16" Fire Hose Extension

[Omega-TI]

Well, as upgrades go, it's not fancy, in fact it's meant not to be seen at all. It adds no extra capabilities, speed or anything else, but what it does do is make ones system look a little less cluttered, and even gives one a little extra room to move around.

 

 

 

 

So, if you too hate that monster hanging off the side of your TI, I recommend the extension cable.

 

The only negative I had was the little PCB that connects the fire hose to the cable was broken in two pieces, but it still works. So now everything is hidden behind the monitor.

 

 

 

 

[carlsson]

Is the bus designed/dimensioned for an extention cable, or do you feel lucky that it will keep working? I know from other examples there were 3rd party cartridge expansion boxes for the C64 that came with a foot long extention cable (CardCo, if I recall correctly). Most of the simpler game cartridges work in those, but fewer of the later freezer/utility cartridges. An engineer who once worked at Commodore commented that it never was intended to connect an extention cable to the cartridge port, at least not without buffering, but perhaps the TI is more thoroughly designed in this matter.

[ti99iuc]

I have a pair of these extensions cables purchased about 10 years ago and on my own TI99 and PEB had problems (freeze and other strange things) on loading some programs from Floppy Disk while without it all worked nice.... at now i never tried it again, i will do soon

let us know if you have all fully working with the PEB

Edited January 12, 2015 by ti99userclub

[atrax27407]

I think I recall that the maximum recommended length for those was 12" or less the same with the splitter cable for two p-Boxes. The original splitter cable that I have has 8" arms. Cables longer than 12" caused the symptoms that Ciro described.

[Gazoo]

It also depends on how critical the timings on the Pbox cards are.

 

When I tried using an extension with a Pbox having a Pgram+ in it, it didn't work at all. Take the Pgram+ out and the system worked fine.

 

Gazoo

[Omega-TI]

 

let us know if you have all fully working with the PEB

 

Will do. So far things seem to be working properly. If I develop any issues, I'll let you know.

[kl99]

mine should arrive any day. will use it for daily work as well.

[gregallenwarner]

I've been using one for as long as I've had my TI (that I acquired during adulthood, not the one from my childhood) with no ill effects. According to some datasheets on ribbon cables, the average signal propagation delay for IDC ribbon cable is somewhere on the order of 1.5 ns/ft, which, when you take the inverse, translates to 667 MHz. I don't think our little 3 MHz TI is going to have a problem with that. The only issue might be voltage drop due to wire resistance, which could cause unreliable detection of logic high.

[Tursi]

It's not designed specifically for it, but the bus is buffered at the little firehose 'foot' and at the card in the PEB, which helps.