Omega-TI Posted July 14, 2020 Share Posted July 14, 2020 In an effort to keep the main listing of thread clean and tidy, and devoid of countless similar posts, based on a suggestion by @InsaneMultitasker, I'm starting this thread as a catch all for people posting ideas for the TI. So, if you have an idea for a new product, program or exploit, maybe you'll consider posting it in this thread. So, GO FOR IT! You never know, the idea you have today could be something many of us use in the future, after all, it's happened many times in the past. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 15, 2020 Author Share Posted July 15, 2020 Well, if this thread crashes & burns, at least I can say I tried. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 I actually meant that in a positive way. "Just because you think its a bad idea, it might not be." was more like how i hope people would read it. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 15, 2020 Author Share Posted July 15, 2020 33 minutes ago, jrhodes said: I actually meant that in a positive way. "Just because you think its a bad idea, it might not be." was more like how i hope people would read it. Oh! ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 5 hours ago, Omega-TI said: In an effort to keep the main listing of thread clean and tidy, and devoid of countless similar posts, based on a suggestion by @InsaneMultitasker, I'm starting this thread as a catch all for people posting ideas for the TI. Ha ha ha ... 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 Well, if potentially *BAD* ideas are allowed... Bodge-wire based boards tend to be ugly balls of linguini, right? Well... A thought occurs to me. It is entirely possible to 3D print directly on top of perfboard. It should then be possible to print out little wire retention channels on top of the perfboard, and thus have physical, mechanical channels into which one can gently stuff down their bodge wires using a plastic spudger. Those can then be routed to the appropriate perforated holes, and a circuit board that is neat and tidy could be produced. With an appropriate stand (held by the corners, elevated above normal build platform, and machine re-calibrated with that location as Z-0?), it might be possible to put routing channels on both sides of the PCB that way (flip it over, and print the other side. Board suspended in air, held down by corners?), allowing a dual sided bodge-wire card, that is neat and tidy. The only issues I can easily foresee are that heating with the iron could melt the deposited plastic channel layer, and that there would be a need for windows in the channel layer for sockets, discrete parts, etc-- to be inserted into, and these windows might not be large enough to reach with fat irons. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digdugnate Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 MBX Emulator peripheral 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DuaneAL Posted July 15, 2020 Share Posted July 15, 2020 3 hours ago, digdugnate said: MBX Emulator peripheral MBX + joytalk+ joystick adapter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonecool Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 (edited) Geneve GENEVE-PI Not sure how that would be possible, or if. Just throwing out my bad idea. The Geneve came out at a time when I was really young and couldn't afford it but loved reading about it in Tennex/Triton catalogs. Edited July 19, 2020 by jonecool 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 Geneve lives inside the PEB, right? There's already a PEB version of the TIPI, so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonecool Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 1 hour ago, wierd_w said: Geneve lives inside the PEB, right? There's already a PEB version of the TIPI, so... *IF* you own a Geneve+PEB, I'm thinking literally outside of "the box". Assume you have no PEB nor Geneve card in the PEB. Only the expansion port to... the Geneve-PI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 That does not make sense... The geneve is a card that completely replaces the TI99/4A, IIRC. It has its own VDP, Its own CPU, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640 The purpose of the Geneve was to transform the PEB from being just a dumb peripheral enclosure, into a complete "Single unit" enhanced TI 99, with a more capable VDP, and some other perks. A Geneve+Tipi, in this kind of arrangement, would be a board with a keyboard port, serial ports, joystick ports, and video out, that exposes a jedi-matt connector for the 32k and tipi. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick99 Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 6 hours ago, jonecool said: *IF* you own a Geneve+PEB, I'm thinking literally outside of "the box". Assume you have no PEB nor Geneve card in the PEB. Only the expansion port to... the Geneve-PI. The Geneve 2020 might be able to connect with a TIPI?, or maybe it will have WIFI built in? ? I will spend my cash on the Geneve 2020, no doubt. