How would *YOU* make the TI "self-sufficient"?

[Omega-TI]

We TI'ers here at Atari Age are very lucky as we have an outstanding group of people here in this forum. The talent pool here is really mind-blowing when you think about it. We have engineer's of hardware, software, and even some guys with their feet well planted in both of those areas.

 

To you guy's I pose this question...

 

What would YOU do, to make a TI totally self-sufficient without the need of a PC playing a support role?

 

[mister35mm]

I have mentioned this, elsewhere:-

 

Just a thought. On the BBC computer (of which I have 6? and 8 Acorn Electrons) the machine was designed to have it's processor 'upgraded' by using the BBC computers screen and I/o functions used as sort front-end processor, to the real/added power (Similar to what mainframe computers do) and, in this way the BBC's 2MHz 6502 becomes a front-end CPU (Via it's TUBE interface) for a range of CPU's, including a z80, a super fast 6502 @4MHz? a Natrional Semiconductor 32016, a 68000 (not by Acorn) and eventually, a ARM RISC cpu.

Perhaps someone should be thinking of assembling a cartridge with 32Kb of 16bit RAM, a pair of SD card slots, and maybe a ARM processor, in the form of a Raspberry Pi-ZERO, is double layer card?

With an ARM as a 2nd processor (possibly multicore processor), adding wifi and wired ethernet, fast storage, perhaps dual SD card slots should be an exciting upgrade.

Just a thought.

[+jedimatt42]

I think the TI-99/4a is self sufficient, given it's design purpose. It's just doesn't participate in today's multi-media 32bit highres icon, bitmap / svg, cloud computing, web based world. But to me, that is a good thing.

 

From a productivity point of view, I did my high-school papers all on the TI. Pretty color printout cover pages on my father's Geneve. I used some wysiwyg tool too. ( I don't remember which now, but I think there was only one choice back then. ) My sister wrote her college papers on the TI years earlier in good old fashioned TI-Writer. Today, I write most of my productivity documents in markdown and vim, and let some tools convert it to pdf, and people think I must have used Microsoft Office. If pictures get involved, I have to step up to google docs. But my point is, less is more when productivity is concerned. Fonts and formatting options and column layouts, and all that are nice but unnecessary.

 

Does anyone still print from their TI today? Is that a goal for self sufficiency?

 

Software development can all be done from the TI directly. In fact, this is a draw for me. But I require a PC to support this effort in 3 main areas:

* Reference Material

* File Backup

* Community

 

Reference Material has an easy alternative. Kinko's, or whatever today's equivalent is. I could print all that out. I have indeed printed out the fbForth manual. It's just how we used to do it back in the 80s, so when I picked up a TI again, that felt natural. Although most of the available reference material I have uploaded to my google books acount, and read from my phone or tablet. ( I consider those PCs ( bigger computers than the TI ) but then again, it feels more like they are just substituting for 'book' in a workflow I wouldn't even want to pursue on the TI. )

 

File Backup is a 'no-contest' situation. This is where HDX is my favorite, and I don't actually want any of my computers to be self sufficient here. My PC's have PC's that they depend on too for the same reason. I sure would like to possess a mass storage solution directly on my TI, but that wouldn't be for my working file set, but for the static things that don't change.

 

Community is an area where the TI teases us. You have the browser project. We can now use the piles of technology around serving up data through HTTP. We just have to customize the servers to give us the data in a form our TI can display. This doesn't require much change to the TI, but more to building services that exploit it. The browser doesn't quite yet have the interactivity features for services like an Atariage forum, but then we have UDS and Telnet hosted BBS services that do. However, those services still appear to be designed toward the volume of data that was available yesteryear, and don't provide the search-search-search based interface for data retrieval that has proven necessary even for the volume of info on this single slice of Atariage.

 

Another thing I do that requires a PC, is burn eproms that this community produces. Back in the day when the TI was designed, they expected users to go to a vendor for that (modules/solid state software), and today we have Arcadeshopper.

