99er Forums

Does Texnet exist anymore? Is there a dialup service I can use with the TI-99/4a these days?

No, TEXNET has been gone a long time.
TE II only does 300 baud, and most dial-ups don't support that anymore. If you have 32K, you can run better terminal programs that run from 1200 to 4800 baud with no data loss, or up to 38400 using the right terminal program and handshaking cable...

You can learn more on this link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator

I have a PEB with 32k in it. and everything else.. its loaded... But i would be interested in getting a terminal program somehow going faster than 300 bps i could run from a pc to telnet with... If anyone could point me in the right direction even if i have to type it in i dont mind. but would appreciate it!

Thanks!
Chris537

I was wondering if someone out there could help. A little background info first - I am a long-time TI enthusiast. My first system was a beige TI 99 that I bought in spring 1983
with money I saved picking strawberries. I was 14 at the time and spent uncountable hours hacking away at programs, writing games, hooking reed switches up to the joystick
port so I could tell if my siblings snuck into my room when I was gone. Good times, great memories. Anyway over the years I have occasionally fired up my old system to
dink around with it, and recently I acquired a long-desired object - a modem coupler. Actually I ended up with two of them due to a second-chance auction on FeeBay.
Anyway I have never played around with comms on the TI at all, and now that I have two complete systems set up, both with RS232 cards and couplers, I'm trying to get them
to talk to each other. I have old model 500 telephones hooked up to them and using a PBX in the house, I can easily make calls from one to the other. I can set one to
Originate, one to Answer, and the modems' READY lights light up. I expected with the terminal emulator II cartridge, to at least be able to connect to each other and communicate.
I have played with all of the duplex setting combinations. No dice. I have an RS232 breakout box which has LEDs indicating the status of the pins, and I do see the setup
taking place. Once I type a character however, I never see TX/RX changing. I expected at 300 baud to be able to see my keystrokes.

I see in the Terminal Emulator II manual that there is an picture and a paragraph showing two systems connected as I've described, although it doesn't go into any detail.
Any advice on how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.

I'm trying to delve into how this stuff works on the TI with the goal of possibly setting up a TEXNET type service for people to be able to call in with their TIs to test
their systems, etc. I'm not sure if anyone has done this yet, it just sounded like a fun project. If anyone is interested, let me know.

Sounds like a fun project, actually. I've never set up the telephone couplers, but you might try to ask the same question on the Yahoo groups--there are a couple of people there running TI BBS programs.

Thanks for the advice. I wonder if anyone has done such a thing with a nullmodem cable?

The null modem route works well to do a direct transfer between a TI and a PC. Several folks have gone that route. There is also an interesting mod to the TI RS-232 card to allow the TI to use the hard disk of a PC as TI accessible storage. Fred Kaal did the software and hardware for it IIRC. His website has been down for a year due to a move, but I believe he may have put it back up recently. I'll have to look later and see if I have the new link, as it isn't showing up in searches yet. TI did a game that they never released that was supposed to tie a pair of 99/4As together so that players could do head-to-head combat. It was called Battlestar Galactica, but I've never seen the code in the wild, so it may have been permanently lost. . .

Have you tried to communicate over the RS232's in BASIC?

On one:
10 OPEN #1:"RS232",OUTPUT
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT #1:A$
40 GOTO 20

The other:

10 OPEN #1:"RS232",INPUT
20 INPUT #1:A$
30 PRINT A$
40 GOTO 20

Run the 2nd one first, so it is waiting for the input, then the first.
Key in anything you like, except commas (unless you embed the entire reply in double-quotes)
It should appear on the other side.

You can try this with your setup, or with a direct-cable connection. You only need 3 pins connected.
#2->#3
#3->#2
#7->#7

In other words, a null-modem - then crossover pins 2 & 3...

Ben

Thanks Ben, I'll give this a try when I can, hopefully tonight. I was under the impression that the terminal emulator
could function as a simple terminal program, like minicom or even hyper terminal for simply comms between machines.
I'm trying to figure out what the terminal emulator is actually useful for, other than enhanced speech capabilities and
the allusions to "transferring images and sounds" in the manual.