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40 column text mode in Extended Basic?


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Is there a flavor of XB out there that supports 40col text mode?

Back in 1981, I wanted to type in the Sea Battle program from David Ahl's second book of computer games, but quickly realized that I needed 40 columns for that. Besides it's unlikely it would have in memory anyway. At the time all I had was the console and a tape recorder, not even XB, and I was really bummed out that I could not type it in because it looked really cool!

I'm in the process of laboriously typing it into my PDP8 replica now, and man is it a pain, not to mention that the PDP Basic is fairly limited with no facilities for such things as ON GOTO, THEN, or RESTORE xxx..., making the conversion a little harder. Once it's done though, I could easily take the listing and paste it into Classic 99 and it will work with minimal changes ( The PDP uses \ as a multi-line separator which is kind of odd).

I suppose I could try and modify the program to fit in 32 columns at some point if all else fails...

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So preliminary testing showed that the standard PRINT command does not work as expected, with strange formatting happening. Other features of text mode don't seem to work at all like the DISPLAY AT equivalent or the margin setting function. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong...

I'll test it out on real hardware tonight and see.

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If you take a look at my port of "The Valley" (http://www.stuartconner.me.uk/ti/ti.htm#the_valley), that runs on standard TI XB and uses some assembly routines to implement the 40 column mode. Once switched to 40 col mode, all screen printing is done through CALL LINK() routines.

 

There's also Cortex BASIC (http://www.stuartconner.me.uk/ti/ti.htm#programs), which runs in 40 col mode by default.

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doing 40col mode in regular ext basic works "sorta" the issue is really that the screen memory needed for 40col is encroaching on program memory.. so you lose the last 2 lines of screen in 40col mode to that. It's interesting watching my TI-net BBS "think" as you can see the characters updating and changing on the bottom of the screen..

 

XBII if you want true 40col mode. or cortex basic.

 

Greg

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doing 40col mode in regular ext basic works "sorta" the issue is really that the screen memory needed for 40col is encroaching on program memory.. so you lose the last 2 lines of screen in 40col mode to that. It's interesting watching my TI-net BBS "think" as you can see the characters updating and changing on the bottom of the screen..

 

XBII if you want true 40col mode. or cortex basic.

 

Greg

 

You wouldn't have XBII for sale, would you?

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I posted it here in another thread will link it to you. It requires a myarc 256 or 512 card or a foundation with xbii roms. And a super cart or other ram device cart to load the loader into. It loads from the dsr auto when it sees ram there.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/251850-yesterdays-news/page-3?do=findComment&comment=3594358

Edited by arcadeshopper
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If you take a look at my port of "The Valley" (http://www.stuartconner.me.uk/ti/ti.htm#the_valley), that runs on standard TI XB and uses some assembly routines to implement the 40 column mode. Once switched to 40 col mode, all screen printing is done through CALL LINK() routines.

 

There's also Cortex BASIC (http://www.stuartconner.me.uk/ti/ti.htm#programs), which runs in 40 col mode by default.

 

The problem with Cortex Basic is that only 14K is available for programs which will not be enough I think.

I can probably roll my own assembly routines for XB as I'm pretty familiar with 40col mode. Could be a fun project :)

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doing 40col mode in regular ext basic works "sorta" the issue is really that the screen memory needed for 40col is encroaching on program memory.. so you lose the last 2 lines of screen in 40col mode to that. It's interesting watching my TI-net BBS "think" as you can see the characters updating and changing on the bottom of the screen..

 

There are ways around this during program execution, most commonly done by moving the screen table and pattern table at the expense of string space and disk buffers (for controller cards requiring VDP). Many of the XB/assembly hybrid BBS programs maximized string/buffer space by keeping the screen table as-is. And I agree, watching the BBSs "think" is indeed interesting ;)

 

On a related note, a good XB VDP usage reference is found in "The Smart Programmer", May 1984.

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Just for cross-reference purposes for casual readers: A little off topic, I suppose—but, fbForth, TurboForth and TI Forth, all work in 40-column text mode—in fact, default to that mode.

 

...lee

 

Hi Lee,

 

maybe you have some comments on my Forth-entries ? Especially for 40/80COL (80 with F18A).

 

thx

xXx

 

UPDATED:

("SAMS" in the list does not mean "required", but supported)

 

TI-99-4A-SW-FORTH-v1.02.pdf

 

thx to Lee for more infos :)

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I'm pretty sure Mike McCann never made more of the Avanti-99 card than his initial prototype board. The problem there was that they stopped production of the native Forth processor chip right about the time he was building the prototype, and he wasn't able to get enough chips to make further development worthwhile. . .

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I'm pretty sure Mike McCann never made more of the Avanti-99 card than his initial prototype board. The problem there was that they stopped production of the native Forth processor chip right about the time he was building the prototype, and he wasn't able to get enough chips to make further development worthwhile. . .

 

What is the Avanti-99 card?

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