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alexGS

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  1. alexGS
    Can you make the Facebook 9750 Interface A group private yet? :) Since you’ve done it for your Square Pistons FB group, I’m hoping you might do it for the other, and then we can post this stuff there in separate threads with photos and video etc. and discussion as we try it out.
  2. alexGS
    Sorry for not being able to respond when you tagged me - simply too busy here this week - but I think you’re absolutely going in the right direction, considering the 9771 PC card also uses 74LS bit-latching logic. I think it’s time for us to start new threads perhaps, for these different configurations - it’s a lot to try and keep up with 😁 It made me laugh out loud when you implied a 24-hour timeframe for responses, I feel like I’m operating on more of a three-month timeframe (that’s when I hope to get my multi-9771 made). But I just wanted to let you know that I’m excited by these developments and always interested to see what you’re doing with them ☺️ cheers
  3. alexGS
    I’d like to test it out and start a new thread just for this :) From reading the 9760 PDF as best as I can, TC Controller is a set of commands added into COMAL that gives it similar capability to TC-Logo. Note; it is different to the code samples included with the hardware manuals (e.g. 9765) that show BASIC and COMAL without command extensions; those rely on POKE. They are perhaps just starter examples for a situation where the full software (TC-Logo, TC Controller) had not been purchased. Remember that the special software came at a cost :) I notice TC Controller is only used in the context of Control II (1092), while LEGO Lines is used with Control I (1090), just as we’ve previously seen in the Teacher’s Guide for the Apple II and the BBC Micro. We’ve never seen any other material dedicated to 1092 - everything else is for TC-Logo and 1090 or 9700. That’s what makes this an exciting find.
  4. alexGS
    Sorry Evan, I did try but the page didn’t open, and being a workday I didn’t have time to write this message to tell you… It’s opened now and I don’t spot any glaring errors; I think by the same token as not including MSX, you wouldn’t include Toastie’s interfacing to Sinclair Spectrum which would be a shame not to .) perhaps you need two tables, one official and one for ‘hacks’
  5. alexGS
    The Apple IIe card only works with the LC and Colour Classic, as it uses the processor-direct slot (PDS) which a Classic doesn’t have. The card has only a disk drive interface and a joystick or paddle interface - no expansion slots. I sourced one a year ago for a collector; the Y-cable is especially highly prized for connecting both a 5.25” drive and a joystick. Ah, ok - sorry - does it cover TC Controller? I was meaning Steuern und Regeln, which wasn’t original LEGO material, but was close as it describes the TC Controller extensions to COMAL. I’m very excited for this discovery in Denmark, in particular the example programs for the plotter that show how it was intended to work 🙂 at last!
  6. alexGS
    I only just realised - reading it - that the content is the same as Make and Program Your Own Robots that I linked to in my post above - already on the archive - and that’s in English
  7. alexGS
    Intriguingly, this is the same model featured in ‘Make and Program Your Own Robots’ by the same author - Sinclair ZX Spectrum and C64 editions exist https://archive.org/details/make-and-program-your-own-robots-for-c64-and-vic-20 I’ve built it, got it working with the paperclip-and-foil switches… …although I never realised the colour scheme, since the book’s drawings and photos were monochrome 😁 Evan will be along to slap my wrist for going off-topic, since this is not related to the Interface A. But it was intriguing for me to see the same model crop up, from 1985 before LEGO offered sensors or switches.
