3.5mm Linkport

[NextPerception]

I recently added a 3.5mmlinkport to my TI83+ since i had about 80 3.5mm jacks and exactly 2 2.5mm jacks. Internal mods are really fun till you screw up your calculator. I thought i had screwed it up until i found the simple problem. my battery pins wern't touching the contact pads on the circuit board lol. bent them down and wala it worked again! I would suggest this mod as a mod for someone wanting to learn the basic way around the inside of the calculator without much risk. 1 word of advise DON'T drill a hole in your calculator case until you KNOW the link will fit. I drilled a hole in the left side of the case only to find out later the case wouldn't close properly with it their. know i have painted over some epoxy i put inside the hole to pill it up and it looks like someone cut a peice out of that side! Just don't attempt this if you have never soldered before. I basically took three wires and connected the thre wires from the old linkport to the new one and made sure the connections were all the same in both. Now i can just plug headphones strait into my calculator instead of using a bulky adaptor. Also I would like to start up a group for a memory expander for the ticalculator that uses basically a tape player that records the program when the calc thinks it is sending it to another calculator and then when needed just put the calc into recieve mode and play the tape back. of course the tape player would need some mods to make it respond to the other calculator like it itself was a calculator at the right times but other than that i think it might work. Have the tape player start and stop when a microcontroller telss it to and stuff like that. gotta go I will be back on the forum tommorow around 4:00pm if anyone wants to discuss any of this with me.

btw this is my first post in United TI forums

G2G bye

[AlienCC]

Perhaps it would be a better idea to make a USB/Cardreader mod that will read your choice of compact flash or secure digital cards (your choice).
This would be more flexible ultimately, allow for more expansion (think 8MB - 1GB cards), and quicker access to what you want off the media. Card readers can be purchased for around $20, and the cards differ in price depending on type and size.

This type of mod should be possible, after all compact flash is just portable flash memory and the Ti-83+, Ti-89/92 already have flash memory internally so most of the system code to access flash memory is already intact. So the hardest part would be figuring out how to give your calc a useable USB port, or adapting one to your 2.5mm link port.

I'm not good at playing with the circuit designs and what not (hardware hacking), but I can toss you some ideas like this every once in a while.

--AlienCC

[Darth Android]

sounds like a great idea. you could sneak hundreds of progs into a test
i like the idea about modifing the calc with a 3.5mm jack. i can solder well, and have some extras around my room.

[NextPerception]

I like the idea for the compact flash cards and I even use them for my digital camera. it is just that I don't think it would work with the speed of the linkport, but feel free to prove me wrong. I think it would need a couple of things that are not commonly available also.

I had suggested the tape recorder aproach because I hate working with digital circuits because of the microcontrollers required. I like the analog aproach because I am pretty experienced in that area. Working with only two data wires (i am not counting the ground wire) I am thinking you could just record the 1s and 0s in a stereo format from the calculator. later if you have a crash and lose half your programs clear all programs on the calculator (so you prevent the duplicate program name error) and put your calculator into recieve mode. Then, just hit play!

I like the idea of just saving the raw data which the callculator sends because it would be an 20 times easier to make.

[wrigley]

you say you don't believe it would work with the speed of the link port, do card readers nead the data at a surtain speed, like a CD-Writer? Doesn't it wait for the data and stores it whenever it arrives?

[NextPerception]

I was just saying it would be hard to syncronize the to data strings
if the calculator is sending at 15kbs and the card reader is expecting to receive at 18 kbs then it would cause some problems...