That page has always come back out of stock.
Sent from my iPhone I have been searching for a source to actually purchase a backpack for a Model 100. Does anyone have a source where I can purchase a unit?
Google has not been my friend. Sent from my iPhone Hi George,
Yes you can configure the way the date is represented by your backpack sending commands to it when it is in regular serial mode:
It's on page 37 of the User Manual, and here's a summary:
To switch between 24-hour and 12-hour time format:
set time 24 set time ampm
To switch between date formats:
set date mdy set date dmy set date ymd
Cheers, Gary
Thank you!
I typed it in from GitHub. what I found is my Backpack is setup to reply with dd/mm/yyyy.
However, Tandy BASIC appears to want the date in mm/dd/yyyy. The RTC.BA program seems to assume the date will come back in the correct format.
Does the Backpack have a way to configure the output format?
In the meantime i altered the program and it works fine!
Best, George Yes, someone already wrote such a program and shared it. If you just got a Backpack Drive Plus it is already on the SD card. You can also download it from: https://github.com/Jeff-Birt/Backpack/tree/main/User_Programs There is an MT version and NEC version. Note that while these have a .BA extension they are really text files, a.k.a. .DO files. It has been the convention to give BASIC programs shared as text files the .BA extension but if you try to load such a file as is BASIC will try to parse it on the fly and it can’t do so fast enough. The file extension needs to be changed to .DO. Load it into RAM, go to BASIC and do: LOAD”FILE.DO”. After it loads do: SAVE”FILE.BA” and it is now a tokenized BASIC file.
I’ll get these renamed and include the tokenized version in the future to avoid such confusion. Jeff Birt Random question - Does a BASIC program already exist to interface with the Backpack to set the clock? I find myself having to Cold start the machine often, but this handy Backpack has a real time clock in it. Would be great to run a quick program that interfaces with the Backpack over serial, issues the TIME, DATE and DAY commands, queries the current system time and date, calculates the delta and then resets the system clock. I started to write the program in BASIC, but I admit I don’t know much about serial communication. I managed to open the COM buffer for output, send the four CR to wake it. However, I then PRINT “TIME”+chr$(13) after that, close the buffer, reopen it for input and then try to get the result. However I only end up with: As if the second PRINT never went through. So rather than continue to rack my brain, I figured I’d ask if it already exists. It might not be that straightforward; the printer port is partially shared with the keyboard. Wire a R2R DAC to the printer port and have the M100 play music Covox style. 😃 All it needs in its next version is an 8mm stereo jack, an mp3 player and some jukebox software for the laptop! Too much to wish for? No matter, it’s already a great piece of kit. :-) Sean
The Backpack was designed by a friend of mine who wishes to remain private. He sent me one and I thought it was great and encouraged him to make more offering my help. My only part of the design was the case. Just received my Backpack from Soigeneris. All I have to say, is that I really like the design of it all. It’s relatively compact, it matches the design of the M100, and it runs on a single AA cell. I immediately plugged it in, and got it to work. Pretty much zero configuration needed. I’ve already got REX installed so I was able to load up TS-DOS and be off to the races. Shout out to Soigeneris and to whomever designed and built this device!
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