ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1993 NEVER RELEASED OFFICIAL TI PERIPHERALS: THE HEXBUS INTERFACE; A KEY TO WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN a hands on description by Charles Good Lima Ohio User Group The Hexbus Interface (PHP1300) allows you to control all the neat little hexbus peripherals directly from the 99/4A console. With this interface and a side car 32K (or 32K installed inside the console) you can create a fully expanded system with a very small footprint (occupying little surface area). If you paid full list 1983 TI prices, the cost of your expanded system would be much less than an expanded system based on the peripheral expansion box. If you have a box that contained a beige console you can see what a TI Hexbus interface looks like. There is a picture of one on the bottom of the box attached to the side of a console. TI listed this device in its last price list (dated June 1, 1983) for $59.95, but it was never officially released. Only a handful of original TI hexbus interfaces are known to exist. I have such a 1983 TI hexbus interface on loan from Gary Taylor for this report, and I now also have my very own BRAND NEW cloned hexbus interface. For years people have been trying to clone TI's original interface and now it has been done. As of right now I am one of two people to own one of these cloned interfaces. More on this later. Gary's official TI interface measures 8 x 3.5 x 2.25 inches. It connects to the side o the console and has a connection on its right side for other standard 99/4A peripherals or the peripheral expansion box cable. On the back is an on/off switch, a power supply jack for the required model AC9201 6v 300ma external power supply, and one hexbus connector. There is no serial number or date code (ATA or LTA number) on Gary's interface, indicating that it is a preproduction prototype. There is, however, an FCC identification number (A929JWPHP1300), and a statement that the device has been approved by the FCC for "class B" use in the home. The following hexbus peripherals have been tested by me using a 99/4A console and the hexbus interface with no problems. These are all very small peripherals, and all of them except the RS232 can be run on batteries as well as AC current. With the exception of the Printer 80 they all stack neatly on top of each other. You can place the whole stack of peripherals on top of the hexbus interface where it is connected to the side of the console. The entire footprint of all these peripherals when stacked on top of the interface OCCUPIES LESS TABLE SPACE than fire hose PE Box connector when connected to the console. The PE Box connector sticks out frather from the right side of the console than does the hexbus interface and stack of hex bus peripherals! --Hexbus RS232 with parallel option: can be used to run any printer. --Hexbus modem, doesn't require an RS232, 300 baud. --Wafertape drive. This is a "never released peripheral" that I own. Up to 8 of these can be cabled together in a single system. --Hexbus 4 color printer/plotter. This tiny printer can be addressed directly and does not need an RS232. --The Hexbus "Printer 80" 80 column thermal printer also works flawlessly with the hexbus interface, but you can't stack it with the other peripherals. Like the printer/plotter, the Printer 80 can be addressed directly and doesn't require an RS232 interface. It uses fax paper or plain paper and a thermal ribbon cartridge. TI was developing a hexbus 5.25 inch floppy drive controller. I know of two working examples of this controller in private hands, and one of these has been tested successfully with a 99/4A hexbus interface. Unfortunately, the Hexbus interface does not work properly with the Mechatronic quickdisk drive, the one that uses 2.8 inch disks. You can save programs to quickdisk, but you can't load them back off the disk into the 99/4A. WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH THE HEXBUS INTERFACE: According to TI's documentation that comes with the TI interface, the device can be addressed in TI BASIC, TI EXTENDED BASIC, Assembly language, and from the P-code peripheral. The usual syntax is "HEXBUS.DEVICE_NUMBER.FILE_NAME". For example, to save a BASIC program to a wafertape set up as device 2 (wafertape drives can be designated any number from 1-8) you would type SAVE HEXBUS.2.PROGRAM and press . To list a basic program to a printer attached to the hexbus RS232 you would enter LIST "HEXBUS.50." where device 50 is the parallel output of the RS232. To list a program to the printer plotter the syntax is LIST "HEXBUS.10." I have used the interface with WORDWRITER, a cartridge version of TI Writer. LF and then the file name HEXBUS.2.TEXTFILE will load TEXTFILE into the edit buffer from wafertape device 2. PF and then HEXBUS.16. will print the file directly to the Printer 80 (which is device 16). The TI Hexbus Interface user guide was never officially published. It would have been designated as document 1049000-1, and was last revised sometime after March 1, 1983. (I have the March 1 revision. Errors in this revision have been corrected in my copy of 104900-1.) This user guide suggests that you can get a CC40 and 99/4A to talk to each other over the hexbus interface, allowing the CC40 to store data on the 99/4A's drives and display