mwright@cg-atla.UUCP (Mike Wright) (12/26/90)
On the standard 99/4A console there are no RS-232 ports. With the console facing you, the 9-pin port on the left is for two joysticks (wired remote controllers). The DIN plug at left rear is for the video. The four pin staggered plug is for power. The 9-pin plug at right rear is for cassette interface. The 44-pin port on the right is for connecting peripherals. Before 1983 TI manufactured "sidecar" peripherals. These included an RS-232 peripheral that contained two serial ports at up to 9600 baud, but no parallel port. In fact, this was the reason that the 99/4 Impact Printer (Epson MX-80) had the serial card built-in as standard. With the introduction of the Peripheral Expansion Box (P-box) a new RS-232 card was made available, that has two serial ports and a parallel port, that is very close to Centronics standard. The parallel port used a non-standard 16-pin plug on the card. Both Myarc and CorComp made clones of this card. There was also a company called BoxCar, that made an RS-232 port for the 44-pin connector. This was much smaller than the TI unit and was about the size of the speech synthesizer. In addition, there was an article published in Volume 1 of 99'er Magazine, showing how to get serial output throught the joystick port. The article was spread over two issues, and included schematics, list of parts (Radio Shack) and software to run in the Mini-Memory. I have a friend who is a possible source for one or more of these items. His name is Ken Gilchrist, and he can be reached at 617-329-5545. If he does not have one, ask him to put you in touch with Frank Billeri. Regards.