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 23, 2020 Author Share Posted July 23, 2020 One idea I acted on recently was to be able to EASILY share the SD card between my P-Box TIPI and my portable TIPI. We all know that on the original sidecar TIPI and the TIPI/32K, getting to the SD card is fairly easy, however on the P-Box TIPI pulling teeth is easier than gaining access to the SD card. So, what I did was get myself an SD card extension... ... now if I want to swap cards, replace a card or even use and older standard size SD card, I should be good to go. It looks like it'll blend in 'okay'. I'll have some time next week to pull everything apart, clean and reinstall everything, so I'll let you know how it worked out then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 What I have actually been contemplating doing, is configuring the Pi to mount a network fileshare (My home NAS does NFS, so I can have native unix file permissions without translations) and store all disk images and pals there. I only have just the one TI (and unlike more diehard fans of this system, one is all I think I shall ever need), but it would allow me to never have to fiddle with the TIPI's sdcard, basically ever. Between work and other projects though, I have never gotten around to it, sadly. Maybe after the 26th, when I have taken a whole week off work. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 On 7/19/2020 at 8:48 AM, Nick99 said: The Geneve 2020 might be able to connect with a TIPI?, or maybe it will have WIFI built in? ? I will spend my cash on the Geneve 2020, no doubt. Wifi/TIPI is very up in the air and a long way off. I did ask JediMatt42 if it was OK to incorporate TIPI, and he said "its open source", but I would like to have everybody happy. So I ask first. I would like to use TIPI as the internet solution, because it is already established. Wifi won't be built in, because a WiModem or ESP8266 would introduce an additional microprocessor that far outclasses the 99105. (If I need a coprocessor, I would go as far as a 9995!) But if you have your Pi externally, that's ok with me. So what I will look at it is absorbing the TIPI into the I/O card, at the expected addresses. Some modifications to the DSR might be necessary, but that's doable. it's a ways off. Connectivity on Geneve2020 first will be FTDI cable, RS232, and 2 MMC card slots standard. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick99 Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 39 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said: Wifi/TIPI is very up in the air and a long way off. I did ask JediMatt42 if it was OK to incorporate TIPI, and he said "its open source", but I would like to have everybody happy. So I ask first. I would like to use TIPI as the internet solution, because it is already established. Wifi won't be built in, because a WiModem or ESP8266 would introduce an additional microprocessor that far outclasses the 99105. (If I need a coprocessor, I would go as far as a 9995!) But if you have your Pi externally, that's ok with me. So what I will look at it is absorbing the TIPI into the I/O card, at the expected addresses. Some modifications to the DSR might be necessary, but that's doable. it's a ways off. Connectivity on Geneve2020 first will be FTDI cable, RS232, and 2 MMC card slots standard. Ok, then there is a possibility to get the TIPI. Great!!! As far as I understand the SDD99 (that´s not ready just yet) will some day be Geneve compatible, when and if it will be made as a PEB-card(?). I know you mentioned a future connection to the PEB on the Geneve 2020, but in that case, could it be possible to connect the side car SDD99? Just speculations and curiosity... ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 23, 2020 Author Share Posted July 23, 2020 One idea (in two parts)... Part one: Some future version of Stuart's Internet Browser would check the typed URL for the addition of a single letter in a specific portion on the entry... Normally we type: http://www.website But what if we could type: httpi://www.website If there was an i in the 5th place, instead of a colon, it could pass the information to a module running on the Raspberry Pi. What would that module do? That's part two! It would basically strip out all photos and HTML and translate what is left into SIB format text and send it to the browser. In this way the TI could browse all sort of sites on the internet. For all I know there might be an easier way, it's just an idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 4 hours ago, FarmerPotato said: Wifi/TIPI is very up in the air and a long way off. I did ask JediMatt42 if it was OK to incorporate TIPI, and he said "its open source", but I would like to have everybody happy. So I ask first. I would like to use TIPI as the internet solution, because it is already established. Wifi won't be built in, because a WiModem or ESP8266 would introduce an additional microprocessor that far outclasses the 99105. (If I need a coprocessor, I would go as far as a 9995!) But if you have your Pi externally, that's ok with me. So what I will look at it is absorbing the TIPI into the I/O card, at the expected addresses. Some modifications to the DSR might be necessary, but that's doable. it's a ways off. Connectivity on Geneve2020 first will be FTDI cable, RS232, and 2 MMC card slots standard. 