Pi has several interfaces, USB, HDMI and Ethernet, but also some general purpose I/O's described here: http://elinux.org/RPi_Low-level_peripherals

I read a question on the TI99ers group on Facebook - how to connect a printer to your Ti99 if you do not want to invest in a PEB? Then you need a NanoPEB, connect it to your pc, run TIPrint on your pc.

Why not attach the Raspberry Pi to the NanoPEB, all you need is a MAX3232 and some capacitors to convert the 3,3v levels on the Pi to RS232 levels, then some linux/python/?? programming to forward what is recieved from the Ti to the USB port on the Pi.

You might even be able to use a WIFI dongle on the Pi's usb port as an interface to your printer (the Ti would then appear on your network :-))

I have not (at least not recently) checked what is needed to interface directly to the Ti99, but consider this as an input to a potential (cheap) solution to what might seem impossible.

 

This has been done on a few other classics.. apple 2 has a apple2pi board that plugs into the gpio connector of the PI and connects to the apple II's bus.. provides disk emulation, tcpip and keyboard forwarding to/from the pi's linux

 

there is a project where someone designed an amiga floppy emulator using the pi at the hardware level (no os) (another cool idea)

 

tiprint probably won't run on a pi since it's an arm not intel.. You can't run wine or windows and it's a windows app.. if we could convince Fred to rewrite hdx and tiprint in GCC it would port to whatever

 

Greg

 

 

Greg

[+Lee Stewart]

There’s been quite a bit posted on this forum about the potential uses of the Raspberry Pi. Here are just a couple:

 

TI, MESS, Raspberry Pi, and PLATO?

Raspberry pi

 

...lee

[Asmusr]

I think it would be really great, especially for newcomers, if such a device existed, that you could build from a few readily available components and load up with some software to get a fully featured PEB. I had the same idea about a year ago, but I don't have the hardware knowledge required to carry it out. The nanoPEB is a great device, but nobody knows when or if Jamie Malilong is going to produce more, and we have no knowledge about which features he's going to add next.

 

One problem is the number of general purpose IO pins on the RPi. Another problem is whether the RPi is fast enough to accurately implement the 32K expansion, for instance. Texas Instruments has made the BeagleBone black that has more pins than the RPi and is also faster (besides being a Ti product, which makes it more appropriate).

[Vorticon]

I am actually currently working on a project connecting an Rpi to the TI's parallel port to capture images taken by the Rpi camera board. The main problem is that the Rpi needs 3.3V and the TI 5V, so I have to use several level shifters to achieve bidirectional communication. I seem to still have a lot of timing issues to sort out but I'll figure it out. I'm using Python on the Rpi end and assembly on the TI one.

Just because I am masochistic, I am having all the image processing being done on the fly by the TI, not the Rpi (Raw RGB conversion to the TI's color space and pixel color and layout limitations), which is obviously pretty slow. Latest tests show about 1 minute per image he he...

As to why I'm doing this rather useless project, well it's a great way to learn Rpi programming and GPIO interfacing. With some luck it will make for a cool demo at next year's Faire