On 7/2/20 8:29 PM, Louis Lipp wrote:
I want to thank you, James Zeun and others for helping me with
information related to the DVI!
Now all I need is to find some of the neat hardware that you mentioned
earlier!
Say, since it seems that the main creator for these object has passed
away, has anyone else taken up the torch for producing this amazing
hardware like the Rex or that one that saves to SD card (which I can't
remember the name of)?
1: Steve Adolph who created the REX, has not passed away!
In fact he's made two whole new versions of REX. Merely, he no longer
develops or support the original "REX Classic" and has published the
files necessary for other people to build a REX for themselves if they
want and are able, and a few have. I think I was the first to actually
manage it, and wrote up some directions and made a slightly updated PCB
design that just adds a few conveniences, at http://tandy.wiki/REX , and
one or two other people are producing them for sale. arcadeshopper.com
has those.
2: Ken Petit, who created the NADS Box, (the sd card thing) has not
passed away!
But there are no more new nads boxes. Neither the pcb nor the firmware
are published that I know of.
Both Steve and Ken are non only not dead, they are on this list and read
that post. :)
However, Richard Hanson, the original provider of club100.org has passed
away and Ken Petit is keeping the site up as far as keeping it on-line,
but not adding new content, and forget about anything on the ordering page.
As far as taking up the torch wrt REX and NADS Box, in a more general
sense, there are a few different things going on at the moment.
Steve has two different whole new styles of REX at
http://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rex
and is working on a strange sort of vt100 terminal that will kinda-sorta
use the same hooks the original rom had for the DVI, I think, it's not
fully baked yet and I haven't read everything about how it works yet
just the posts here.
And a NADS Box is essentially a solid-state TPDD emulator with some
extra features added beyond a real TPDD (like for one example I think it
has an RTC and some way to set the M100's clock from the nads box).
There are a several forms of similar "tpdd emulator on a stick", though
none as polished and complete as nadsbox.
If you go on oshpark and search the name "stardust" (who is also on this
list though I forgot who it is), he has a few slick looking boards that
claim to be tpdd emulators, but no firmware or source published anywhere
so they aren't useful except to himself. But they sure do look slick.
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/WuJJLbXA
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/kFDwRJcy
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/WWm1seUy
That was slick hardware with no software, and on the other hand there is
also software with no hardware!
Jimmy Petit implemented a TPDD server in Arduino,
https://github.com/TangentDelta/SD2TPDD
And I took that code and ported it to a couple different off-the-shelf
arduino boards that are physically small and already have an sd card
reader built-in, and some that even also have a lipo battery manager
built-in, and added a little bit of code of my own for power saving and
directory display, so they are *almost* a nadsbox, except the software
is not as good or complete as nadsbox, and the hardware is still just a
handful of diy parts and no nice case designed yet to package it up.
https://github.com/bkw777/SD2TPDD
The closest thing to a box you can buy today takes a whole different
approach, which is a google-tv box which runs Android, with the mComm
app installed and pre-configured to run at boot. Those are for sale at
arcadeshopper.com I believe. That still isn't really a nads box because
it still needs power and an otg cable and usb-serial adapter...
..nope, out of stock
https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/?page_id=11#!/Android-TV-Box-TPDD-server/p/110827547/category=28313042
However, it's just an Android app. You can just install it on your phone
and get the same thinsg in an even smaller package and with it's own
battery built in.
http://www.club100.org/memfiles/index.php?&direction=1&order=mod&directory=Kurt%20McCullum/mComm%20Android
There are C, .NET, Arduino(C++-ish), and python implementations of the
TPDD server/emulator code, so really there are lots of ways to knock up
a "TPDD box". Not even counting the years, (decades?) old versions of
the same idea:
http://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=Jan%27s_DOS-Based_Docking_Station
I personally like the microcontroller approach and kind of rejectthe
os-in-a-small-box approach even though it's more limited and more
difficult. It's effortless to just toss LaddieAlpha or dlplus on a full
linux installation on a Pi Zero. And they are physically small and
perfectly cheap. But somehow it just offends my sense of engineering
elegence to run a full linux os on a superior and fully general purpose
hardware platform just to be a peripheral for a M100. I want the tpdd to
be implemented with as basic computing hardware as possible, like the
hitachi microcontroller in the TPDD itself.
Objectively, this is silly. Even if the tpdd box were made out of
nothing but a handful of 74xx ttl chips and NO cpu, the controller RIGHT
INSIDE the mircosd card itsef is a more powerful "computer"
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554
What can I say, I can't help that it still just feels wrong and I seek
to do it as much like a nadsbox or an actual tppd as possible even if
only on abstract grounds.
--
bkw
Take care, Louis Lipp
Sent from my Z88
--
bkw
