> -----Original Message-----
>
> This is Dave from Utah and I am new to this group and to a "T". I
Welcome from another newbie - I just subscribed to this mailing list a few
weeks ago after having acquired a few model 100s earlier this year as a
teaching experience for my kids, and we've all become hooked to the point that
I had to get them each their own, in addition to mine. :) As a fellow newbie
I might have some insights that might be helpful to you wrt getting started.
> work using Packet Radio Terminal Node Controllers and have been using a
> laptop PC. The really long events require hauling a generator to keep
> these running SO...
>
> 1. I am hoping to run the packet nodes from a "T" using a terminal
> program running 9600 baud with 8,N,1 settings. I believe I will need a
> null modem cable to do this and some commands to set the serial port
> correctly.
A great application - I've used mine as a portable terminal at work and at home
countless times, it's a lot handier than balancing a laptop on your arm or
trying to type long commands on a tablet's on-screen keyboard.
You may have found this already but the serial port on the model T machines is
DTE, same as it would be on a PC, it just happens to be female. Pinout wiring
would be the same as you'd use to connect to a 25-pin port on a PC, except with
a male plug on the cable instead of female.
In TELCOM on a t102 you'd just need to give the command STAT 88N1E if you want
to use XON/XOFF flow control, or STAT 88N1D if you want to use RTS/CTS flow
control, then TERM to go online with your TNC. The first 8 is the baud rate
(where 9=19200, 8=9600, 7=4800, etc. dividing the baud rate in half as you
descend), the 8N1 is the bit/parity/stop parameter, and the E or D is Enable or
Disable soft flow control.
> 2. I would like to carry some DOCs on the 102 with me which means I
> need to get files to/from the PC and the 102. I hope to find something
> easy to do this.
Here's the evolution I went through:
When I got my first one, I started off loading documents and BASIC programs (as
ASCII files, not tokenized files) by just capturing to a file in TELCOM on the
m100 and pasting the text into an open PuTTY window on my PC. This is kind of
slow for bigger files because you have to sit and watch the whole thing scroll
by on the screen, but it's dead simple.
Once I started reading some more tips and felt more confident trying other
things out, I realized there are faster ways. For text files, you can go into
TEXT, give the name you want to save the file as, then hit F2. At the 'Load
from:' prompt type COM:88N1E (assuming you're using PuTTY at 9600n81 with soft
flow control, otherwise, adjust parameters as needed) and then on your PC you
can paste the text into the open PuTTY window, followed by Ctrl-Z which signals
end-of-file to the m100 and makes it stop loading from the serial port.
Similarly, in BASIC you can LOAD "COM:88N1E" and then paste an ASCII program
listing into PuTTY followed by Ctrl-Z. Once you've done that, you can SAVE
"FOO" to save it locally as FOO.BA which will be tokenized.
Later on, I discovered TBACK (already mentioned) and found that I could not
only create and restore backup image files of my m100's memory contents (handy
for when something goes wrong and you have to cold reset), but when I had too
much stuff going on and wanted to switch quickly from having one set of files
on my m100 to another set of files, I could just back it up and restore it from
the image. Even better, I now had a way to get non-text files in and out of my
machine, because (as mentioned) if you copy a backup image file you made with
your real machine with TBACK overtop of the RAM.BIN file in VirtualT, then you
fire up VirtualT and you've got the contents of your real machine. VirtualT
has a couple of great methods for transferring files between your PC and the
emulated filesystem, and when you're done you can shut down VirtualT and use
TBACK to 'restore' from RAM.BIN to your freshly cold-reset model T.
I bought a Tandy disk drive and after re-belting it and using that for a while
I learned about Kurt's fabulous mComm software (makes your PC or Android device
emulate a Tandy disk drive). I had already read about the struggles people
have had when they got a disk drive but didn't have at least the original Tandy
utility disk or a TS-DOS disk to bootstrap the DOS into their machine. Not
having a DOS in ROM on my machines, I would have been stuck otherwise.
What I'm doing now is: I have a folder in my Dropbox account called TPDD
containing all of my model T files, which the emulated NADSBox in VirtualT
points to. This is also the root folder mComm points to. This means that no
matter what PC I'm on, I'll have access to the same files and they'll always be
up to date (and if I overwrite one by mistake, Dropbox enables me to restore it
to a previous version). I'm also using mComm on my Android phone, and an app
called DropSync to keep a copy of the TPDD folder synced to the filesystem
location in the phone where mComm looks, so I can plug into my PC or my phone
and run TS-DOS on my m100 and save or load any of the files from the repository.
This may exceed the needs of many, but I like diving into new things and seeing
how far I can go... this approach may not work for everyone. :)
> 3. How much value is finding and installing the extra 8K of
> memory? Are there other ways to extend the file storage?
If you can find an 8k module for a reasonable price I would say go for it. You
can never have enough, since the RAM is also your filesystem (unless you have
another device to offload files onto). There have been other products made
down through the years, but no hardware solutions currently in production.
> 4. I see they have an internal NiCad battery. What happens if it can't
> hold a charge? How hard are they to replace? Where do you get them?
It provides power to the RAM to maintain the contents while you are changing
batteries. If it doesn't hold a charge you'd need to plug in an external power
source while changing batteries, or use TBACK to make a backup of the RAM
before changing batteries. The bigger concern, as others have mentioned (which
reminds me, I need to check my machines) is that if the battery is leaking it
may lead to corrosion on the PCB which can cause you more problems if it
destroys traces.
It's soldered on to the board, so your comfort level with soldering will
determine how hard it is to replace. :) I don't know where to source them,
I'll leave that for someone else to comment on.
> My first computer was a Commodore 64 That I had for a long time. I
> then had an Apple 2 PC with I think 128K of memory. My next PC was an
> Epson with a hard drive (cost over $2500 in 1986 dollars).
Fun times. I was jealous of friends who had Commodore 64s as I had a VIC-20.
I spent a lot of time on my uncle's Apple IIe and eventually got an XT clone in
1988, and a hard drive for it in 1989... makes me shudder to remember the money
that went into those things :)
jim