3 hours ago, Nick99 said: Ok, then there is a possibility to get the TIPI. Great!!! As far as I understand the SDD99 (that´s not ready just yet) will some day be Geneve compatible, when and if it will be made as a PEB-card(?). I know you mentioned a future connection to the PEB on the Geneve 2020, but in that case, could it be possible to connect the side car SDD99? Just speculations and curiosity... ?? Well, side car and Pbox flex cable are different things, but carrying most of the same signals . The Geneve2020 "hardware compatibility" interface card would have the 16 to 8 bit multiplexer like the 4A, generating wait states, and include the buffers/drivers like the P-box flex cable foot. Then there would be a 50-pin SCSI cable to a new card in the pbox, which replaces the flex interface card. I think of it as the "8 bit compatibility card" and it would supply physical GROM/ROM from cartridges as well on the 8-bit bus. Actually, I hope someone else will make it. (It is totally optional. You get 8-bit vdp, speech and sound from the MSB on the 16-bit bus.) Making a sidecar port might be a matter of same signals, different cable. I dunno what gotchas there might be. How it will work. The memory mapper stores a bit, per page, that goes out over the backplane to indicate an access to an external 8-bit bus multiplexer. It's called the PBPTHP, for P-box Pass Through Page. When a page has the PBPTHP set, is mapped in at an address, say >4000 in GPL mode, and there is a memory access to >4000, the PBPTHP line is asserted. You can also set the PBPTHP on a CRU range. Seeing the PBPTHP, the P-box controller would run the memory cycle out to the Pbox. So, if you had a Geneve/Tipi in the P-box, then you would set things up to assert the PBPTHP when you want a Raspberry. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick99 Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 @FarmerPotato, it requires a lot of work, I´m amazed of the work you have done so far! Personaly I can go with TIPI just to be able to copy files fast with my network, and with a computer like Geneve 2020 I will compose the music I always dreamt of doing on the TI-99 and Geneve. ????? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted July 25, 2020 Author Share Posted July 25, 2020 There was something I wanted "back in the day" that I thought would be cool, and I was thinking about it again last night. A device to give us "programmable macro keys" for the TI. No matter what program you are in/using it would simply send the same series of text to the keyboard. Back in my early 4A/DOS days it sure would have been nice to press two buttons to send some commonly used commands to DOS, XB or the editor of choice. Now that Force Command is even more useful and powerful than 4A/DOS ever was, it would be useful for sure. If I remember correctly, Telco had some programmable macro keys in it's program that even factored for delays, so one could log in to the BBS with one selection. A little macro key device would also have practical uses in other programs, not just Force Command, for example logging into Heatwave with the TELNET program could take two key presses, instead of entering the url, then the port number, followed by user number, and then password. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted August 6, 2020 Share Posted August 6, 2020 (edited) I'm thinking about writing an assy game called, house of cards. Basically your dealt a card, if it's lower or equal in value to a 10, then you can add a wall. Only if you're dealt a jack or higher, then you can add a roof which enables the player to continue building. If you're dealt a jack or higher and can't use it, then you can store it for later use, BUT if you gather 3 your house tumbles and you lose. If you can't keep the jack or above, the opponent is offered a card to build upon. And same rules apply. There is a new shuffle after each draw. How high can your house of cards get, depending on how many decks are picked. Graphics mode 1 Cards on house being built are represented by merely a line, vertical for walls, horizontal for facecards(roof). Any suggestions? Thx Edited August 6, 2020 by GDMike 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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