No comment on the other hardware, but I will comment on the battery possibilities. These machines will gladly run on the 5V that a portable USB battery bank puts out. I have made many USB-to-DC barrel connectors to run my 102 and 200s on the go. Not only do you get the power density of lithium chemistry, but you also get the pack's built-in charge controller so you can just plug it in and recharge it like anything else that charges via USB. Some battery backs support pass-through charging as well so they can supply power while being charged. (This is not always the case, and not often advertised as a feature so you may have to test a few different battery packs to find one that supports this.)
Find a good battery bank and then 3-D print the supports and legs to make it a good fit for tilting the machine (maybe velco would be fine to make it easily removable) and you're done from an electrical perspective. --Justin On Tue, 2025-09-30 at 18:49 -0400, Scott McDonnell wrote: > I plan to dedicate one of my Model 100s to use as a controller for my > 80s robots. > > These are my planned mods to implement this: > > 1. Internal retro wifi modem (oldnet.com) > > I plan to make hack onto the MC14412 chip. I have no plan to > retain the original modem functionality, but if I did, I am thinking > I > could implement this via the modem enable signal. That would also > allow > me to control power to the ESP8266 so that it did not drain the > battery > when not in use. I could bring the enable line out to a switch to > reconnect the enable line to the MC14412. At the moment, I can't > really > think of why I might ever want the original modem. > > I will use a Wemos D1 mini with an external antenna that I will > attach > to the M100 body. > > 2. Complete my originally idea to port the TPDDuino project to the > sparkfun openlog hardware and make this internal > > Here, I am thinking the BCR TTL serial mod would be appropriate. > This frees up the serial port which I will need for the robot > control. > Not sure if TSDOS already supports this, however. There could could > be > some benefits to the faster speed possible with the BCR hack. > > 3. Wireless serial > > For this, I have not decided whether to use bluetooth or an HC- > 12 > module. This will be in an external modules so that I can use the > serial > port for other purposes. I do plan to add a fused 5V output to pin 25 > of > the serial port. This was a common pin to use back in the day for > adding > a power output. It doesn't appear to be connected to ground in the > M100 > per the schematics, but I will need to double-check. > > 4. Joystick mod mentioned previously > > If I will be using the BCR port for the TPPDuino, then I will > end > up implementing the ideas discussed in that thread for using the > parallel port. But I also might just hack into the keyboard matrix > arrows since this will be dedicated for this purpose. Still weighing > this while I work on the other mods. > > ----------------------- > > Interested in internal battery hacks. I have been thinking of > installing > a 7.2V nimh pack. I am not really sure it could fit anywhere inside, > though. > > While looking through old magazines, I had seen products that were > available at the time which were battery packs that also doubled as > tilt > stands. I liked the look of those and might end up 3-D printing > something like that. There was a simpler project to use a PVC pipe > with > D cell batteries and the author fashioned that to also act as a tilt > stand. > > For my first M100, I had modified a book light to attach to the BCR > port > to provide light for the LCD. I wasn't especially happy with it as > the > clear plastic bezel is too glossy and reflected too much of the > light. I > feel like if there were any possible enhancement here, it would need > to > be some sort of front light mounted internally. This is probably > outside > of how much effort I want to put into this. > > Interested in hearing about any experience and efforts into trying to > improve the readability of the LCD. >
