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Thanks Jar. It was much easier and faster with the spiral bindings removed. The older TC Logo documents were already PDF'd and shared widely around the web before I discovered these sets a few years ago. Just centralizing them now into a safe place.

Control Lab books are all on the Archive.org site now. Several more TC Logo books (from set 9700) may appear soon. :)

He's good, but mainly he is just a Bruce wanna-be. I stopped working on the examples book because its spiral binding was very tight and I was afraid of damaging the paper by turning one more page. Instead, I consulted with @jarstx and suggested removing the spiral wire very carefully, scanning the pages as flat sheets, and then taking it somewhere to be professionally re-bound. He agreed, as long as I promised to do the quick-start guide too, which I was going to skip. I agreed, removed the spirals tonight, and got through the first two chapters. Now the process is no longer painstaking, merely tedious. :)

You're confusing the sets. I am talking about Control Lab software for the mid-1990s Interface B #9751. Those cards you mentioned are for Mindstorms RCX. https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=166.36.633 Yep, right reference. :) Hey I am from New Jersey!

Thanks again @eloybroock! The reference guide is online now: https://archive.org/details/@magicratandbarefootgirl. Next, I got through the first 24 pages of the examples book. Only 102 pages to go there. :( PS. Kudos to anyone who knows the "magic rat and barefoot girl" reference without Googling it.

Got yet another 40ish pages done tonight. Final 40 in another day or two.

Pretty sure I'm just talking to myself now. :) I got on a Skype call with the former Lego employee in Denmark. It turns out he worked on the education and curriculum side. He was not an engineer or involved in the hardware/software development. Oh well. :(

Update, 11:55pm, Sunday ... 50% through the 160-page reference guide. Meanwhile the (short) "directions for use" guide is posted. See https://archive.org/details/@magicratandbarefootgirl.

Update, 11:40pm, Saturday ... got through the first chapter of the reference guide (40 pages) ... a very tiresome task, but it's important! Look on the bright side, it is 1/4 done.

Hey look! One of the books magically showed up on Archive.org. What are the odds. :) https://archive.org/details/cl_setup I will see about editing the title to something more useful. I plan to change the description too. It says this is one of five documents, but there are more than five things to be uploaded. This document is 50ish pages. It took about 45 minutes to scan, save, and upload. The reference guide is 160 pages so it will take much longer. 4:19am here, off to sleep...

They're here! These four manuals are insanely helpful, and I've never found any of them online. Fixing that soon. :) Our purchase includes four books: - Setup Guide and Introductory Explorations - Reference Guide - Technology Investigations and Inventions - Quick Start Guide: Creating a Fan Control Project The first two books are the good ones. They cover everything you need to know about how to use the 9751 Interface B and the Control Lab 1.x software (I don't think there ever was a 2.x, but I'll find out in my phone interview with the Lego engineer in Denmark, which is scheduled for Monday.) The third book, Investigations/Inventions, is basically just examples for classroom teachers. It is similar to the 1980s version mentioned by Lukazi at http://lukazi.blogspot.com/2014/07/lego-legos-first-programmable-product.html (see in the literature section where it says "Technic Control 1 Resource Guide.) The fourth book isn't so exciting. Just a quick demo of an electric fan model. I will focus on the first and second book. @jarstx, thanks for helping make this purchase happen!

Good morning everyone (here in the States it's morning) -- another wild day of Covid-19! But I'm excited because, according to the post office tracker, the Control Lab reference guide is arriving this afternoon. Can't wait to read it and hope it magically appears on Archive.org in not too long from now.

I made a Facebook group earlier this year called "BrickHacks". You should post about it there.

Wow! That should be its own thread.

Good job. Re: Lukazi's blog -- yes, that post helped a ton when I first started using the 1980s set (#9700, #9750, etc.) a couple of years ago. If you read the comments on that page, you'll see a few from Evan K. ... guess what, I know that guy. LOL pardon anything I said in those comments that makes me sound clueless; I know a LOT more about the technology and the products now than I did back then. Ragooman was the other person in those comments. He was a close friend of mine and an electrical engineer. He died of cancer in 2018. If you go to my site (again, it's www.mindsbeforethestorm.com, with the 16-bit section coming online soon), you'll see a tribute link to him (Dan Roganti) in the header.

My first programming language was Logo on a Commodore 64, but they only taught us turtle graphics, not the rest of the language. That was in 5th grade, so I was 10. Then we moved on to BASIC with the Apple II+ and Apple //e in 6th-7th grades. I got a //e for my bar mitzvah! LOL, one very happy 13-year-old. Stopped being interested in Lego as a teenager when I discovered 1/10-scale electric car kits. Tamiya, Team Associated, etc. .... those were WAY more fun to build and race than Lego. That hobby stopped when I got a driver's license and a real car. :) Sometime in my 30s I became interested in vintage computers, and from that world I re-discovered Lego ... eventually finding out ways to do both things together!!! That's where I am at now. Let me guess, you work in IT or software development?

Thanks @eloybroock! I spent 20 years writing for computer magazines and now work as a science writer at a technical university here in New Jersey, so it comes natural to me to find the right people and interview them. The person I interviewed is also here in the U.S., but after we discussed Robolab I asked if knows anyone who worked on Control Lab and he referred me to someone in Denmark. I'm scheduling a time to talk to that person by Skype, hopefully very soon. That person already mentioned yet another Denmark engineer. So, exciting things are happening!

I had that phone interview today with the guy who led development of Robolab. :) Learned all about the history of how/why things happened when they made that software. It will all go onto my website. Meanwhile, the Control Lab reference guide books should be here in another couple of days.

That's great! Yes, please get those files onto an online drive somewhere. Let me know if you need help. I have a 5.25 drive.

Another update, while I wait for slow book shipping during this crazy virus situation ... I tracked down one of the Lego engineers who helped build Interface A, so I asked if he also worked on Interface B ... I'll report back here when he responds!

On further inspection, the MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 programs are identical. They're both Dacta Control Lab version 1.3 from 1995. This version works fine directly from DOS or from inside Windows 3.1 (I tested both on real hardware). However I would like to see a version 1.0 if you or anyone else has it available. (The 1.0 software posted on page 1 of this thread, from 2012, is for Windows 95.) Version 1.0 for MS-DOS was sold on a 5.25" floppy: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?G=821915#T=S&O={"iconly":0} Version 1.2 is here: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?G=4102514b

Clarification: it's not Control Lab running on modern hardware, it's entirely software-based ... this isn't a hardware replica.

Hey look! In the last day or two, someone in Seattle posted new software for using Control Lab through 64-bit Windows (7, 8, 10), MacOS (minimum 10.10), and Raspberry Pi (3B/4B). Pi uses .deb formats, so I contacted him and requested an Ubuntu build, which is immediately supplied. Awesome! I was able to operate motors through my Linux computer just now. He said he'll update his website with the Linux part soon. Click here. Note, this doesn't appear to have input ports, only outputs! I asked him about inputs just now. Waiting for a response. Between this new software and (in the next couple of weeks) an online scan of the original Reference Manual, it's a good season for Control Lab fans!

I download RIS (Robolab) 1.0. Unlike the 2.5 version, this version installed fine on Windows 95. But there's always another obstacle. :) The software opens, but it won't let me into the programming environment or the help file until after I connect the tower and RCX box. I don't have those! Just wanted to poke around the development screens and see what's there.

Thanks @eloybroock!