[TI-H] Re: I remember hearing of a ti hub project a few years ago... (c


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[TI-H] Re: I remember hearing of a ti hub project a few years ago... (continued...)




>===== Original Message From Olle Hedman <oh@hem.passagen.se> =====
>At 02:30 2001-05-02, you wrote:
>
>>Hmm, this has gotway off my original idea... for all those that dont 
remember
>>it :) i was thinking of something more like a star topology with a computer
>>acting as the hub (or possibly some other hardware acting as a base) where
>>instead of the calculator or the custom hardware doing all the work (which
>>would slow it down a lot) the computer does the work and the calcs would 
have
>>a standard packet except the header would have the destination id and the
>>originating id
>
>I know you suggested that, I never commeted on it, since I thought it was
>quite a bad idea since most times you want to network calcs (for
>multiplayer games or whatever) you don't have any computer with you, and it
>sounds like a really bulky sollution too. You also need a link cable per 
calc.
>The thing with some other hardware in the middle is also interesting.
>though it probably has to be something smart, and then you have to program
>it. It just moves the programming from the calc to something else. I think
>I would like a sollution with minimum hardware, that as nitrocloud said,
>can be built by anyone (almost), and then you only need software in the
>calc. I think that would make it much more used.
>A usefull variant of your system though, would be a system to network calcs
>over the internet or any other tcp/ip network. then you could try out
>multiplayer games with friends anywhere. that would be nice.
>
>//Olle
Well that would be a useful adaptation, allowing anyone to hook into another 
small sort of LAN whenever you have your computer hooked up to the net, as TI 
calcs dont use high bandwidth it probably work quite well... Seeing as im in 
year 11 and finally have my own laptop, thats what prompted me to think of the 
idea in the first place... Link cables are easy to build, especially the 
parallel ones and with USB parallel converters it means you can add loads of 
ports.. expensive tho... i was thinking more of a network for file sharing 
only, rather than a network that was for games as well, theyd be much harder 
to make. i suppose you could have a byte which tells the computer where to 
send all the following traffic until it sent a closing byte... then you could 
have a game which would initialise the connection to one other calc using a 
connect packet (more than one would be harder, you would have to tell the 
computer to broadcast it to more than one connection, but as the computer 
would be managing where the packets go the calc could send more than one 
connect packet to connect to multiple calcs...)

If you designed the program on the calc to send the connect packets then end 
without closing the connections opened, the calc would think it was connected 
by the wire because the computer would automattically send all data to the 
open connections, you could use the standard ti file transer protocol, and 
maybe even some standard games if you played one on one.