We didn't think ticalc was slower than usual in news, not in the least bit. He was teasing us about the video yesterday, but wouldn't let anyone see it. It's actually rather impressive, but I'm partial to the "Gatekeepers" scene in the matrix, personally.

ZOMG! R-Rated content on ticalc.org! Someone call the censors! Remove this filth from the site!

It's no longer R-rated thanks to the 96x64 resolution and monochrome :)

WOW!
Not to push it but is there anything in the works for a 68K.

None that I'm aware of.

OMFG that's amazing!

I wondered how long it would take for somebody to figure this out. What, 3 years? Not bad.

I just might buy an 89T so that I can figure out how to do USB with it.

Uhh, more like 16 months, if that long... The 84+ was released around April last year.

My mistake. I don't follow z80 very closely.

I collaborated with ExtendeD (me working on the 84P and him working on the 89T) to figure out some of the details of the hardware interface to the USB port. I'm not sure if he's working on a similar driver for the 68k, but if not, I think there's enough information out there for someone to make one.

<< I'm not sure if he's working on a similar driver for the 68k >>
Yes, I am, but I need to find time for this.

By the way thanks again Dan for you adapter cable, my USB mouse worked on the Titanium a few days after I had received it.

Hi, thanks for the news article, Michael. Just some other notes:
-usb8x is open source. The source is available on sourceforge.
-There is a demo video on the website linked in the news article showing the calculator linked to a mouse, a keyboard, and a silverlink.
-There is an assembly language and a BASIC language interface to the USB driver. The assembly language interface is in a beta state, the BASIC language one is in an alpha state.
-You need an adapter cable to connect USB devices to the mini-usb port on the calculator. There's a 5-in-1 connector kit that's available at many stores, or serialio.com sells a mini-A to female-A cable that will work.

I've got the USB computer cable. if I get one of the little USB plugs that's female on both sides could I plug in my USB Mouse?

There are no such things. Cables which have two female or two male connectors violate the standard, so they're not USB cables.

The question we must ask ourselves, then, is why are such cables expressly prohibited by the USB standard? The answer is that you never need or want to connect a host to another host (which will probably damage one or both devices), or a peripheral to another peripheral (which obviously won't work at all), so you never need to connect an A-device to another A-device, or a B-device to another B-device.

The trick is that the calculator can be either a host or a peripheral, and the initial state is based on whether a mini-A cable (such as the round end of the calc-to-calc cable) or a mini-B cable (such as the PC cable) is connected. So when you connect the PC cable, the calculator always acts as a peripheral. While it might be possible to force the USB controller into host mode anyway, this is a really bad idea.

You need a male mini-A/female A adapter, not a female A/female A cable. Using such a cable (wheter legal or not it is) would make you insert a mini-B plug into the calculator, not a mini-A. This determines wether the calculator is acting as host or device (although on TI84P and Titanium, the USB controller doesn't really care about this, but software does, and perhaps usb8x, I haven't checked).
By the way mini-A/female A adapters are described in the On-The-Go specification and are "legal".

Its an extension type thing. USB female-USB female.....its not actually a cord, just a little box....anyway I have the mini-B-USB or whatever it is that comes with the calc. What I want to no is with the above box, wil it work to plug my cable that came with the calc into my male USB mouse

No.

Yes.
"Its an extension type thing. USB female-USB female."
I have the same thing.

Yes, you will be able to plug your mouse, but it may not work. Have you tested?

Are you serious? You think that just because something violates the standard, it doesn't exist? USB host-to-host cables DO exist. In fact, there are special USB cables that can be used to network computers together. They're even supported in Windows XP.

Yes, but they aren't a simple host-to-host adaptor. They actually have some chips in them to handle the communication, and they look like a function to both hosts. Connecting two hosts with nothing more than a cable is a bad idea.

How is it a bad idea? Nothing in the design of the USB host protocol would make it a "bad idea." Most USB networking cables are just that - cables. The communication is all handled on the software end. Every USB hosts can be a USB client; it's all a matter of drivers.

<< Every USB hosts can be a USB client >>
Not really. A USB host controller is not a USB device controller. USB is made of several protocols stack up. Some protocols or parts of protocols can be entirely managed by the hardware (the USB controller). And the protocols are asymetric: acting as host is completely different from acting as device.

you are wrong there are some host to host connections and you use them on net for example but for connecting to hosts you could use a male to male cable with format A, but there is a twist with this
because you have to create the drivers for your comunication between two hosts and this drivers have to have the structure of message pipes because you are dealing with two hosts and they dont support stream pipes