PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1987 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ HARDWARE FOR THE TI ^^^^^^^^^^^^^by J. Peter Hodie (Ed. Note: The following article is taken from the August 87 issue of the Boston Computer Society TI User Group Meeting Newsletter. It is the best comparison of available TI99/4A hardware I have seen to date. Most of this hardware will be available for sale at the upcoming Chicago TI Fare. If you do get a chance to go to the fair, BRING MONEY! You will probably get a chance to actually see everything that has ever been made for the TI, software and hardware, including the hardware described in Hoodie's article. Often you can purchase for less than advertised prices.) Rather than discuss the virtues and pit falls of the 9640, this month I am going to go over the details of the standard hardware available to 99/4A owners. There seems to be a great deal of confusion of the capabilities of the various peripheral cards, hopefully this will clear some of that up (more likely it will just make things worse). DISK CONTROLLERS There are 3 main controllers out there, made by TI, CorComp, and Myarc. They all vary in their capabilities, so let me first list the different features a disk controllr can have. All disk controllers can support double sided disk drives. This means that if you have drives that can store data on both sides of the diskette, any of these controllers is capable of using that feature. Many disk drives can support what is called "double density." This is a method for packing double the data onto a disk. Most disk drives these days are 40 track, which is standard, while some can support 80 track. 80 track means that you can store twice the amount of data as on a 40 track disk. However 80 track drives usually require more expensive diskettes because the data is so compact on the surface of the disk. Disk drives vary in the time it takes them to access data. The slowest speed is about 20 milliseconds (ms). There are drives that are as fast as 3 ms, although these are more expensive. The TI DISK CONTROLLER can handle up to 3 double sided, single density, 40 track, 20 ms step time disk drives. In otherwords, the TI disk controler is the bottom of the line in all respects. RYTE DATA currently has availabble an EPROM set for the TI disk controller that will allow it to access 80 track drives, however I do not know enough about the product at this time to make any comments on it. The CORCOMP disk controller can handle up to 4 double sided, double density, 40 track, 20 ms to 6 ms step time drives. This means that you can have one more drive than the TI controller, and each drive can hold double the data. The drives can also be accessed faster. The CORCOMP disk controller has some nice extra features including a good disk manager (it was the basis for DM1000), and a number of extra CALLs. The disk controller literally takes over the computer on power up, however, which causes some compatibility problems. This can be fixed by purchasing a new EPROM set from MG for about $35. The MYARC disk controller can handle up to 4 double sided, double density, 40 or 80 track, 20 ms to 6 ms step time drives. This is essentially the same capability as the CorComp card. You can only use 80 tracks if you purchase a special EPROM from MYARC for about $50 that suppports 80 track drives. The MYARC disk controller comes with probably the best disk manager program for the /4A, and has a built in CALL DIRectory command to catalog disks from BASIC and Extended BASIC. Also, the MYARC disk controller is noticably faster then the others because of the approach MYARC took in designing the card. RS232 CARDS There is very little to say in this area. There are cards available from TI (very rare these days), CORCOMP and MYARC. They all have 2 RS232 ports (Ed. Note: You need a "Y" cable to use both serial ports with the TI card. I don't know if the other cards need such a "Y" cable.) and 1 parallel (PIO) port. The CORCOMP will not work with the MYARC print spooler (more below on that), whereas the MYARC and TI will. The MYARC suports some extra software commands to allow for 19.2K baud (the others stop at 9600, real slow ), inverted busy in software rather than hardware, and some other details. MYARC also has an EPROM that will make the PIO port act like the thermal printer (TP) if you need something like that. However, really all these cards are petty much the same. Most people prefer the TI card, and shun the CORCOMP. The MYARC is probably the best and most readily available these days. MEMORY CARDS AND RAM DISKS There are more memory cards out there than almost anything else. TI made a 32K memory card. That was it. Most RAM disks, but not all, replace this card. If you just want a 32K card, they are available from MYARC and CORCOMP and there is no difference worth discussing between these two cards. They both seem to work reliably. (Ed. Note: Used TI 32K cards can often be obtained cheaply these days as users upgrade to MYARC or CORCOMP big-memory cards and no longer have use for their old TI card. Watch the newsletters for ads.) Foundation made a 128K memory card that replaced the 32K memory expansion and gave you an extra 96K of memory that could function as a RAM disk. Unfortunately their RAM disk software was terrible. Quality 99 software and others have since released new software that makes this card acceptable, however since it is out of production it can't be strongly recommended. MYARC makes a memory card which replaces the 32K memory card, and comes with either 256K or 512K of memory. The memory beyond the first 32K can be divided between a RAM disk and a print spooler, although the print spooler will not work with the CorComp PIO port. For an aditional $50 or