You can do tpdd to a pc or mac or pi etc for free. Just need a usb-serial
adapter and serial cable.

There is also an initial arduino implimentation that works on at least a
few boards that have sd readers and usb interfaces already built-in, if
you're up for that. Jimmy Petit wrote it and I have gotten it working on
both Teensy and Adafruit Feather boards where you don't need anything else
besides the board, an rs232-ttl module, and power. The Adafruit even has a
lipo charger/manager and standard lipo connector already built in, so
"power" means just plug in a lipo, and it's automatically charged by the
same usb port used for programming. So there is no circuit designing, just
connecting a couple legos to each other.

I too collect laserdiscs and have a few players, though I don't think any
of mine have rs232 interfaces.

I have played around with the rs232 interfaces on a few different video
processors. Especially a Faroudja where I don't have the remote and neither
does Logitec harmony have the codes for it.

I have a stack of strange discs that were obviously part of some internal
teaching system at some company (I forget who it was). You can physically
play the discs in a normal player, but they are really meant to be played
in some kind of special rig that shows only 1/2 of the video and plays only
one channel of audio at a time, and jumps to specific frames, presumably in
response to user input, or I guess it could have been scripted.

-- 
bkw

On Mon, Oct 29, 2018, 11:27 AM Scott Lawrence <yor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> So I'm working on a project; a BASIC program that talks at 4800 baud to a
> LaserDisc player.  The commands are sent as ascii text, with a carriage
> return at the end, and responses are similarly a text string terminating in
> a CR.
>
> On my Tandy 200, I'm able to configure the port in TERM via:
>    STAT 78N1DNI
>
> And then i can type out commands and the player works and responds with
> the correct responses... so I know the serial line is working in both
> directions as designed.
>
> In BASIC, i know i need to open the connection for INPUT and OUTPUT so
> that I can write stuff and read back the responses.  The following code
> works to send out the commands, but it gets errors no matter what I try for
> reading in the response
>
> 10 OPEN "COM:78N1DNI" FOR OUTPUT AS 1
> 20 ON COM GOSUB 100
> 30 COM ON
> 40 REM Send seek to frame 1000
> 50 PRINT #1, "FR1000SE"
> 60 REM when the player gets there, it responds "R<CR>" via serial
> 70 GOTO 70
> 100 REM Got serial response
> 110 A$=INPUT #1
> 120 PRINT "Got ", A$
> 130 RETURN
>
> I looked around in a few online T books, but couldn't really find anything
> that could help me out on this one, and I'm feeling pretty stupid that me,
> a web applications and embedded systems engineer can't figure out a BASIC
> program.... It's been YEARS since I messed around with BASIC, and even then
> I never really did much with opening files...
>
> sidenote, "ON COM GOSUB <xxx>" ?!?! That's an awesome feature!  I love
> that we can have interrupt-driven serial in BASIC!
>
> Side-sidenote; I also don't really have a good solution yet for saving and
> restoring the files but i'll probably just do serial port dumps or
> somesuch. ;D I know i can buy NADS or REX or something, for file offloading
> but this is a short-term project for Maker Faire next month, and I don't
> have the cash to drop on fancy stuff right now.  I'll probably just throw
> together a serial-terminal based SD card shell using a spare arduino or
> something...   Although I'd gladly trade my Booster Pak which i never
> really got working for one of those... ;D
>
> -s
>
> --
> Scott Lawrence
> yor...@gmail.com
>

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