Wow... that was a quick new article!

It's good to see that people are making software that is compatible with both Windows and other OS's (even though I am a windows person)

Is this linking program similar to TI-Graph Link or TI-connect? Is it better? Should I get it? What do you think?

> Is this linking program similar to TI-Graph Link or TI-connect? Is it better? Should I get it? What do you think?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The main difference is that TiLP will always work on Windows XP--some people can get TI Connect to work, but not all. And the Graph-Link doesn't support the USB cable.

Well, it works with 'all' calculators even it TI-connect or whatever other program doesn't.

Sounds good to me. I'm not a big software downloader, but I think I might take a look into this.

Hey! It looks quite good... I'll try it (as long as it works faster than Ti-Connect (Grrr-that still runs slowly, even on a 2.4GHz P4)

That's a bottleneck inherent in the calculator's linkport.

(Well, it's more the OS than the linkport, coupled with the processor and clock speed.)

It's not the actual sending of files (that's okay) but waiting for it to send the files - the silent linking protocol is a right pain. (I use FastLink - you can trun off SLP: you just have to press Link:Receive and it will send the file without any delay). This new program won't work for me either - it can only use COM3 for the Graph Link cable, which is not the right port - it is the one my internal modem has created! It refuses to use COM1 which is the right one.

My computer only has COM5...
Kind of strange... why is there only COM5?
Good thing the TI-Connect can access COM5, but I really want to try out the other softwares, but they cannot use COM5.
Does anyone know how I can change COM5 to ... COM1 per say? Or to route COM1 to point to the actual COM5...? Or?
I use Win98SE, if anyone can help, it will be great.
(As you might guess, I'm not good in computer hardware)

you could check the BIOS...

>> ...even on a 2.4GHz P4)

I wasn't even aware that they made computers that could process that fast. I thought that the fastest publically available computer barely ran at 2.0GHz... (maybe it's the extra caching levels).

Uh... no. They have 3 gHz chips coming out soon... I think the highest now is around 2.8 gHz.

So quick ! I hadn't time enough for writing and sending the news. What I usually do...

Tijl Coosemans (http://tijl.studentenweb.org) made a FreeBSD version of TILP, he just posted on his site. Btw, i wonder how many people would really use a link cable under FreeBSD...

Well, the *BSD OSes are just free alternative look-a-likes to Unix. Some prefer *BSD to Linux, but most prefer Linux to *BSD (myself included).

What on earth is a *BSD?
Like a BSOD? (Hopefully not)

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc.

Stands for Berkely Software Distribution.

Considering that there isnt any other program out there that allows you to connect a TI calculator to FreeBSD I am sure that alot of people will use the FreeBSD port of the program. Myself being a FreeBSD user hopes that this trend to produce for FreeBSD continues.

Do you need to uninstall TI's driver for this to work?

Wondering if I should use this for vti 3.0 or not for silver cable support if I put ROM dump back in...which I should.

Yes. You can download the libraries and drivers used, and include them in your own programs I believe.

Yea, just trying to figure out the ease of use when TI-connect or something else is already installed with their drivers.

Too many people cannot get it working even when they are no steps :) I'm trying not to have to give complex instructions.

If you look at the references provided by the TIUSB.dll file installed with TI Connect, it has the TIUSB 1.0 Type Library, where you can use the driver provided by TI to send/receive raw bytes through the cable.

Interesting remark...

The TiLP's driver and the TI-Connect's driver are not compatible. As explained on the driver page, you can use only one driver at a time.
But, joelt or another guy (I don't remember) reported to me that Greg Dietsche managed to use the TI-Connect and TiLP on the same machine (this implies that both driver have been installed).

About the ticables library: the lib is released under LGPL: it's useable by anyone. It makes life easier about cable management for both linking program and emulators. It's used by TiLP, TiEmu and the TI-Winamp project. Available bindings: MSVC, C++ Builder and MinGW.

You could use the ticalcs library, too (direct file loading). This implement stuffs in a very straight fashion.

BTW (it's not in the news, Michael is too fast ;-)): I have also released a preliminary Windows SDK about the 3 components of TiLP (ticables, ticalcs & tifiles).
It includes: source code, html doc, library, projects and examples.

About VTi: I made an attempt few month ago on VTI2.5 for adding SilverLink support. I never released it because the linking was working so so.
But, if you want the source code, feel free to mail me...

Email me the romdump file source if you want then.

It shouldn't be too hard to integrate silvercable drivers. In fact, it probably isn't, I just don't have a silver cable to test with.

Hehe, the real main problem is re-integrating all of the old beta 5 interface features onto the new code :)