Yeah, that's almost as cool as posting a message about a certain car audio player and getting a response from the guy(s) who created it. Naaah, that never happens...

I did not depend on the ribbon cable for the length, mine is attached to a parallel port extender cable that I already had laying around.

That's where I gave up. My creation worked fine *until* I tried extendding it with a straight-through DB-25 cable....and that config would work on my work laptop, but not on the parallel port on my home PC. So, after about 2 hours down the drain, the answer? Money!

(News flash! I have a lead on a 15-1994! Details to follow!)

Yeah, I had trouble sourcing a 6 pin connector and ribbon. I ended up trimming down a 10 wire ribbon and connector, applying judicious amounts of The Dremel and Epoxy. Seems to hold up well enough.

They're really going for nearly 50 bucks on ebay? Wow...

Nope. more like 61 bucks

Damn, I just end up in the best threads on here. Makes me wonder what I've been missing in the past few months.

Just taking some time to browse and for who knows what reason decided to read this thread. Now it turns into a discussion on the 1994 which I've been using for a couple of years. I originally bought four of them. 1 for myself, one for my brother, one for a friend and one for my parents. I was out a month ago looking for more of them and found nothing. My brother recently replaced his with an RCA model with an LCD featuring a nice enough button layout. Similar to the 1994 in programmability. It also has a 6 pin header in the battery compartment, but just pads, no pins.

I originally bought these remotes for $30 Canadian each. When I first bought mine, I thought only the four s buttons were custom and everything else had to be built-in. Imagine my surprise when I decided to try programming the other buttons. Wooowee! I had no idea.

And now I learn that there's been this whole movement of people programming these things with a parallel interface? Damn! That would have saved me a lot of time. A lot.

Never too late to start playing with an old toy I guess.

Bruno

My brother recently replaced his with an RCA model with an LCD featuring a nice enough button layout.

Hey, does your brother want to sell his 1994???

I'll give him, like, 15 bucks for it!!

It also has a 6 pin header in the battery compartment, but just pads, no pins.

Then it is likely that his unit is supported by the same IR.EXE hacking software that we're using on the 1994 unit. All you have to do is solder some kind of a connector onto those pads.

And now I learn that there's been this whole movement of people programming these things with a parallel interface? Damn! That would have saved me a lot of time. A lot.

When you see it in action, it's really quite cool. After having jumped through hoops to get codes punched into it through the thing's keypad, you will be amazed at what you can do with IR.EXE.

One of the most interesting things you can do is to drop little machine-language "extender" programs into the remote's memory. These are more than just macros, they are embedded code, and can make significant changes to the remote's behavior.

The first of these extenders was written by Nicola Salmoria of "MAME" fame. I remember when he first joined the JP1 mailing list and started messing with the stuff. Soon he was doing amazing things with the code that no one had ever dreamed of.

We need to get an empeg in Nicola's hands. Then he and Mark can compete for the most amazing hack prize.

actually... i would DEFINITELY contribute to a group fund for buying him an empeg. That's a brilliant idea.

no... wait... that would give him less time to work on MAME... no good...