Nateo Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 Hey TI-heads; I just picked up my first TI 99/4a and I'm having some trouble loading cassette software. I've downloaded some .wavs and have tried to play them from my phone into the machine with the white cable plugged into the earphone. I've tried everything I can to load programs, tinkered with volume, fiddled with the equalizer, and tried a number of different programs. Nothing loads. I even turned my phone all the way up and was able to hear the signal through my TV! Nothing. Any idea as to what could be wrong? Thanks all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shift838 Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 Hey TI-heads; I just picked up my first TI 99/4a and I'm having some trouble loading cassette software. I've downloaded some .wavs and have tried to play them from my phone into the machine with the white cable plugged into the earphone. I've tried everything I can to load programs, tinkered with volume, fiddled with the equalizer, and tried a number of different programs. Nothing loads. I even turned my phone all the way up and was able to hear the signal through my TV! Nothing. Any idea as to what could be wrong? Thanks all! There was some traction on this a while back. you can read it in the below thread. It may offer some insight. HERE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+arcadeshopper Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 I use vlc on my winders tablet with good results Sent from my LG-H830 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 You are entering OLD CS1 then pressing ENTER right? You have the cassette cable plugged into the port on the right rear of the computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 11, 2017 Author Share Posted August 11, 2017 You are entering OLD CS1 then pressing ENTER right? You have the cassette cable plugged into the port on the right rear of the computer? Yessir! Is cassette loading just THAT finicky on the TI? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 The tone needs to be pretty high. The computer is looking for a signal of about 1 volt A/C. It's possible the phone doesn't have enough audio out. What error message comes up? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 11, 2017 Author Share Posted August 11, 2017 The tone needs to be pretty high. The computer is looking for a signal of about 1 volt A/C. It's possible the phone doesn't have enough audio out. What error message comes up? Just that no data was found. I thought that maybe there was something wrong with the cable, but when I turned the volume all the way up, I could hear the .wav file coming through the TV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 Usually when there is no data found that means the volume isn't high enough or there isn't enough treble in the signal. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 11, 2017 Author Share Posted August 11, 2017 I'll do some more experimenting tonight, maybe by writing a quick program and saving and loading it using my shoebox tape recorder. Could it also be that the programs I'm trying to load are incompatible with the built-in TI BASIC? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 I'll do some more experimenting tonight, maybe by writing a quick program and saving and loading it using my shoebox tape recorder. Could it also be that the programs I'm trying to load are incompatible with the built-in TI BASIC? Are you able to LIST a program after loading? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 11, 2017 Author Share Posted August 11, 2017 I can't get anything to load at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted August 11, 2017 Share Posted August 11, 2017 Try recording from the phone to the shoebox recorder then playback from the recorder to the TI. If the recorder has tone control turn to high treble with volume around 8. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 12, 2017 Author Share Posted August 12, 2017 Just tinkered with the shoebox recorder - it worked!! The volume wasn't high enough coming out of my phone. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 12, 2017 Author Share Posted August 12, 2017 So now that I got the darned thing figured out, what software do you guys recommend from ftp://ftp.whtech.com/Cassettes/?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted August 12, 2017 Share Posted August 12, 2017 Do you have Extended Basic? If so, games by Millers Graphics (MG) are good. So are Moonbeam. Bunch of others as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 12, 2017 Author Share Posted August 12, 2017 Do you have Extended Basic? If so, games by Millers Graphics (MG) are good. So are Moonbeam. Bunch of others as well. No extended BASIC I'm afraid... just a plain ol' TI-99/4A, a D60 tape, and a shoebox tape recorder. Oh, and those wretched joysticks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeBo Posted August 12, 2017 Share Posted August 12, 2017 The cassette on the TI really does suffer from only being able to load TI-Basic and XB software (that I know of anyway) Although it used to take forever on an Atari 800 to load, let's say, Jumpman from cassette (and miss-loads were frustratingly common), at least you could purchase many non-Basic commercial titles on cassette. (I assume the same was true of the C64?) With the 4A I bought my first "datasette" nearly exclusively so I could save/load programs I wrote or typed-in from magazine listings before I could afford a PEB, but with the Atari, it was often simply an alternative distribution method to cartridge software for systems without drives. Or am I misunderstanding something? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casey Posted August 12, 2017 Share Posted August 12, 2017 Yes, you could load binary programs into a Commodore machine from the cassette and then execute them with a SYS command if they didn't autostart. I think the big problem is, in order to use anything other than BASIC on a TI, you needed the 32K memory expansion. TI BASIC by itself was not able to use it, so you'd need Extended BASIC, Mini Memory or Editor/Assembler. By the time you had all those things, you'd probably have a disk drive as well. I don't believe the Editor/Assembler would let you save object code to CS1 (though I admit I've never tried to do that). Even further, you can't do a CALL LOAD("CS1") with Editor/Assembler or Mini Memory (both produce errors, strangely, different ones), but oddly, you can with Extended BASIC. Nowadays, I could see someone making use of a 32K and a cassette and not having all the other peripherals because it would be fairly inexpensive to get those. Now that I wrote all this - I think you could do some assembly on cassette with Mini Memory, using the line by line assembler to load code, and then saving it to cassette with Easy Bug and then reloading it that way later. It still wouldn't be done via BASIC, but you could load in assembly language programs I think from cassette and then run it via Mini Memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted August 13, 2017 Share Posted August 13, 2017 This is how I started with my TI99/4A, Extended Basic, few games Carts, Mini Memory and 2 Cassette Recorders. Very quickly I had a P-Box, CorComp Disk Controller, CorComp RAMDISK, GRAMULATOR and was running TELCO to BBS sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nateo Posted August 19, 2017 Author Share Posted August 19, 2017 Check out what I found in my parents' basement... My potential software library just got a lot bigger! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notwhoyouthink Posted August 20, 2017 Share Posted August 20, 2017 Awesome find! Now that you have that, mind if i put in a shameless plug to my own program?:fingal's cave, music demonstration in extended basic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 Have any of you tried this? I can't get it to work in Safari for some reason; will need to try either Chrome or Firefox: http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ramidavis Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 (edited) Have any of you tried this? I can't get it to work in Safari for some reason; will need to try either Chrome or Firefox: http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/ The upload button expects you to select a ti fiad. I tried to upload a text file with basic code and it did not take it. The download button will take what ever text is in the editor and save it as basic.bin Interestingly, if you have a *.titape file from win99/4a simulator with a basic / xb program saved to it, you can upload that file and it will list it. There also seems to be a limit of 64kb upload file size. Edited November 11, 2017 by ramidavis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fredrik Öhrström Posted November 14, 2017 Share Posted November 14, 2017 Hi Nateo! As Acadiel said, you can try my web page from a computer: http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/ Just press "Play Tape" and OLD CS1 on the TI. (Firefox or Chrome works) A Computer might be able to raise the volume higher than your phone. When the volume is enough, the beeps through the TV speaker when starting the TI should sound approx the same volume as the tape sounds through the TV speaker. You can find basic programs in TIFILES format that you upload into the webpage and then send to the TI through the audio cable. If you find a disk with basic programs you can extract the TIFILE from the disk image using for example the mame tool "imgtool". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fredrik Öhrström Posted November 14, 2017 Share Posted November 14, 2017 Here you can find plain and extended basic games in bin files format, suitable for uploading into the editor directly: http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/nittinian/Spel/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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