  8. alexGS
    And thank you Thorsten for already noting all the unusual hardware (for us) - that’s obviously a whole avenue of exploration also! ☺️ I didn’t have anything to add to what you’d said in that regard, but of course I agree with you, those are interesting machines and fascinating to see how LEGO supported them all. I’m excited about the C64 software as I’ll be able to run it - with the COMAL cartridge provided by my new C64 Ultimate’s capabilities (it can load any cartridge image as though the cartridge is attached), while still having a user port for my Interface A to plug into. The documentation will obviously provide linguistic challenges, but that’s all part of the fun! The Macintosh adapter, I think that seems to be a clever homebrew project late in the life of Interface A. HyperCard was mentioned, which was an early hypertext/graphical system with object-oriented, event-driven procedures behind it (I used it back in 1993!) I know that a Classic has a serial port rather than parallel, and no other relevant expansion slots, so the hardware may have latched data bytes sent using a generic serial device driver rather than anything specific. Or, it could have been fully implemented with objects and a polling routine. Hard to know at a glance, with my limited French reading ability 😁
  9. alexGS
    Amine - this is tremendous, you have uncovered the official LEGO support (software and literature) for COMAL80 which @evank and I were aware of and had been looking for - for years - we even obtained the German book directly from the author which mentioned it but still left us needing the software. This is significant for several reasons; - It is the only official material to reference 1092 (Control II), while all the other printed materials feature 1090 and 9700. - As such, it includes programming examples for the plotter and other instructed models of 1092, which makes it of specific interest to me. - This is the first LEGO software for the C64 we have seen other than Lines, and as such, provides structured programming extended with interface-specific capability (TC-Logo was unlikely to have been ‘ported’ to the C64, as C64 Logo was an entirely different product from a company other than LCSI). So a very exciting find, I presume this has not been available until recently - if it has been published on dubbekarl.dk for many years, then we will feel rather silly for not finding it earlier 🙂 Thank you for posting it here for us
  10. alexGS
    Five years on, I’m seeing the same thing… USB plugged into power (red light beside the plug is on), left plugged in overnight but still flashing two orange flashes followed by white even when the hub is turned ‘off’ (the light sensor white light stays on too). Tried a different power supply and different cable. Seems like it just isn’t charging for some reason. I think perhaps I have to charge the battery ‘manually’ (ie. using a bench power supply with a current limit set) UPDATE: a third USB power supply has successfully charged it, the orange light has stopped flashing. I guess many USB chargers must be too weak to do the job :)
  11. alexGS
    Thanks Evan - I was slow off the mark on this thread (sorry, Gunners) - I thought the symptoms sounded familiar. I think it’s a board layout mistake from putting the header footprint on the wrong side. I have a photo of my solution, but can’t upload it here as there’s a size limit for me of 15.78KB. I used a panel-mount 20-pin header (screwed to the back of my Apple IIGS) and, counting from red (pin 1), split the ribbon between wires 5 and 6, and turned over the remaining strip of wires 6-20 before crimping into the 20-pin plug that goes into the 9767 Reboot board. To clarify, the red wire is still pin 1, so the first five wires are not twisted. I didn’t change anything on the board itself. Crimping ribbon cable connectors is best done with a bench vice - the jaws stay parallel - or a Vise-Grip welding clamp can be used (the jaws have wide plates) A standard ribbon cable to the Interface A then plugs into the 20-pin header without having to open the computer for setup/packdown. It’s the same type of bolted-on header that older Apple IIs used for the floppy drives. I really should have documented this by making a PDF, just never got around to it. Again, sorry about that
  12. alexGS
    Is it possible the footprint for the 20-pin ribbon connector was reversed? Just thinking of how the 5, 4, 3, 2 occurs with 1 and 0 perhaps treated as the inputs
  13. alexGS
    Thanks. So that’s where I saw it… I thought it was in the German book you’d scanned ☺️ Thorsten @Toastie: cheers and good luck! :) Bear in mind that the C64’s BASIC is pretty awful - anything created with POKEs and GOSUBs and variable names (where only the first two letters are considered) is going to be pretty obscure to anyone else, and thus not really a ‘general solution’, apart from any ‘IT snobbery’ against BASIC! It’s a little like when people use spreadsheets for accounting, and IT people dislike it. Better to use the development environment, where all the groundwork is done (e.g. the graphics in LEGO Lines). I spent about 15 years showing people how to use spreadsheets correctly, and it all counted for nothing in the end (no credibility), apart from the happiness of all the people who made their own solutions 😉
  14. alexGS
    We’ve never seen mention of TC-Logo for C64. Logo on the C64 existed many years before (sold by Commodore themselves), which seems unrelated to LCSI Logo and therefore not a straightforward development path to ‘port’ across from the Apple/DOS versions. There was mention somewhere of using COMAL-80 on the C64, I’m not certain LEGO sanctioned that (were there code examples in LEGO literature or only in the book from Germany?) - eventually the LEGO materials seemed to settle on TC-Logo for Apple II and DOS PC as being the standard. I find LEGO Lines quite useful at shows, as it’s easy to see what’s running. Highlighting the lines on the display does slow it down somewhat, so if you need accurate responses, you can run it in a ‘fast’ mode where it doesn’t update the display.
