Talk via MBus 1.1 by Burkart Lingner VERY SIMPLE MBus aware chat program Requires a TI-82 with CrASH 1.6 Uses Resident MBus Receiver 0.99.2 (included) Table of contents ================= 1. Introduction to the MBus 2. The program 3. Installation 4. Controls 5. Version history 1. Introduction to the MBus =========================== I don't wanna waste a lot of time with this. Therefore if you don't know what MBus is, but you are willing to find out, then just visit Vasantha Crabb's website at http://members.xoom.com/_merlin/mbus/. MBus uses a network, the easiest way though to use Talk is to connect two calcs with the calc-calc-cable that comes with every TI. 2. The program ============== If you want to have a really good MBus chat program, take a look at MChat, this is much better. But my intention to write this litte program (smaller than 1kB) was to learn programming the MBus routines which I intend to use in a bigger project, a game called Capture the Flag. Because of this there's neither much functionality nor much comfort. But it works, and that's what it has been written for. Enough of this, let's explain a bit: If you start Talk you should see an empty screen, but if you start pressing some keys, letters and symbols should appear on the upper half of the screen. As I stated above, Talk is very simple and therefore only capital letters and a few symbols are supported. If you then press ENTER (and if you're linked with another calc running Talk), the typed message appears on the lower half of the other calc's screen. Of course this also works vice versa. As the program is very simple - haven't I said this before? :) - the message will be cleared as a new one arrives. In a network (not the calc-calc-cable) you can connect more than only two calculators together. In this case the messages might disappear after a short time, because Talk doesn't make a difference between the sending calcs and so a message might not last very long on the screen. 3. Installation =============== First of all you need a TI-82 with ROM version 16.0, 17.0, 18.0 or 19.0. Make sure you have installed CrASH version 1.6. If you don't know what CrASH is or how to install it, please take a look at http://lfx.org/crashware/. Upload talk.82p to your TI-82. If you're not familiar with this, I recommend you to take a look at the Basics section on http://www.ticalc.org/. As Talk uses the MBus, you also have to transfer si2cint.82p, the so called Resident MBus Receiver. This program is needed for Talk, so if you don't know how to use it, take a look at http://members.xoom.com/_merlin/mbus/. 4. Controls =========== ENTER -> Send message MODE -> Quit Talk A..Z -> Type letter + -> Type " 0 -> Type space . -> Type . (-) -> Type ? 5. Version history ================== 1.0 07/05/2000 757 Bytes Basic functionality 1.1 08/08/2000 789 Bytes Added ReqInfo support