All, It would have been nice if the M100 evolved into something like the ASUS PadFone ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P71neJ5cCcs ), but it didn't. So, have we ever looked into being able to just plug the M100 into a USB port and it appears as a drive on the desktop. Seems like this would be a better option with little other hardware needed. The software could be in a 27C512 on Mike Stein's PCB or Steve Adolf's REX and then an RS232C to USB using a USB network cable would probably give the right signal so the desktop can recognize it. I mean the M100 with the DVI is great, but the line died before any software companies could take advantage of it. I don't know about the Ultimate ROM, but the Super ROM software is not a happy camper on the DVI. To make it really useful would mean some serious re-write time.
God Bless, GregS <>< ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Pettit" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, September 14, 2018 4:30:55 AM Subject: Re: [M100] DVI or modern equivalent Hi James, My idea 3 years ago was to build the physical TDock board. And I actually built a board, though never got it working yet. It is PiHat for Raspberry Pi B with a 5V tolerant Xilinx CPLD to interface with the Model T via parallel port. The TDock software is directing all screen I/O to the parallel port using "special" signalling. What this means is that it raises the STROBE signal and then twiddles the D0 - D7 data bits to send data. The TDock server (VirtualT emulation, physical TDock CPLD, etc.) detects this D0-D7 signalling and realizes it is the TDock software communicating vs. the ROM trying to send LPT data. The ROM *never* changes D0-D7 while STROBE is HIGH, so it is easy to know it's not the ROM wanting to print. Then TDock CPLD decides that it received SCREEN data and passes it along to the output device (VirtualT window or Raspberry Pi HDMI port, etc.). At least that was the plan. If the TDock CPLD detected LPT print data, then it would send the printer data to it's LPT replacement port. In other words, TDock hardware consumes the LPT port on the Model T, but it is generous and gives it back on a different connector (one of it's own), so you can have your cake and eat it too. I have all of the CPLD code written and even working in simulation (I wrote a verilog testbench to emulate all of the signalling an it is supposed to work in theory). But I didn't get it working on the board ... probably because I simply ran out of time before getting too busy with work and kids. Ken
