• 32k memory expansion.
• Peripheral Expansion Box.
• Suitable separate powersuppply for your Raspberry PI.
• Your own Raspberry PI (3/3+ or Zero W)
• SD-card with my SD-Card image flashed ( instructions further down )

A pair of cables are included to connect the PI to the TIPI board.

The PEB version of TIPI ships (if built by Jedimatt42) with the CRUBASE set to >1000 ( no cru jumper set )

The first thing you need to do is know your system hardware. What CRUBASE do each of your existing peripheral cards use?

For a common card CRU chart go here: CRUBASE

If the only storage device you have is a floppy controller, then it is running at CRUBASE >1100. The TipiPEB crubase should be set to >1000 for maximum functionality.

If you have a ramdisk, or harddrive, they will likely already be using CRUBASE >1000 to provide DSK1-3 override the same as TIPI.

Determine the best CRUBASE for you usage. The CRUBASE must be unique amongst your other peripheral cards.

Download the SD Card Image for your Raspberry PI. The image should work on both a Raspberry PI 3, and a PI Zero W. It is based on the raspbian image, with the TIPI services pre-installed, along with optimized use of ramdisk to extend SD card life.

The SD Card Image is on my Downloads page in the TIPI section.

Flash the SD Card Image to a 2GB or greater micro-sd card. It is recommended to use Raspberry PI Imager to flash our TIPI image. It is supported for Linux, Windows and OS X. When flashing, under Choose OS select Custom and then select the zipped image you downloaded from Downloads.

The TipiPEB board has mounting holes for attaching the Raspberry PI 3 or 3+ directly to the board. #2 screws can be used to attach the PI. A pair of nylon washers should be used as spacers to prevent the underside of the PI from scraping into the ground plane on the TipiPEB board.

Note: It is easer to insert the micro-sd card in the PI before mounting.

Carefully follow the details on the TIPI-to-PI-Wiring page for pinouts and illustrations depicting proper wiring between the TIPI board and the Raspberry PI.

Warning, connecting to Raspberry PI pins 2 & 4 will destroy the CPLD on the TIPI pcb

Attach the power cable to the PI. It will boot. PI's don't have power switches. Let the PI finish booting, only takes a minute.

**Note: Do NOT remove power from the PI without shutting down the PI first. (covered later)

You do not need a monitor or keyboard attached to the PI.

Install the TipiPEB board into a free slot in your PEB.

Put things back together. You took it apart, so you know the drill.

Turn on your PEB, and then your 4A.

The image contains a configuration tool, in the form of an EA5 program image:

TIPI.TIPICFG

Load this program by going to TI BASIC and entering:

CALL TIPI

Upon load, it will read the PI.STATUS file, and PI.CONFIG file, and present some interesting bits. Initially you won't have an IP address unless you used ethernet. The drive mappings will be blank, as well as the wifi settings.

If you are to use WiFi, set the SSID, and PSK by pressing 'S' and entering the SSID value, and then press enter. Then press 'P', enter the pre-shared-key for your wifi ( this is usually your 'wifi-password' ) and press enter. Editing is limited, supports F3 to erase to end of line, along with F1, F2 and arrow keys. If you press enter, want to undo what you typed, you can press 'R' to reload, or just press 'P' or 'S' again and re-enter the value.

Once you have what you want on the screen, you can press 'W' and the configuration will be written. The Raspberry PI will reboot. Reading will block until the TIPI services are all back up and running. Wait a little bit, 10 seconds or so, then press 'R' to re-read the status. When it is done, you should see an IP address.

'Q' exits without saving any changes.

Note: At this point an upgrade may be presented. For best results grow the sd-card partition first!

If you have special configuration requirements, the Raspberry PI sd-card image supports a headless bootstrap model. You create a wpa_supplicant.conf file in the boot with the necessary WiFi configuration details. Follow the guidance provided at raspberrypi.org headless.md.

** Old sd-card images (before Novvember 2019) were 2GB images and must be installed to 4GB or larger sd-cards. The root filesystem must be expanded to fill the remaining space. Below is the procedure to do this. New images are 4GB already, and do not have to be expanded, although you are limited to 4GB if you do not.**

You can ssh into the Raspberry PI, and use raspi-config to extend the partion to enable all of your space.

Login to the raspberry PI from your TI by going into TI BASIC and entering:

CALL TIPI("TIPI.NET.TELNET")

At the HOST and PORT prompt, enter localhost and 23

HOST: localhost
PORT: 23

You will be brought to a login prompt. The user name is 'tipi' and password is 'tipi'

Now to grow the file system. The sudo command will prompt you for your password again before executing the command with 'root' user privilege. This is the password for the 'tipi' user.

sudo raspi-config --expand-rootfs

It will finish, and show some mount errors, and ask you to reboot. Enter:

sudo reboot now

The TI will lock up with the TIPI light on. Power off the TI. Now just wait about a minute, and you should be ready.

If you want to check that the root filesystem grew correctly, you can log back in using the TELNET client, and use the following command:

df -k .

There is an early web administration interface at:

http://<ip-address>:9900

To get your TIPI's IP address, go back to TI BASIC and run TIPICFG by entering:

CALL TIPI

The IP address should be shown near the upper right. Now you can compose the url in your browser's address bar.

Open it up, and you can browse the files hosted on your TIPI, as well as upload files. The TIPI.TIPICFG tool should already be visible.

TIPI expects all files to be in TIFILES format. If you use the 'upload' feature from TIPI's web ui, it will auto-convert v9t9 FIAD files (such as HDX files) to TIFILES format.

Disk images are not directly supportted, however you can upload most .DSK image files via the web-ui or file share, and they will be automatically extracted into a directory matching the volume name.

You can also use programs like Ti99Dir, or TiImageTool or xdm99 to convert whatever format you have into TIFILES.

the web ui is incomplete There are functions in the top menu bar that appear to do nothing, such as 'settings'.