alexGS
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Thank you for undertaking this! In case it helps - the software documentation in the large folder and those function key templates are the ‘treasure’ to us. The smaller LEGO booklets 1090/1092 A-E are more widely available and have been scanned before - just wanted to save you from doing work that’s been done before :) -
Great work Amine :) I can’t remember how I edited the code for the C64 version (so many years ago) but perhaps it will be possible to analyse that for the confirmation key comparison and make improvements. It’s different assembly language of course but the principle should be the same. Note that the C64 screen background isn’t the original - I drew the LEGO logo - and I made tweaks to include more of the shortcut keys (which is useful when you are actually using it). The ones that didn’t fit there, I put on the loading screen.
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Thanks Thorsten, yes, let’s return to private messages and get this sorted out 😊
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phew, thank you. You’re right, you are walking the walk at present 😊 I feel like I haven’t done any building with the old stuff for months, plus I had to drop my interface circuit design in lieu of other pressing jobs. There are actually many contributors to this thread (I counted more than ten) but they’re getting drowned out. I really want to see this thread split into topics of discussion that can grow slowly as we apply all this new information. And, we need to be able to find something six months later. I’m happy to do the splitting of posts from this thread into new threads. Please, someone grant me the ability to do that :)
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Apology accepted :) It was back on page 14 of this thread and it was actually a reply to your question… link below Earlier this month, you said “I like the ongoing Interface A megathread. I vote for not changing anything.” Hopefully now we’ve changed your mind 😁 it is getting hard to find things from less than a month ago! And, I feel bad that maehw had to leave… and why is this text larger (sorry)
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Arrrrrrgh… Didn’t you read my notes two weeks ago about the TC-Controller (and its manual) being the only original software and documentation we’ve ever seen for the plotter? - and the other builds of the 1092 set - which is not just three motors, it’s optosensors… 🤣 mind you, I can’t really blame you, everything gets lost here lately and I can’t keep up either. It was a really significant find by Amine and there’s the BBC version, too. I have the plotter built currently and I would like to make a video soon showing how it was intended to work. Yes - I have tried with Logo - to produce lines at different angles and even curves with varying speed of the motors is remarkably difficult, especially as you need to somehow read the position during this as well. I probably had greater expectations than was intended. Atkelar’s video - which I saw some time ago - is nice but is a complete hack with modern controller and code techniques. That’s fine, but personally I’d rather see that applied to typical stepper motor hardware (many early 3D-printers were Arduino-based). I’d much rather see how this was intended to work with the control equipment of the time :)
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Thank you, Diego, for your wonderful contribution to the ‘scene’ 😊 I love the aspect of being able to use the original software, which was always what I set out to achieve with the parallel port hack (except, no modern systems have parallel ports). It looks like you have done well in packaging all this to make it easy to use (and keeping the cost down), and I look forward to trying it out soon. Does PWM/Setpower respond correctly? Not hindered by any Windows activities? 😉 I look forward to us being able to discuss this in a thread of its own, not buried on page 21 - I think we will have a solution to that soon. Thank you again for working away on this in the meantime, it’s great to see. I imagine a multiplexed version to drive multiple Interface As requires no more hardware (just plug in several) but will require a different software approach… Sounds a good idea to me, please do 😊 Practical usability beats archival originality (ie. we should have the original French and German versions archived, and then we should aim to make complete usable English copies with example files, as long as it is clear that it has been translated/prepared by yourself - splash screen should say this as I think mine did)
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Dacta Control Lab Software
alexGS replied to Dazmundo's topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
Thanks - it would be good to know if there are differences from the one in Evan’s Vintage LEGO Robotics archive, I recall that one has some useful example files included https://archive.org/details/lego-dacta_202012 -
Excellent news, amine - thanks
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I think a subforum can’t come soon enough - Toastie’s post about the serial to parallel conversion is a fantastic post and deserves its own thread. I hope we’re able to move things out of here into separate threads soon. If that means I have to be the administrator to do so, then yes please… :)
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You’ve both made very good points; Toastie has thoroughly dissected the idea, and I agree with what he’s found. I think there is a case for including Mindstorms RCX (1998-2004) out of practicality, as the 9V sensors/wires etc. are the same as used in Control Lab. Plus, anything built with ‘studded Technic’ is more familiar to us than the studless used in NXT (2005) and later EV3, Robot Inventor, Control+ etc. So I’m going to propose that it should be Vintage LEGO Robotics 1984-2004 (4.5V and 9V pre-NXT)…
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You can put me forward, Evan. Although my rules might be different to yours :)
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LOL… Thanks all 😁 Toastie’s idea was the sub-forum which I now think is best and we all agree. Personally I think we could have a 20-year cutoff for our ‘Vintage LEGO robotics’ sub-forum. We could have threads about RCX and even NXT in our new sub-group without interfering with our Interface A or Control Lab content. Or perhaps we could specify “pre-NXT’. The old Mindstorms threads would just drop to the bottom if no-one’s interested (it’s a fairly small group collecting and using original RCX software on old hardware as I do). It’s a similar principle after all; ways to get the old hardware working again.
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Thank you @vascolp for your thoughts - you’re right - that’s really what I need to do 🥰 I use Facebook as a substitute for LinkedIn, lots of business contacts - they should really see a different profile. I think usage of Facebook varies around the world. Anyway, instead of duplicating on Facebook, I strongly agree with Evan’s proposal that we should have a sub-forum here, so we can split all our various topics into threads within it. Otherwise, discussion on this mega-thread becomes hard to follow - I’d like to see all the material related to the BBC in one thread, for example, so that we can pick up months later where we left off, or so that someone finding the thread in a search doesn’t feel obligated to read through 15 pages of other progress including the PC interface multiplexing, etc. Thanks, @evank for the idea :)
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I think I’ve explained before… when I post in a public group, anyone from my work colleagues, to occasional work acquaintances (tradespeople), to friends, not-so-friends, and family all get shown that post randomly in their feeds. Some will private-message me in confusion. Some will use it as evidence that I wasn’t working on their project at the time. Some will just laugh or post unrelated discussions in that group. I even had a phone call from a friend’s mother (whom I hadn’t seen in 25 years) worried that my identity had been stolen after I posted on a UK group. A private group avoids all of these embarrassments, and I think you’d get more people sharing things if they knew they weren’t being ‘watched’. Having said all that, and considering that Facebook is the easier way to upload photos and videos, I’m aware that important contributors here don’t use Facebook. And so, I support your idea of a sub-forum here - that seems a great way to organise things better.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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’
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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!
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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
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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.
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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 😁
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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
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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 :)