 

I don't actually want the TI to turn into a thing that downloads and processes 3megabytes of data per click. Because that is what I hate about the PC. Somewhere, I think Omega asked if the TI obsession is a mid-life-crisis. I know it is for me. I'm reaching back to a time when I didn't need to do the things that make modern PCs a must. A time with less responsibilities. I'm rebelling against how all the security agents and network dependencies make windows soo slow when they fail. This time now where 90% of the time my fiberoptic internet connection lulls me into thinking it is ok to be downloading 3 megabytes of advertisement per 2k of text that I want to read. I often wonder how did the Amiga seem so modern and yet so speedy. ( I've decided it was because it used 2 bits per pixel, not 32bits per pixel ((for most people)))

 

I think I ranted... sorry.

 

Now what would it take to make my TI provide me with sufficient computing that I wouldn't need a PC in the house? If you want to go there, we'd have to get Amazon a BBS system to order from. But then the TI would still be too slow to show me the reviews and page through all that text, and so before long, you'd have to almost turn it into a PC. Give it a high res display, a co-cpu that can pump the data through, or a primary one that can also handle being a TI-99.

 

The thing is, it doesn't take long where you get to ruining the TI.

 

So, what keeps me in my TI, doing TI style things, the TI way? Multicarts.

 

What I would wish for the TI, is more mass storage availability.

 

* The multicart paged off of SD card model would work. A multicart that actually supported multiple programs designed to run directly out of ROM, where all the programs are starting at >6000 and can use the banking schemes as though they are alone in the cart, so we can load a fbForth and TurboForth and TIXB all off the same cart. <- This would aid self sufficiency in using a TI to do TI things the TI way. Soft solid state software. To add to that, it would be cool if in XB you had a DSR to load and save files off of the storage in the cart. Ideally directly customized by the user on the TI.

 

* Very Large persistent storage - I depend on HDX for this today, as it is the only mass storage available to me. I only use the HFE storage on the TI for things that refuse to run off mass storage. Mind, I still want my HDX as it serves as a network drive, where I willfully violate the point of this conversation.

 

* Large persistent ramdisk storage - As I ranted about earlier, solid state takes the cake. I prefer zero load time ( most of the software in the multicarts we have today are 'rom-disks' if you will, as they have to be copied to RAM before they are run. ) direct rom execution, but next to that, a big RAM disk would be the preferred DSK1. replacement to me. It needs software that does folder shuffling for all that old stuff that expects DSK1, so you can swap between things that expect DSK1.

 

On the communications front, it would be cool to get away form the UDS-10 and have a device a little more TCP/IP oriented. Say an microcontroller with an Ethernet or wifi port, and a TCP/IP stack in it. Fronted by an actual TI DSR. Inside the microcontroller you could put an HTTP cache. You could even put an optional filter. The DSR interface could be more straight forward about opening connections of specific protocols, so that most of the protocol is implemented in the microcontroller, but the payloads are handled like streams. It might actually be easier to work with web content and file transfers if the DSR for GET requests was random access file oriented. Maybe something like one device endpoint that you write an HTTP request to like GET /someurl, and assign it to a request buffer, and then another device like BUF1.REQUESTBUFFERID, that is the cached random access file holding the results of the request. Let there be sockets too, for BBS/telnet access. This could be a lot faster than going through our serial ports.

 

Obviously, the DSR skill set needs to grow to build these sort of things.

 

Oh, and then don't forget, if your purpose for a TI is to play old games and newer games, you can embed 32k in your console, and use the multicarts and that TI becomes extremely self sufficient at being a retro gaming console.

 

What all do you do with your TI's that require PC intervention?

 

-M@

[+save2600]

More self sufficient anyway... by now, all SD or CF card solutions should offer simple drag and drop of files or disk images directly to a FAT formatted card. A program inside the mass storage cartridge should allow you to manipulate and access said files using your TI. No monkeying around with a Windoze or DOS only program beforehand. Drag and drop I say!

 

This type of multi-cart exists on nearly all vintage computer & game systems and have for several years. Wish the TI had something comparable!

[PeBo]

What would YOU do, to make a TI totally self-sufficient without the need of a PC playing a support role?

