Texas Instruments Expansion System Question

[meba2233]

In a huge lot of TI99 computers, peripherals, and games I just bought was something called a Texas Instruments Expansion System. It is a huge, very heavy box about 17" long by about a foot deep. Looks like it has 10 bays, two of which are taken up by floppy drives. My questions is what is this item for? Is there any way for me to test it without hooking it up to the TI computer. Thanks in advance for any help. Mark

 

[Brendan]

Peb?

Peb?

I assume you're referring to a PEB (Peripheral Expansion Box):

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/peb/peb_box_project.html

While I think you can see if it powers up (mine has a loud fan), I think the only real way to test it is to plug it in to one of the TI 99 and use it. I imagine you could test the disk drive by using the disk management cartridge. The PEB should have a ribbon cable that should plug in to the side of your TI 99.

You can put any number of different cards in it, such as memory expansion and RS-232. Read more on the site above.

 

[Ksarul]

It is where all of the TI peripherals reside. You should also have a flat rubber cable connected to a circuit card in the box--that connects to the console on the right side.

Since yours has two disk drives, you might want to open the top (spring tabs at rear of lid on right and left) and look to see what cards are inside. . .that will tell us a lot more about what you can do with it.