+OLD CS1 Posted January 29, 2022 Share Posted January 29, 2022 1 hour ago, HOME AUTOMATION said: This is technically permissible... Reveal hidden contents ...As long as your Speech Synth. isn't hungry. You seem to have missed the second clause. But, please, no pics... 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted February 13, 2022 Author Share Posted February 13, 2022 Thanks for all the suggestions and humor. I decided to put it aside and got a replacement PEB on eBay. Works fine. I'll discuss with my son later how and why he unhooked all the wires and zip-tied them together 20 years ago or so. Funny that the PEB I picked up had those extra wires hooked to a screw terminal strip that appears to be connected to nothing. So I assume they were for different voltages but that this one was set up as a US only model at the factory. (By the way, it's an older PEB with the push button switch and marked as "TI99/4 Peripheral Expansion System." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted February 14, 2022 Share Posted February 14, 2022 4 hours ago, Paul Fitzgerald said: Thanks for all the suggestions and humor. I decided to put it aside and got a replacement PEB on eBay. Works fine. I'll discuss with my son later how and why he unhooked all the wires and zip-tied them together 20 years ago or so. Funny that the PEB I picked up had those extra wires hooked to a screw terminal strip that appears to be connected to nothing. So I assume they were for different voltages but that this one was set up as a US only model at the factory. (By the way, it's an older PEB with the push button switch and marked as "TI99/4 Peripheral Expansion System." You are correct about the terminal strip and the extra wires. If you can find a copy of the Formorall schematic booklet, I believe it has a description for which ones to use with each possible input voltage. I modified a US PEB of that type to work with 220V using these schematics back in the late 1980s for my then brother-in-law. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apersson850 Posted February 14, 2022 Share Posted February 14, 2022 When I replaced my fan with a less noisy one, I let the fan be powered directly from the input to the box. Since I stay put where the voltage is the same, I don't have to adapt to other possible supply voltages. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 6, 2022 Author Share Posted March 6, 2022 Update: i went with the hypothesis that the extra wires were for different line voltages, and I just used the red and white that branch to the fan, and taped the others off. Reconnected everything and I get a nice steady +5v and +12v on the floppy power connector. So it looks like I’m good. The hidden fuse in the transformer must have been the problem that led my son (not me) to disconnect everything long ago. Though he still won’t admit he’s the one who did it…? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dhe Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 I love the old school Radio Shack meter! ? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 I haven't checked - do we know the amperage and what a fully loaded PEB would typically be spec'd to pull on each voltage (+16V, -16V and +8V)? Reason why I'm asking is because we have these really neat PicoPSU power supplies today - they're tiny. They also support quite a bit of wattage - mine (pictured below) was the equivalent of a 100W ATX PSU. I just put one in an ATX breakout board in my Tandy Sensation, and it supports the old 100W former power supply draw just fine. I mean, the breakout board and PCB with the switch (to retain compatibility with the old front power switch) took up more space than the NanoPSU and the ATX breakout board. The negative aspects of these: the -12V is weak on all of them. - voltage is non existent, but you can easily break out the 5V supply into a +8V/-8V PSU with a dual output (and single input) board (widely available on Amazon) *or* a negative voltage regulator (which is the trick that later ISA systems used to get -5V on the ISA bus.) Same with the +-16V. IMHO, a PicoPSU and a combination of maybe a few of those positive/negative boards plus an ATX Breakout board would definitely do the trick with plenty of room to spare. You'd just have a large amperage PSU coming in and either parallel or serial the PicoPSU and positive/negative boards to get the 16V/8V. We'd have to get the currents right. If I can have a nanoPSU 100W power a whole Tandy Sensation with CD, sound, 32MB, hard drive, etc, I know we can likely figure out something similar with this and the +- boards. - jg 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 5 hours ago, dhe said: I love the old school Radio Shack meter! ? Snap! Except mine is "Kingdom" branded rather than Micronta. The receipt is still in the box - bought at Maplins (UK) for £19.95 in 1984 ... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 7, 2022 Author Share Posted March 7, 2022 2 hours ago, Stuart said: Snap! Except mine is "Kingdom" branded rather than Micronta. The receipt is still in the box - bought at Maplins (UK) for £19.95 in 1984 ... Yup, same one. Don’t know where Radio Shack got some of their names… Archer, Micronta… kind of like Aldi’s with their Savoritz crackers and Casa Mamacita taco shells. But it was a good meter. I just have to clean the corrosion off the battery contacts every couple-two-three years. My son gave me a digital multimeter but I like this one better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 8, 2022 Author Share Posted March 8, 2022 On 3/6/2022 at 12:05 PM, dhe said: I love the old school Radio Shack meter! ? I used to be a regular at Radio Shack… they even sold TI’s surplus parts from the consoles after they were discontinued… I still have a power supply board from them, and I had a couple of keyboards. Unfortunately, they were the Mylar keyboards that TI used at the end, and the plastic and adhesive dried out over the years making them unusable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 8, 2022 Share Posted March 8, 2022 1 hour ago, Paul Fitzgerald said: I used to be a regular at Radio Shack… they even sold TI’s surplus parts from the consoles after they were discontinued… I still have a power supply board from them, and I had a couple of keyboards. I used to be a regular at Radio Shack… they even sold TI’s surplus parts from the consoles after they were discontinued… I still have a power supply board from them(not shown, this is the LINEAR type), and I had a couple of keyboards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 8, 2022 Share Posted March 8, 2022 On 1/29/2022 at 6:17 PM, OLD CS1 said: On 1/29/2022 at 5:11 PM, HOME AUTOMATION said: This is technically permissible... Hide contents ...As long as your Speech Synth. isn't hungry. You seem to have missed the second clause. But, please, no pics... It seems that TI's, SSSS, doesn't quite pass the size-check... ...Looks like the sum of the parts is greater than the hole! