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jw0k / serial2ti83

A program for Arduino Uno that makes it possible to connect a TI-83 calculator to a computer
MIT License
68 stars 25 forks source link

[solved] Convert the code to act as a Silver Link cable? #7

Open MeneerJansen opened 1 year ago

MeneerJansen commented 1 year ago

In Linux you can not use TILP with this Arduino. TLIP for Linux will only connect w/ a Gray Link via a real physical serial (DB9) port, not USB (i.e /dev/ttyACM0).

The so-called Silver Link cable is USB. So if the Arduino would "act" like a Silver Link cable that would be great! Would it be possible to alter the .ino code so that the Arduino Uno acts like a Silver Link instead of a Grey Link cable?

MeneerJansen commented 1 year ago

Answer to own question: yes it's possible and people on Github already did this.

  1. It looks like the author of libticables2 has to finally changed his code to use /dev/ttyACM instead of /dev/ttyS in Linux. See: https://github.com/debrouxl/tilibs/ and https://github.com/debrouxl/tilibs/commit/01782c21da30fcddfbc9bdeb5ca15e12d112483a. However I couldn't compile his most recent source code at the time of writing (26 July 2023) and used a workaround (see point 3 furtheron).

  2. I followed the changed Github serial2ti83 ReadMe (link) to compile a newer version of libticables2.so and copied that to the directory in which my Linux computer (Ubuntu 20.04) installed it, i.e. to: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/. I deleted the old library (libticables2.so.7.0.0) and renamed the newly compiled libticables2.so.8.0.0 to the old name libticables2.so.7.0.0 (= very, very, very dirty hack!).

Tip: there's a tiny typo there. Where it says "As of July 31, 2018, that corresponds to lines 314 through 346." it should be line 341 instead of 314.

Without altering the Arduino .ino sketch - and thus without "updating" the Arduino as recommended in the changed Readme - the program TILP that I installed via my package manager in Linux now works (that is: with the Dupont cables connected to digital pins 2 an 3 instead of the recommended analog pins 0 and 1).

  1. A word about the source code of libticables. The most recent source code on the official Github page of tilibs (which contains the library to connect from your PC to a TI calculator via the TI cable: libticable2) would not compile on my computer. So I downloaded the version from 2018 that the authors of the changed Readme used too: link. That works.

P.S. You should still use the Arduino as a Gray Link. :)