  15. alexGS
    That is great news! I had also received two disks for the Macintosh Control Lab software - one was colour and one was monochrome - so both the same really (I uploaded them to the Internet Archive; https://archive.org/details/macintosh-control-lab-1.0) I’ll be interested to see what is on the two disks that you’ve found :) -Alex
  16. alexGS
    Hello Thorsten, Perfectly understandable, I myself often fail to keep up and seem to be very busy at this end of the year. I haven’t bought the Pocket386 yet, as the ‘special’ pricing offers haven’t been too special, plus I foolishly spent exactly that money on a speeding ticket driving on an old road (formerly the main road) on the way back from a worksite, didn’t realise the speed limit had been reduced from 100km/h to 60km/h, and I was blissfully doing 87km/h. As noted to Evan on Facebook, there is an easy way to plug three 9771 cards into the Pocket386 - https://a.aliexpress.com/_mroi0Yl But my desire is to design a board that connects directly to the Pocket386 (or Book 8088) and incorporates the 9771 logic for four Interface A (20-pin) outputs. Of course only one Interface A could be used for TC-Logo, so it goes hand-in-hand with Evan’s preferred method of programming in BASIC. Such a setup has the advantage that it would be compact for taking to shows and would have a bright modern (readable) display. Generally I like to see period-correct hardware, but I think I’d make the exception for this, for the sake of compactness. i will try to work on the board design soon - I need current skills as part of my work (been a few years since I designed a PCB), I anticipate using surface-mount ICs and getting them assembled onto the board by JLCPCB, then adding connectors by hand. Cheers -Alex
  17. alexGS
    Hello Amine, Thank you for sharing this with us and I saw you mentioned the data file somewhere - that sounds a similar arrangement to the C64 version with the commands listed in a file. It is some time ago and I cannot remember how I did it. The display was a simple bitmap that I was able to edit using a program on a PC that converted it back into a C64 file. I will have a look when I get some free time. I imagine for other prompts in the program, it will require using a hex editor and it is difficult to change the length of the text. Maybe we should just use it in French instead! :)
  18. alexGS
    Control Lab does use Logo. I think we’re confusing the machine language for the application with the language presented for the user :) When you add buttons and controls to the page, they have event procedures (rather like HyperCard on the Mac at the time), and those procedures are written in Logo. Typically they run other procedures and functions also written in Logo. And yes, being event-driven, it is capable of running more than one procedure at a time. My understanding is that TC-LOGO existed before Logowriter (Logowriter being a combination of Logo and word-processing features for documenting projects?). Logowriter was then updated with added commands to give it the same capability as TC-LOGO for controlling the interface. I know of at least one photo from LEGO depicting Logowriter on the monitor of an Apple IIGS, but I haven’t seen the activity guides etc. rewritten for Logowriter (if, indeed, they ever were). Perhaps that means it is 100% compatible with TC-LOGO? I’m looking forward to trying it out. Well done, Evan :)
  19. alexGS
    Hello Thorsten, This is fabulous news, thank you for summarising various discussions (which I’d hardly kept up with) and giving us a concrete example. I gasped/choked when I saw the wires/perfboard added to the original, pristine 9771 🥹 I burst out laughing when I saw the ‘power meter’, like a VU meter on an 80s stereo… needs translucent green/red bricks for effect 😁 I like to use TC-Logo for original LEGO activities (from the workbooks) but I think ‘Technic Multicontrol’ justifies the use of BASIC (as @evank prefers). You inspire me to create a new interface board, same idea as your 9771 addressing enhancement (perhaps