Jump to content
IGNORED

CB Wilson - TI-99 related documents


acadiel

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Omega-TI said:

I have to wonder though, if sometimes it's the limited thinking of those in charge who hold back the free thinkers.

I would like to think that behind the scenes there was some thought on this, but perhaps the crunch of available frequency bands would have been a limiting factor.  Just about everything we had in my home which was wireless, like cordless phones and walkie-talkies, were in the CB frequencies.  My read on Wikipedia is that more frequencies started opening up for cordless phones in the 1983-1984 area, but no mention of any restrictions on these bands.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordless_telephone#Frequencies

 

Cost could have been a factor, as well, or maybe stability in home environments versus the wild-wild-west environment of RF, being the hair drier and giant metal Kirby vacuum cleaner could trash TV signals and if my TI was within about 10 feet of the family stereo it could cause interference.  The appliance control over power line, like X10, was already shown to be strong so building upon or parallel to the technology would seem to be a good idea.

 

I can tell you that power line Ethernet has matured greatly over the years to be far more capable in range, security, stability, and speed, and I have deployed it at a couple of customer locations where wireless was not feasible.  In fact, some wireless "range extenders" use (or used, again I have not needed to look in a long time,) PLE to back-haul the network.

 

It has been a long time since I looked at the standards, but ISTR the two major competing standards were merged into HomePlug, or maybe it won out to become part of international specifications.  Whatever the case, it solved the issue of cross-phase communications, interference and noise and susceptibility to the same*, and increased speed.

 

* When I was using HomePlug AV equipment at home I experienced two anomalies: a touch lamp on the same circuit as one transceiver would flicker during high traffic, and a rack mount UPS in the same circuit as the other transceiver would cause the signal to drop.  The former was resolved by putting the touch lamp in a noise-filtering tap, and the latter I had to resolve by replacing the errant UPS.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, humeur said:

Merci, humeur!

 

I am simply de-skewing and applying whitening to the scans.  Hopefully, this is cleaning them up and making them usable - but thank you for doing this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, acadiel said:

Merci, humeur!

 

I am simply de-skewing and applying whitening to the scans.  Hopefully, this is cleaning them up and making them usable - but thank you for doing this!

I have already tried but the result is not necessarily there in any case with non-professional tools.

 

If you have any other, I would gladly do it for you, it's done quickly but it's already a start

 

 

The main one is backup.

 

Jean louis

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by humeur
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, humeur said:

 

I´ve OCR-converted the same 2 files from @acadiel with my OmniPage Pro 14.1, like @humeur did.

 

Can someone please compare this versions and tell if text & quality is OK, worse, better, or whatever ?

 

If OK, with my tool it is just one cklick, and I can do batch-convert.

But maybe the OCR/text is not so good ? Don´t know...

 

1978_1979_LCD_CALC_Product_X_OCR-Schmitzi.pdf

 

1984_Powerline_Network_Memo_OCR-Schmitzi.pdf

 

PS: Size does not matter :grin:

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Schmitzi said:

 

I´ve OCR-converted the same 2 files from @acadiel with my OmniPage Pro 14.1, like @humeur did.

 

Can someone please compare this versions and tell if text & quality is OK, worse, better, or whatever ?

 

If OK, with my tool it is just one cklick, and I can do batch-convert.

But maybe the OCR/text is not so good ? Don´t know...

 

1978_1979_LCD_CALC_Product_X_OCR-Schmitzi.pdf 33.28 MB · 2 downloads

 

1984_Powerline_Network_Memo_OCR-Schmitzi.pdf 6.68 MB · 2 downloads

 

PS: Size does not matter :grin:

 

 

 

 

It's all in how you use the  "tool".

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, RickyDean said:

It's all in how you use the  "tool".

 

Yes, I have "optimized" it for my use, but I never compared it to other products. And it´s a somehow old license

 

Edith: aaaaah OK, I didnt got that but the answer fully works ?

 

 

 

Huua-Esel.thumb.jpg.09ddddcc5c80953cddca5e389e2bc3e6.jpg

Edited by Schmitzi
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, humeur said:

I don't understand everything in the posts, excuse me so I thought I was going to do well,

I wouldn't do it again.

