  Stellar parameter determination is a challenging task when dealing with
galactic giant stars. The combination of different investigation techniques has
proven to be a promising approach. We analyse archive spectra obtained with the
Short-Wavelength-Spectrometer (SWS) onboard of ISO, and new interferometric
observations from the Very Large Telescope MID-infrared Interferometric
instrument (VLTI/MIDI) of a very well studied carbon-rich giant: TX Psc. The
aim of this work is to determine stellar parameters using spectroscopy and
interferometry. The observations are used to constrain the model atmosphere,
and eventually the stellar evolutionary model in the region where the tracks
map the beginning of the carbon star sequence. Two different approaches are
used to determine stellar parameters: (i) the 'classic' interferometric
approach where the effective temperature is fixed by using the angular diameter
in the N-band (from interferometry) and the apparent bolometric magnitude; (ii)
parameters are obtained by fitting a grid of state-of-the-art hydrostatic
models to spectroscopic and interferometric observations. We find a good
agreement between the parameters of the two methods. The effective temperature
and luminosity clearly place TX Psc in the carbon-rich AGB star domain in the
H-R-diagram. Current evolutionary tracks suggest that TX Psc became a C-star
just recently, which means that the star is still in a 'quiet' phase compared
to the subsequent strong-wind regime. This is in agreement with the C/O ratio
being only slightly larger than 1.
