Texas Instruments TI-82 Serial Link on Windows 10

In the early to mid-90s, the Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator (or Graphing Calculator) was introduced and became a requirement in some high schools. I never had the official serial link cable to connect mine to a PC, but it came with a calculator-to-calculator link cable. That cable was very popular during math lessons for trading pictures, programs and games. We had several games back then, but I only remember one game, a Breakout clone programmed in TI-BASIC that was painfully slow.

I still have this calculator, but it was sitting in a drawer for more than 20 years. In this article, I will bring it back to life and connect it to a modern Windows 10 PC to install a Breakout clone or something better on it.

Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator
Texas Instruments Ti-82 Graphics Calculator
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Philips CDI605 RGB SCART Adapter

The second generation professional and authoring CD-i players of the Philips CDI60x series feature a DE-9 RGB port. To improve the video quality of my CDI605T/20 and also to prepare for future experiments, I built a prototype RGB SCART adapter. The needed pinout is documented in the 605 and 605T user manuals on ICDIA.

Philips CDI605 RGB SCART adapter - prototype
Philips CDI605 RGB SCART adapter – prototype

After the first tests were successful, I made this schematic for an adapter with a SCART socket (output) for both RGB video and audio:

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