Ken, I bought a 2B today. so I'm ready to go! I decided a 2B was a better investment then to use OpenWRT and a linksys router for my "laddiealpha on the WAN" project....
Steve On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 10:36 AM, Ken Pettit <[email protected]> wrote: > On 12/7/15 7:00 AM, Ray Lopez wrote: > > Ken, forgive the stupid question, but what does TDock do? RL > > > Hi Ray, > > The goals of TDock: > > 1. Provide an HDMI LCD video interface for Model T (a DVI replacement). > 2. It should work with M100, T102, T200 and PC8201. > 3. Provide a TPDD client to USB Thumb drives or SD cards (NADSBox > substitute). > 4. Provide an interface capable of supporting networking. > 5. Provide an interface for printing to modern printers. > > 6. While not a goal, it also provides 13 I/O pins (well 11 I/O and 2 > input only) on the pass-thru LPT port when not connected to a printer. > > The implementation in the picture is a daughter card for the Raspberry Pi > 2 B (a "Pi Hat"). It connects with the Model T parallel port for primary > communication of video data, but also has an RS-232 port (and a BCR port). > It also has a "pass-through" LPT connector where your old LPT printer can > be connected. Making TDock a Pi Hat was the simplest and cheapest > approach, though it is not very portable and has the requirement of booting > / shutting down Linux. > > My other ideas involved simple microcontrollers or FPGAs to provide HDMI / > VGA. They would have been more portable, but also more expensive. The > general theme on this list always seems to be "cheap" (though I prefer the > word "inexpensive"), so I decided to give up portablily in favor of lower > cost. > > Ken >