 

Jean louis

 

Hi Jean Louis, yes you were doing very well, and I just tried it with another tool to get text into the PDFs,

to find out if this tool maybe is easier to use, or not, or the same result, maybe.

(Maybe I have to change my tool, that´s the question)

So all is good, thanks :)  :thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, Schmitzi said:

 

Hi Jean Louis, yes you were doing very well, and I just tried it with another tool to get text into the PDFs,

to find out if this tool maybe is easier to use, or not, or the same result, maybe.

(Maybe I have to change my tool, that´s the question)

So all is good, thanks :)  :thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

It's not always easy to understand the translation, I'm bad at language and it's google that works for me

 

Jean louis

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now, if you read anything today... read this.  A perfect example of a snarky internal memo from one Tony Barlow to one Johnny Barrett "dumping" on the TI-88.  Dated 1981.  Note, the TI-88 was in development from around 1980 and then pulled in September 1982 (before the ALC/CC-40).

 

 

1981-TI88-Barlow_Critique_Memo.pdf

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, TI-88.  September 10, 1982.  The crap is about to hit the fan.  The TI-88 was cancelled today, and this is a copy of a TI Silent Printer (?) printout/memo about that, as well as follow up.  This is from Herb Shanzer, a manager in the Calculator and Compact Computer division of TI.

 

1982-TI88-Herb_Shanzer_Silent_Printer_Mailing.pdf

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here, we have a nice bit of history.  Two memos (slightly different) from Herb Shanzer, manager of the Calculator and Portable Computer Division of TI.  September 20, 1982.  The formal memo is to Bill Turner, the executive President in charge of the TI Consumer Group (remember, he was fired in 1983 for the Consumer group's poor performance.)

 

In the memo, Herb announces why the TI-88 is being discontinued.  TI lost $3M ($8.2M today) by cancelling the program.  They are concerned that the TI-88 would interfere with their long range strategic product, the Advanced Language Calculator.   The ALC, which I have plenty of stuff to scan on (including consumer studies of three models which were under consideration) had three tiers - all of which are described in this memo.  Ultimately, we wound up with an ALC known as the CC-40, which was one of the three choices. 

 

Anyway, now we're into CC-40 territory with this documentation.  I do have a whole binder of something called "TI-88 ALEX" which appears to be unit test/test cases done with the TI-88 calculator.  That will be one of the later things I scan since it's so large.  

 

Up next - Some TI Professional peripheral manuals and a document called "SR-70" - a TMS9900 based system - from 1978.  "The SR-70 is a small business oriented machine..."

 

Enjoy today's scans.

1982-TI88-Herb_Shanzer_TI-88_Program_Discontinuation.pdf

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/9/2020 at 6:20 PM, Stuart said:

I like on page 3 "Game about a presidential election". I wonder if such a game would have considered the current reality a bit far fetched?

 

Page 9 - "Something to get the wife involved."

 

Page 9 again - "Medical emergency remedies First Aid etc" on cassette. "Will you just bleed quietly for a moment dear while I load this program ..."

 

Quite surprised how many of the users are wanting to use the computer for business or technical stuff rather than just games - assembly language stuff, cypher & data compression, home energy control, statistics, financial stuff, ...

I have to wonder why TI didn't do a Pong game for a 1979 release. They eventually made a Pabble Ball game in 1983 that was planned for cartridge, but they should have put that out first in 1979 with the launch of the system. I think that would have been a biggie. Another mistake I think was not putting TI-Trek on cartridge (and programming it in assembly). I feel it too would have made a big splash as an early title, as it was a fun game but most have never heard of it since it was disk based and not many had disk drives in the early days of the 99/4.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/16/2020 at 6:10 PM, acadiel said:

1978 - SR70 Hardware Functional Specifications.  (there's a couple missing pages, yes, I know.  <grin>)

 

Never released; TMS9900 small business computer.  Maybe the mythical TI-99/7?

 

 

1978-SR70-Business-Computer-Specifications.pdf 93.8 MB · 12 downloads

Any feedback on this one yet? :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...