The
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...
Hex-Bus interface (sometimes used unhyphenated as Hex Bus and with varying capitalization) was designed in 1982 and intended for commercial release in late 1983. It connects the console to peripherals via a high-speed serial link. Though it was prototypical to today's
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
(plug and play, hot-swappable, etc.), it was never released, with only a small number of prototypes appearing in the hands of collectors after TI pulled out of the market.
Several Hex-Bus peripherals were planned or produced. A
WaferTape drive never made it past the prototype stage due to reliability issues with the tapes. The 5.25-inch Floppy drive also never made it past the prototype stage, even though it worked. Prototype DSDD disk controllers and video controllers were also made.
A 4-color Printer-Plotter, a 300-baud modem, RS-232 interface, an 80-column thermal/ink printer, and a 2.8" "Quick Disk" drive were the only peripherals released in quantity, mostly for use with the TI CC-40. All Hex-Bus peripherals could be used with a TI-99/4A when connected through the Hex-Bus Interface, through direct connection to the TI-99/8, or through direct connection to the
Compact Computer 40
The Compact Computer 40 or CC-40 is a portable computer developed by Texas Instruments. It started development in 1981, and was released in March 1983 for US$249. The CC-40 has a single-line 31 character LCD display, weighs 600 grams (22 ounc ...
.
Devices
*HX-1000 Printer/Plotter
*HX-1010 Printer 80
*HX-2000 Wafertape drive
*HX-3000
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...
interface
*HX-3100 Modem
*HX-3200 Centronics Printer Interface
*HX-5102 Disk Drive/Controller
*
Quick Disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a rectangular plastic carrier. It is read and written using a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks were an almost universal data for ...
QD-02
References
{{reflist
External links
The TI-99/4A Home Computer Page64K bank-switched cartridge project
Computer-related introductions in 1983
American inventions
Computer connectors
Serial buses