 

 

a truly cross compatible disk sytem where I could copy files directly from my PC onto a floppy and plop it in the TI.

 

Lotharek and HDX are good stopgap solutions - but they still require extra steps to get files from the PC to an actual TI disk. The nanoPEB's dsk2cf works fine with itself, but by design the nanoPEB doesn't allow simultaneous access to real disks.

 

My dream toy would be a DOS or Windows program that would allow TI disks to be FULLY read/write compatible with the PC. I've got a closet full of old PC's with 5½ drives waiting to be put to use (or put out to pasture)!

 

OK, that doesn't fit the "without the PC playing a support role", but still.

Edited February 21, 2016 by PeBo

[ElectricLab]

1) Mass storage in an HDX way, right on a memory card.

 

2) Ability to download files using Stuart's browser and save to mass storage. 99ML-style pages could be created to host files and a webring created.

 

3) A multicart with all the major images you'd expect, plus Stuart's browser.

 

With these you could do a lot and not need a PC very often, except for burning ROMs, and ??

[Omega-TI]

1) Mass storage in an HDX way, right on a memory card.

 

2) Ability to download files using Stuart's browser and save to mass storage. 99ML-style pages could be created to host files and a webring created.

 

3) A multicart with all the major images you'd expect, plus Stuart's browser.

 

With these you could do a lot and not need a PC very often, except for burning ROMs, and ??

 

On your #1: Oh hell YES!

Even though I'd like to get the PC out of the equation, it would be cool to have the

inclusion of a modern USB interface, that way we could "Drag & Drop" the files from

the PC to the TI's memory card.

 

On your #2: I'm with you on this one too!

It would be awesome if Stuart's browser had download capability... upload too!

Maybe someday, it's amazing what you can be done with a cartridge. This would

sure eliminate the need for a PC to download stuff from the Internet.

 

On your #3: There are a few things I'd love to see in a special CommCart^TM.

For starters the Editor/Assembler, and possibly even Cortex BASIC⁸⁰ if a viable email

program/utility comes out of it. I'd also like to see TIMXT on this same cartridge when it's

completed and all the Macro's and personal settings reside in a disk-based file.

Of course I'd want this cartridge to automatically start in the 9640 Menu System, having

bypassed the title screen.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

I would like to see mass storage over Ethernet using an approach similar to HDX, but allowing for more than one TI connected to the server program. Then I could share all files with all of my systems or even across the internet. And it would give everyone a mass storage option unlike the scarce SCSI and similar cards.

[Omega-TI]

I would like to see mass storage over Ethernet using an approach similar to HDX, but allowing for more than one TI connected to the server program. Then I could share all files with all of my systems or even across the internet. And it would give everyone a mass storage option unlike the scarce SCSI and similar cards.

 

What a concept! With the right cartridge, like an UberCart, one could store their settings in the cartridge, but design a personal menu from all those programs available on the server, sort of a "TI-Cloud".

I want it, and I want it............. NOW!

[Omega-TI]

One of the nice things about the DSR in the HDX is that it can very easily over-written. I wonder, would it be possible to modify the DSR to work with the UDS-10 and bring Tim's vision to life? When done, it can be swapped back to regular mode if the user wanted.

[Asmusr]

How about if the HDX DSR was built into the XB27 cart? Then you could even get full HDX on a nanoPEB. And while were at it, let's add a DSR to use SAMS as a RAM disk as well.

[+Schmitzi]

Yes, and the IDEDSR from Fred please

[+Vorticon]

For me, self-sufficiency on the TI means not needing a modern PC at all for all my daily needs. Is that even conceivable in the modern world? Let's see:

 

