Toastie

Thank you very much @Gunners TekZone! It will take some time for me plowing through the (to me) unknown Apple hardware - but what is time! I love these chips. And others may be way more educated to come up with ideas, proposals, solutions. For sure: You can make it way less sophisticated, as said. On the other hand: You absolutely don't need an Apple or IBM PC/XT to control 9750. A ZX81 - the totally el cheapo Zeddy - is well suited to do so, with a little help from (again) dead cheap ancient TTL chips. Not the point: This thread is not about saving here and there, it is about making it work. If someone figures out how to connect a Cray X-MP to 9570: It is >totally< relevant to this thread! And most probably, I will faint. It is just fantasizing about what >could< possibly work, regardless of the approach. @evank will judge and approve or not, just for locking anything appropriate into his (wonderful!) website. How cool is that. But here on EB: Just go nuts. All the best Thorsten

BUT This IS a totally relevant post to this thread!!! Sure you can use them for much more sophisticated stuff, but, also for talking/listening to Interface A! This thread is not about what can be done cheaper or less demanding, it is about what devices can interface to 9750! Your cards can do much more, but hey, I am absolutely sure that the chippies on these cards would be so happy when running 4.5V Technic machines. Is there a chance that you repost the card pictures? I have no idea how the Apple works on its inside, but I saw (but did not take screenshots, when I was preparing for a nice, 3 beers night diving into Apple ][ hardware) the photographs, all the chippies, I am familiar with ... of course these cards will do, I thought, but then - gone ... Man, I am using the I/O port of an Atari 1040 to talk to 9570. Believe it or not, I can hear some sort of "snickering", when it does. A friendly sound, though. This thread is about just doing or envisioning it. Best Thorsten

Huh? I am confused. If you want to know the dimensions of a LEGO thing in studs - isn't the diameter of a "stud" more or less irrelevant, but the center distance of two such studs (or the stud pitch) is? I thought this is the LEGO universe universal constant: 8 mm ideal stud center distance. Which of course implies that the diameter of such a stud needs to be less than that. The brick, precisely the 1xX bricks, are (ideally) 8 mm wide (which they really aren't, as reality needs tiny space to separate them again). And a stud is a stud, isn't it? In studless world, there are no studs, otherwise it would be studful. In studful world, we pop the holes - some call anti studs ^^ onto these (ideally) 5 mm (but in reality about 4.8 mm) diameter studs, don't we? The only real constant here seems to be the studful LEGO stud pitch - which should be more or less exactly 8 mm. So is the studless Technic hole pitch. Best Thorsten

Oh nice!!! I love rectification of this kind! Thank you very much, Evan! All the best Thorsten

I completely agree with you - with everything you wrote! Yes, let us continue to voice our enthusiasm and appreciation for what has been accomplished by TLG in the past. And show what (still) can be done with these fantastic educational materials. All the best and have a very nice day! Thorsten

This is absolutely true. However, I am not so sure about the last bit. Whenever we were asking TLG about historic software (apparently, the inquiries went all the way up to The Archives in Billund), in the end their reply was: Not to be found or not possible to disclose anything due to IP infringements. Well, this was about software(s) introduced 35+ years ago ... Could be that their archives suck, could be that their contracts are legal monsters. Besides the added value for the history, I also find it highly educating to study any >principle< progress that has been made over the decades. That is true for virtually everything, but I like to reflect from time to time real progress and not the change of color or communications protocols. Sure, new powerful hard- and software may do things unheard of every time they are introduced. But one has to tell them to actually do so. In the educational line of "robotics", having been limited for some decades to 2-3 sensor inputs or 3-5 actuator outputs (except for Interface B) without cascading the controlling devices, some repetitive elements are clearly observable. Line followers is only one. Furthermore, it is certainly true that schools and other institutions of education should be on top of the high-tech-game. However, the repetitive introduction of follow-up technology, being incompatible with its predecessors, seems also to be a nice way of increasing revenue at increasing pace. In addition, teaching folks need also be a) able and b) willing to teach the ever evolving advancement in technology. It is not only playing with old stuff from a historical perspective - it is purely fascinating to realize again and again, what can be accomplished with this old stuff, when used properly and with some skill. All the little hardware tricks and the software tweaks enabled many cool features - decades ago. Whether one sends data through a wire or through the air, be it IR, BT, BLE - in the end data need to be sent, and understood or interpreted at the other end and vice versa. Yes, today everything is high-res, multicolor, superfast, and totally awesome - but when you've built a LEGO model equipped with some sensors and some motors, 5GHz CPU clock rates are hardly necessary. Color sensing, fine, recognition of the user using an iris scan, fine, but your LEGO model will respond by moving something or making sounds. That sound could be a "beep" - as it was decades ago, or a super-nicely modulated sound from outer worlds as it is today; it remains a simple response, though. I am also aware of all the gurus out there, really bringing new technology introduced by TLG to the highest levels of sophistication. But we are talking education here, classroom action, performed with plastic bricks that have become more diverse, but the central idea of holding them together, as well as sensing and actuating, is 3 ... 4 decades old. I am not saying that today's students need to listen to beeps, because we did (in addition to all the limitation we had to live with ), no, I am talking about me, trying to get something across as a teacher. Getting to the heart and principle of the process by moving away all the decoration making it look good, no, look >awesome<. All the best, Thorsten