so, you can get MYARC Extended BASIC II, which is a much faster, more powerful, and slightly buggier version of Extended BASIC that will work with the Foundation card or the MYARC memory card. CORCOMP makes a 256K and 512K card, and these both function as RAM disks. I don't know much about these cards, except that they are reported to work quite well, so again I will make no comments. The HORIZON RAM DISK comes either as a kit or assembled, and provides a very reliable 90K or 180K RAM disk. It can also be upgraded to 256K. It supports a very powerful operating system including replacing the TI title screen with a custom menu of programs. The HORIZON RAM DISK does not replace the 32K card and thus can be used along with a MYARC or Foundation RAM disk. (Ed. Note: If you are NOT using the CorComp disk controler it is possible to use as many HORIZON RAM DISK cards as your "P" box will hold, assigning each card a separate drive number. As I understand, it is only possible to use one HORIZON card with a CorComp controler. I have 3 180K cards in my "P" box, giving me 540K of battery backed up memory storage instantly available every time I turn on the computer. I don't have to use floppy's very often since my most used software is on the RAM disks. Multiple HORIZON cards will work even if you already have the maximum number of floppy drives your controler card is designed to handle. With a TI card you can have 3 floppy drives named DSK1-3 and additional HORIZON RAM DISKS named DSK4-7.) PRINT SPOOLERS Your printer is much slower than your computer. Your computer could print a full TI writer document in a few seconds. Your printer couldn't. A print spooler is a device that accepts your document as fast as the computer can send it, and then the spooler sends it to the printer, while you can continue to use your computer for other things. The first print spooler was part of the CORCOMP TRIPLE TECH card. It has 64K of memory and ran independently of the computer. The MYARC print spooler is part of the MYARC 256K and 512K cards and can be anywhere from 1K to 400K. The MYARC print sppooler is software driven, so that if your computer fails while the spooler is printing, your document probably won't be finished. Further more, some pprograms lock out the MYARC print spooler so that it can't print at all until you exit that program. However, for most uses the MYARC spooler is adequate. There is another class of print spoolers, which are separate hardware devices that go outside your expansion box. These will work with any computer. They are usually 128K of memory, and run about $90 or so. These work quite well, and if you don't want the added features of the Triple Tech card (clock and speech synthesizer in the box) or the power of the MYARC memory cards, these are a very economical solution. SPEECH IN THE BOX There are two ways to get the speech synthesizer into your expansion box. You can either get th CORCOMP TRIPLE TECH CARD with its print spooler and clock, or the RAVE 99 speech card. Both cards require that you already have the speech synthesizer as they both just provide a connector for it. The TRIPLE TECH CARD will not work with the 9640. The RAVE card will, however it did not work well with all speech synthesizers, at last check. RAVE has been good about trying to resolve this problem, and since their card is only about a third the cost of the TRIPLE TECH card it does provide a reasonable alternative. (Ed. Note: If you are handy with a soldering iron it is possible to put your speech synthesizer permanantly inside your 99/4A console. Back issues of Northwest 99er News and other newsletters tell you how.) CLOCKS There are several clock cards available, all radically different. The MBP (MPB??) clock card is one of the earliest, and works well. The CORCOMP TRIPLE TECH clock is probably the most popular, although CORCOMP also makes a standalone clock for those who don't want the entire TRIPLE TECH card. John Clulow recently designed a memory card that you can build which includes a clock similar to the MBP. The problem with all these clocks is that there is almost no software that supports them. Bulletin board programs can use them, but mostly you'll have to write your own software to handle these clocks. (Ed. Note: "Checkbook Writer" by Mel Nomina has a provision for using the TRIPLE TECH clock to automatically date check records. This public domain software can be obtained free from the Lima (Ohio) Area User Group by sending a disk and return postage to P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894.) IBM STYLE KEYBOARDS There are two sources for IBM keyboard interfaces. The first is from RAVE 99, and they are quite well established now. They have suppport for special Multiplan and TI-Writer modes to minimize key strokes, and installation is straightforward. The second source is ML Systems. They supply only a key board interface, you supply the keyboard. The RAVE folks will supply you with a keyboard, if you wish. The ML Systems supports keyboard macros, where one keystroke can send up to 12 key strokes to the computer. This is a powerful feature, however if you wish to customize the macros you must pay an additional $20. There have been reports that the ML Systems interface is less reliable than the RAVE, however I suspect that this is due to the keyboard being used and not the interface. Because the ML systems interface is considerably less expensive than the RAVE, it might be worth taking the chance. The one thing I can't stand about the ML Systems is that it uses the ESCape key to repplace the function key on the /4A, whereas the RAVE uses the ALTernate key. The RAVE choice makes much more sense, using the ESCappe key is horribly awkward. Look at an IBM keybboard sometime and you'll see what I mean.