• Word processing: No problem, particularly in 80 columns with the F18A. However, printing on fanfold perforated paper with a dot-matrix printer might raise some eyebrows, but it's workable at least
• Desktop publishing: We have Page Pro on the TI and maybe others as well. Crude, yes, but again workable.
• Email: Not yet, at least until someone comes up with a tcp/ip stack and a text based email program. It should be possible using the SAMS card. This requirement is probably the most pressing and essential one in this day and age. But then again, one could substitute PC based emailing with a smartphone and plain old snail mail.
• Web browsing: While Stuart's browser is great, it is inherently bound by the memory and graphical limitations of the TI, and thus woefully inadequate for productive and secure web access (banking, shopping etc...). That said, one could theoretically completely avoid using the web and instead go to brick and mortar stores and bank branches for all their financial and shopping needs.
• Gaming: This is a golden age for gaming on the TI with all the new projects and the easy availability of carts. Yes, it's still very much skewed towards arcade games, but that could change with time. Otherwise, one can always purchase one the gaming consoles out there.

So yes, I suppose I could survive without a modern PC and rely on my TI only. Would I want to do it? Not really because shunning modern technology for the sake of nostalgia makes little sense to me. I'd rather use that technology to simplify my life and thus create more free time for me to enjoy my retro hobbies rather than be stuck with obsolete, however nostalgic it may be, equipment.

[Omega-TI]

By "self-sufficient" I meant in a capacity that the TI could sustain itself with new software/programs and communications without the need for a PC in a support role.

 

I truly believe someday the TI WILL be able to send messages to other people, sure it may not be by encrypted means, but in a hobby role we're not doing banking or other secret squirrel stuff. I believe Stuart's browser will continue to grow and evolve, true it'll grow past the disk stage and require a cartridge environment, but look how far it's come since the beginning. Heck, you can even play interactive chess with another TI on it now.

 

I believe it's just a matter of time before a TI sub-net forms, is already in the nucleus stage with a chat program, a chess game, I imagine a rudimentary and limited TI-only email cannot be far off.

 

And that reminds me... I'm going to have to fire up TIMXT tonight. I see there are a bunch of new uploads to Heatwave BBS that I've never seen before. I gotta check them out a little close and download a couple as they looked interesting.

[ElectricLab]

I made a chat program for Stuarts browser, and it's on myti99.com now. The only caveat is that it requires version 9.0 of his browser which isn't released yet. I have an early copy since I've been helping to QA it, and it is amazing. It now allows for text input, so of course the first thing I did was create a chat program. I also made a way to log in by typing your screen name and PIN into forms instead of in the URL which is nice. I have a couple of game ideas that I will be coding up when I get the chance over the next few weeks. If anyone is interested in doing this, I'll share what I've done. I've written everything thus far in Perl, which would be easy to port to PHP if that's your poison. On the backend of myti99.com I use a MySQL database for the user accounts and the chess game data.

[Omega-TI]

... only caveat is that it requires version 9.0 of his browser which isn't released yet.

 

9.0! You mean Stuart's been holding out me?

 

I can't wait to to burn the next image into a cartridge and give it a shot.

[ElectricLab]

It'll be worth the wait. He and I have been working on new features and I've been doing QA when I get time. I believe he's close to publishing it, and it would be cool to have on a cartridge. I really need to learn how to burn them myself. I have too many projects cooking right now, but hopefully by summer I'll be able to delve into it.

[Stuart]

Vorticon, on 29 Feb 2016 - 10:53 PM, said:

 

Web browsing: While Stuart's browser is great, it is inherently bound by the memory and graphical limitations of the TI, and thus woefully inadequate for productive and secure web access (banking, shopping etc...).

 

I'd be quite happy to set up a little form for my browser for you to enter your bank details to send to me a server. I could even make it display a little yellow padlock icon in the address bar so you know it is secure ...

[Omega-TI]

Corey,

Do you have an UberCart? I can burn whatever version it is (at the time of Fest West) and bring you the chip.

[ElectricLab]

Omega: No, I don't have any chips or modern burner yet. I want to get set up with the right gear to do it, and I am pretty sure what to get (Thanks Greg). Anyway, just you guys wait to see see Stuart's next version of the browser. You will be amazed.

[+Vorticon]

 

I'd be quite happy to set up a little form for my browser for you to enter your bank details to send to me a server. I could even make it display a little yellow padlock icon in the address bar so you know it is secure ...