Hi Alex, in inner BASIC circles, that obscurity is also called "IP protection" . I grew up with “programming” BASIC on a Sinclair ZX81, and then (for years due to budget limitations) on a ZX Spectrum. Commands were exclusively tokens, the rubber (mat) keys represented >multiple< "commands" and graphic symbols, I was PEEKing and POKEing everywhere, moved RAMTOP around to make space for bytes some call "assembly", no line indenting, nested GOSUBs and so on and so forth. The dirtiest of dirty coding - but it sometimes worked. That will be quite the C64 experience. Others visit amusement parks, I take the C64 BASIC roller coaster - for free. I guess it is some rare variety of electro-masochism - but I'm actually looking forward to poking around on that 8-bit number cruncher. All the best Thorsten

Thank you, Alex. Appreciate your reply very much! Still did not make it into Lines, but that will happen soon. I shall also try out @maehw's GitHub code! I am also assembling all the Archive Lines images. I was asking, because I am planning to explore the C64's BASIC a bit more. Setting it up in my attic right now. Got another Interface A, as well as the C64's user port plug. Shall make the cable, and then try out "coding" (typing in BASIC lines is generally not regarded as coding, but "I don't care, I love it") an interface program, as I did for my DOS machines and the Atari 1040. Three more years, and I will be 100% on all this :D All the best Thorsten

Oh, that is a nice read! Thank you very much @amine! It works as the DOS Wasm X browser based emulator. I shall clear up my code, will also put the latest versions on Bricksafe. That may take a little time as I am rather busy these days, the winter semester comes to an end, which means !examania! As I have my C64 back to life (it was the boldly soldered in PLA ... it was a pain the a*s to get bugger out - ripped one trace off the ground and ruined a couple of vias, but works) - I have a quick question, I bet you, @evank, or @alexGS know right off the bat: I there a TC Logo version for the C64? Or is it "just" LEGO Lines? Best Thorsten

If the archive DOS emulator works as on the DOS Wasm X online emulator, it should work fine. As I said, in 9750 SIM mode nothing is sent anywhere, but the lill' virtual LEDs will go on/off as well as the direction is shown. I can certainly assemble a ZIP file containing all my latest programs (9750, 9751, 8485). I would probably need some explanations, but I can write something up as well. Best Thorsten

Yes, but using that code GitHub, you'll need to build and compile the server on a Linux machine. Best Thorsten

OK, I currently do not know what it's worth, as I am on a business trip ^^ and can't check any further. I just made a ZIP file of my entire QBasic directory with all Qbasic files in sub folders residing on my laptop's HD, including the QBasic.EXE, .HLP, and .INI files. Opened the above referenced website (neilb.net/doswasmx/) and dragged the about 1.2MByte long ZIP file into the little window, that says ... drag files here. It makes Zzzip, then a DOS window appears in the browser and I can start QBasic. There is nothing much about that, as you can do that on the Archive as well, at least this is what I believe. I ran my QBasic control programs for 9750 and 9751 in SIM mode (as I don't have my LEGO stuff with me ;) and all seems going well. Tomorrow I shall try getting access to the serial port - no clue whether that works or not. The thing is: The source code for this web-DOS-thingy is also on GitHub and programming gurus can build their own web-server from scratch ... I certainly cannot . Best Thorsten

I believe on Windows machines and using a browser for HW control, Windows with its directives is in your way. There are means of circumventing that, see post above, but I'm out on that stuff, I am a DOS person. When locally running a DOS emulator, just make sure you are using DOSBox-X. I have Bluetooth2Serial (BL2Ser) adapters on my Interface A, Interface B, and on my pimped ControlCenter II (I made a serial port for that one). They are all controlled from my Dell laptop using its internal Bluetooth radio - in "parallel". All I do is pair the BL2Ser adapters with my laptop, and then change the COM port Windows gave them to meaningful ports (that's just me). Then I open 3 DOSBox-X instances with their individual config files from a Windows console batch file: @echo off start dosbox-x.exe -conf 8485.conf start dosbox-x.exe -conf 9750.conf start dosbox-x.exe -conf 9751.conf exit Each config file configures the Windows COM port of the individual BT2Ser adapter as DOSBox-X COM1 or 2 port. The last lines of the DOSBox-X config file are (individual QBasic programs for each interface): mount C C:\_DOSBox-X\ c: cd qb11 qbasic /run Q9771\Q9771_3.BAS 3 DOSBox-X windows open, "autostart" QBasic, which in turn autostart my individual BASIC control programs for the 3 interfaces. And then I can play with all three interfaces; even in this configuration, DOSBox-X handles the "data bombardment" from Interface B ;) All this works nicely, but how to access HW from a web browser is >way< above my head ... But maybe someone else know how to do that? All the best Thorsten

I was afraid of that - however, there are the emulators "DOS Wasm X" (neilb.net/doswasmx/) and "js-dos" (caiiiycuk/js-dos on GitHub ), which are apparently based on DOSBox-X (which in turn very nicely allows access to the computer hardware), and both run in a web browser ... Well, Google's AI told me that, I have never tried, nor did/do I know anything about it. Best Thorsten

WOW! Nice ... Hmm - I would need to configure DOSBOX first, i.e., which COM port on my laptop (=USB port) is declared as "serial1" in DOSBOX. Is there a way of configuring DOSBOX on the archive? Best Thorsten