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveB Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 On 3/8/2022 at 6:21 PM, HOME AUTOMATION said: I used to be a regular at Radio Shack… I remember frequently being in a RadioShack in the Seminole Mall on our family vacations to Florida in the early eighties when I was about 9 to 13 years old ... we didn't have an electronics shop in our town in Germany. When I needed an universal 110V powersupply for my MiniDisc-Player on my Honeymoon on Maui I searched for a RadioShack and found one, but was disappointed that RadioShack turned from a tinkerers paradise to a shrink-wrapped electronics shop by then... 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 12, 2022 Author Share Posted March 12, 2022 2 hours ago, SteveB said: …I searched for a RadioShack and found one, but was disappointed that RadioShack turned from a tinkerers paradise to a shrink-wrapped electronics shop by then... Their last gasp was when they tried to be a phone store. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 12, 2022 Author Share Posted March 12, 2022 On 3/8/2022 at 11:21 AM, HOME AUTOMATION said: (not shown, this is the LINEAR type) Got it… I’ll stow the correct one in the junk box when I put them back… whoever conducts my estate sale should appreciate that.? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 7 hours ago, SteveB said: I remember frequently being in a RadioShack in the Seminole Mall on our family vacations to Florida in the early eighties when I was about 9 to 13 years old ... In the '70s, I used to frequent the RADIO SHACK, next to the Empire State Building. When I first started going there, it was still a TANDY/LEATHERCRAFT, downstairs... I seem to recall their telling me that the whole store was originally TANDY/LEATHERCRAFT, back before they started doing radio-electronics. Later in the '80s, they turned the downstairs into a "computer center", reducing the LEATHERCRAFT to a small corner. Later, the LEATHERCRAFT, stuff, vanished completely. Come to think of it, the "computer center", didn't last too long after that. I remember reading the back of a shift register's, blister pack, and thinking, "I'll never figure this out"... In reality, it only took about 40 years. I liked the 5v, Reed Relays, a lot ...a wire-wound, plastic-form, with a reed-switch loosely held in place by its leads, through the center ...now I'm using these epoxy-dipped thingys. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDMike Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 (edited) I think, but I could be wrong, but I could swear that radio shack also had bins of components too, did they not? I mean, I think hanging their stock wasn't their original way was it? I'm thinking this way of selling was adopted in the mid 80s?. We'll, maybe at the location I visited... Edited March 12, 2022 by GDMike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 (edited) 57 minutes ago, GDMike said: I think, but I could be wrong, but I could swear that radio shack also had bins of components too, did they not? I can't say that I remember these being around until the late '90s, or early 2000s. Edited March 12, 2022 by HOME AUTOMATION 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 The radio Shack local to me had those drawer bins right up until the end, but the pickings in them were truly hit-and-miss for about the last five years they were open. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed in SoDak Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 And in the end it was... 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 12, 2022 Share Posted March 12, 2022 Now, we have Shenzhen. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XLERB Posted March 13, 2022 Author Share Posted March 13, 2022 So to put some closure on the original post, the PEB is working fine now. I am currently suspecting that my son decided to either do some mods or raid it for parts years ago while I was busy at work and he had too much time on his teenage hands. Then my other son and I were told that it wasn’t working. But I’ll let bygones be bygones… now that I’m obsessively reanimating all my TI stuff and got the PE box back together with some help from the good people here. Surprisingly, everything I’ve had in storage (other than the PE box and the Mylar keyboard on one console) was still in perfect shape, including all the disk drives AND disks. Even my Panasonic dot matrix printer still works, after ordering new ribbons from a bank supply house (apparently people still need dot matrix printers for stuff). That sound is as much of a flashback as the sound of a modem or the TI cassette. So, on to my project that’s been postponed for 25 years and can now be taken up as I slide into retirement: learning Forth and assembly on the TI. I know I could do that on the Windows PC with Classic99, but I love the real old hardware too. I’m also rescuing old files that were saved (most of them in TI-Writer format) on floppy disks, including a family history and a lot of letters between me and my friends when we only had CompuSeve to exchange e-mail. The TIPI (when I get one) will help get those saved in more accessible form. The FinalGrom is another ingenious invention, and I’m enjoying running things I would never have hoped to run back in the day. Hats off to Ralph Benzinger and the Brewing Academy. I am completely impressed. Also impressed as heck with Lee’s fbForth and everything else people have come up with over the last few years. A lot has been done while I was away. One more interesting bit of trivia: my Telco disk still has phone numbers for CompuServe, Delphi, TI-West BBS and West-Dale BBS stored in the dialer. Of course, those numbers were within our free calling area from Illinois Bell. The toll charges for anything further away were a pain… 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveB Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 On 3/12/2022 at 7:44 PM, HOME AUTOMATION said: Now, we have Shenzhen. In Germany they cancelled the tax free amount for postal packages last year ... ~$6 handling just for collecting the VAT. But they do not collect it if the VAT is below 1 EUR. So with 19% VAT we have duty free from China up to 5.25 EUR incl. shipping (~$5.75) ... enough for some parts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted March 13, 2022 Share Posted March 13, 2022 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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