six outputs) - I would like to make this connect to the header on the Pocket386 that is available on AliExpress. I don’t have one yet (waiting for Black Friday or 11.11 or whatever sales they have, as it’s a somewhat pricey toy) but it exposes the ISA bus at the back of the unit, and is compact, with a modern display. I realise some old laptops might expose the ISA bus through a docking connector, but they tend to be all different and difficult connectors to find, and then of course there are the usual problems with using 35-year-old hardware - so I’m going to start with this new PC, as then other people could buy the same and use the same interface board. Link below to the product (do not buy at this price as that fluctuates wildly, there are lots of listings for the same item with lower prices, higher shipping, etc.) and it also exists in 8086 form, clear casing, etc. Anyway, that will be my next Interface-A project, and will be useful for controlling my 12V train layout, which really needs more than three motors. Thanks again for your post! 🥰 -Alex https://a.aliexpress.com/_mseT8DJ
  20. alexGS
    Hello Thorsten/Toastie, I know I’ve dredged this up from the distant past, but I just wondered - do we know how the sizes of these magnet rings compare between the various LEGO motors of the era - Cybermaster, Mini-motor (heavier/lighter weight), and even the Micro-scout. It’s possible to buy ring magnets on AliExpress. I have no idea how their polarity is arranged - I imagine the motors require several poles in the magnet to function, or perhaps they function with a single magnetic field N-S (like an old motor with one magnet each side of the housing) Anyway, I probably also need to get around to opening motors, but I just thought I’d ask about the Micro-scout in particular as it seems like it would have a similar motor to the Cybermaster. And yes, I have a Cybermaster with a seized motor :) Cheers -Alex
  21. alexGS
    I think the C64 LEGO Lines works similarly - it has a ‘loader’ written in BASIC that displays the title screen, but the main part is written in assembly language for speed. I’d never gone further with working out how the code worked but there are similar registers in the C64 for user port data direction and bit values. Well done for figuring it out, Thorsten :)
  22. alexGS
    That’s Alex Lukazi - a different Alex. I’m Alex Shepherd :)
  23. alexGS
    LINES material was designed around set 1090 (never 9700) but the parts and concepts are similar (for example, there is an instructed washing machine build in both). 9700 has two switches and an optosensor, while 1090 has two optosensors. The instructions for set 1090 may be particularly hard to find online (if you want to make the exact models) but I eventually bought a physical copy. We can refer to Evan’s collection for programming examples. This teacher’s guide was the typical reference for LINES (versions exist for BBC, Apple II): https://archive.org/details/lego-lines-teacher-materials/page/n15/mode/1up The C64 LINES software that I translated (mostly) to English included four samples, WASH, BELT, and so on, which were provided in Dutch and I converted across. You could open this in a C64 emulator to see the programs https://archive.org/details/en-legolines_202112 There is TCLogo material in the collection, for both 1090 and 9700. This workbook has fairly complex TCLogo examples: https://archive.org/details/technic-control-i-resource-guide
  24. alexGS
    A razor blade (of the type used in a scraper) is the best tool for spreading the cross-cut pins. They should be a nice tight fit - particularly the 4.5V Technic motors tend to suffer from a loose fit, but by expanding the pins you will greatly improve reliability. This is essential in 12V train layouts too :)
  25. alexGS
    Lol… And winter holidays? That’s a long time to wait - summer has just started on the 1st of December 😛 Seriously, good idea Evan, thank you for including me. From about 2pm onwards (your time) would be good here
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