information on the 99/4A monitor. There is only limited truth to this. The documentation includes a skeleton 99/4A BASIC program that is supposed to put the /4A in "slave mode" so that it and its peripherals can can be controlled by a CC40 connected to the hexbus interface. The key word here is "skeleton". Big parts are left out of this BASIC program, and nobody that I know who has a TI hexbus interface can make this program work. Nobody has been able to SAVE or OLD a CC40 program onto a 99/4A floppy drive or display CC40 text via a 99/4A onto a monitor. You are supposed to be able to do this, but nobody can figure our how. You can use a CC40 (or TI74) to save data to a data file on wafertape and then use the 99/4A to open the file and read the data into the 99/4A. Wafertape drives are rare and not very reliable. It is really too bad that you can't use the Mechatronic quickdisk drive with the hexbus interface. THE KEY TO WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: Back in 1983 the hexbus interface would have been the key to a low cost compact expanded 99/4A system. Lets compare costs, based on the rediculus full list prices from TI's last official price list. EXPANSION VIA THE PE BOX: --PHP1200 Peripheral Expansion box...........$249.95 --PHP1220 RS232 Card.........................$174.95 --PHP1240 Disk Controller Card...............$249.95 --PHP1250 Floppy drive for PE box............$399.95 --PHP1260 32K card...........................$299.95 --PHP1800 Telephone coupler (modem)..........$199.95 ----------------------TOTAL EXPANSION COST..$1574.70 EXPANSION WITH HEXBUS PERIPHERALS: --You need a side car 32K and there is no such hexbus product. Doryt Systems advertises one in the June 1983 99er......$175.00 --PHP1300^Hexbus Interface...................$ 59.95 --HX2000^^Wafertape Drive....................$139.95 --HX3000P^RS232 with parallel interface.....$124.95 --HX3100^^Hexbus modem.......................$ 99.95 ----------------------TOTAL EXPANSION COST...$599.80 This would leave you with enough extra money to purchase additional hexbus peripherals such as --Additional wafertape drives. Up to 8 drives can be cabled together in one system and you don't need any kind of "controller" interface. --HX1000 4 color printer/plotter.............$199.95 --HX1010 Printer 80, released in 1984 at.....$249.95 (the TI impact printer listed in 1983 for $750.) So after listing it in their official price list, obtaining FCC certification, and providing a color picture of the thing on each beige console box, why didn't TI offer the Hexbus Interface to 99/4A users? I suspect the answer is the failure of the wafertape drive to live up to expectations. My wafertape drive, and those owned by a few other lucky collectors, are not very reliable, particularly when operated on battery power. The key to system expansion is reliable mass storage that is better than a cassette tape recorder. Failure of the wafertape drive left the hexbus in 1983 with no mass storage peripheral. But this may soon change! .CE 3 NEW 1993 HEXBUS PERIPHERALS: reported by Charles Good Lima Ohio User Group A hobbyist in Germany named Michael Becker is making clones of TI's never released Hexbus peripherals in limited quantities. (Michael Becker also makes a quad density disk controller and a "speech in the PE box" card that includes TEII speech in ROM usable from extended basic without occupying normal XB program memory space. This card was shown at the Feb 1993 Fest West.) --99/4A hexbus interface. I own one of these clones. It is built like a tank in a solid metal enclosure resembling the enclosure of the Mechatronic 80 column peripheral. Like the original TI product, the clone plugs into the side of the console and has a connector for the PE Box cable. Unlike the TI original my clone has an LED which flickers to tell me that my interface is funtioning, and it does not require a spearate power supply. --5.25 inch DSDD hexbus disk controller. This can be used for mass storage with the CC40, TI74, 99/2, 99/8, and with the hexbus interface can also be used with the 99/4A. Michael Becker has a TI original (a very very rare device, even rarer than a wafertape drive) and has dumped all the code in the PAL chips so that he can produce duplicates. I expect delivery of my controller in a few months. --Hexbus Video interface. This allows the CC40 and TI74 to display text in 40 columns on a composite color monitor. One of my correspondants has seen Michael's working prototype. It is better than the TI original in that it will display in 16 colors, not just in black and white. Another hobbyist, Lee Bendick, has cloned the CC40 EA cartridge and is making this cartridge available to interested CC40 owners. This allows users to program the CC40 in assembly language, storing assembly routines in battery backed RAM cartridges or in the RAM of the CC40. I know of only 4 TI original CC40 EA cartridges. I own one of Lee's cloned EA cartridges and it works as described in my two massive CC40 assembly language manuals. You need either a 5.25 hexbus disk drive or a wafertape drive to make the EA cartridge work. Anyone interested in any of these CC40/Hexbus peripherals can write me at P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894. I will put you in touch with Michael Becker or Lee Bendick. .PL 1