RickRothstein

You spelled the first program name incorrectly... it was ASTEROIDS... I should know as I was the programmer for the game. Hi... Rick Rothstein here. I just stopped by to reminisce a little and saw this thread. It is nice to see people are still appreciating the programs we (FFF Software) created. You are still appreciating them, right??

So, how much are people willing to pay for nostalgia these days? As for autographing them, FFF Software was composed of three people... me (the programmer), Frank (the graphics guy) and Flavian (the documentation guy) and, of course, the three of us collaborated on how the game play should go. I retired here in New Jersey (USA) some 14 years ago, Frank retired somewhere in either North or South Carolina (USA) some 8 or so years ago, and Flavian moved out of the area better than 10 years ago without leaving a forwarding address. So what would an autographed copy of our documentation be worth when only 1/3 the group signed it? I'm thinking my signature alone would add nothing to the value of the documentation.

On this day before Christmas Even and the first night of Hanukkah, I wish a Happy Holidays to the TI community here.

But did you guys like it or not ?

I was 38 I am starting to realize that.

I wish...I do have 2 Shuttle Command manuals and 5 TI-Asteroids manuals (but one of each is reserve for me to keep as mementos. The manual were simply Xerox copies (made on a real Xerox copier) on good quality (for the time) paper and the covers were a card stock paper, also Xerox'ed... we never made up too many booklets in advance, mostly just as orders trickled in. I do have the templates from which the manuals were made, however the tape holding the pages together back-to-back (so we could make the booklet up easily) and some graphic cut-outs affixed to the pages have all yellowed with age making the templates unusable (not that I would take advantage and make new ones up even if I could). Also, I have no idea what brand paper we used... the place we bought the paper from closed up 10 or more years ago and we simply went to a certain bin and bought the paper from it, we never paid attention to what brand it was. So, whatever number of copies of our documentation that are out there "in the wild"... that is all there will ever be. That means anyone who paid a premium to purchase our manuals... your investment is protected as the market will never be flooded by additional copies.

My older Extended Basic module is date coded as LTA2081 so mine was made in the 20th week of 1981 which would put it sometime in the 3rd week of May.

Thanks... I'll have to see what the Minimem is bringing now-a-days as I have no use for it. As for the Extended Basic... these are the first two Extended Basic modules that were released... the first when the 99/4 was out (that was the first TI that I owned) and then when the 99/4a was released (my second TI)... at least that is how I remember it. I also think the second one contained some kind of bug fixes as well. Both modules are black and the copyright date on them is 1980 and they have the same PHM number as well (although the font used to display the PHM number on the older version is about half the size of the second one). It was necessary to keep both of them as they executed programs differently time-wise.... when setting internal timings within loops, it was necessary to eat up more loops with one over the other, for example, to make the 3 minute time built into my BOG'L game (sold to Compute! magazine) actually take 3 minutes.

Okay, I just went through all of the command modules I own... anybody know if any of them are considered rare (I am guessing not)? With Box and Documentation ------------------------------------------------------- Mini Memory Command Module wth Line-By-Line Assembler Cassette (unknown if tape is viable) No Boxes with Documentation if marked with an asterisk ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Addition and Subtraction I * Alien Addition * A-Maze-Ing * Beginnin Grammer * Blasto * Centipede (Atari) Computer Math Games II * Connect Four Disk Manager Donkey Kong (Atari) Home Financial Decisions * Hopper * Hunt The Wumpus * Microsurgeon * Minus Mission * Munch Man * Music Maker * Number Magic * Parsec * Personal Real Estate * Super Demon Atack * Terminal Emulator II * The Attack * TI Extended Basic (Model 100) TI Extended Basic (Model 110) TI Invaders * Tunnels of Doom * Video Chess * Video Games I * Zero Zap *

Thanks Lee.

I took a quick look but couldn't find the "Wizard's Doom" thread.... can you post a link to the thread? Yeah, Compute! got pretty jazzy there in the early '80s... I think their success back then was a result of everything being kind of new in the home computer market back then (you bought a computer and then learned to program it or else all you had was an really expensive game machine.. and TI did not have the best games available in those days) and they featured articles with program translations for multiple computers. They also spent a lot for articles as well... they paid me $650 for my #15 puzzle (but they really wanted that one... see my first message for details)... $450 for the article itself and another $200 to reserve the rights to be first to publish it on distributable media (tapes or floppy disks). That was a lot of money in 1983 (I think I paid $800 for my TI if I remember correctly). My second article did not fare as well... they only paid me $450 for it ($250 for the article and $200 for first media rights). And after that, they only paid me $250 for the remaining articles after that (they dropped the media rights payment when I guess they realized they were not going to publish them that way). Still, even with the declining payments, they were paying what I considered a huge amount of money in 1983 dollars.

Thanks for the nice welcome. Things looked bleak for new programs when TI closed up its home computer division, as you can well imagine. The three of us who made up FFF Software all worked for the New Jersey Department of Transportation in the same office. I retired back in 2002 and Frank (our graphics man) retired a few years later... I stayed near my home town and Frank moved to another state and we lost touch after that. Flavian (our documentation man along with other activities related to fulfilling orders) moved to a different office and contact with him became sparse... eventually he moved out of the area without telling us where so I have no idea where he is anymore. So there won't be any possibility of FFF Software coming back together. An interesting story about the name FFF Software that we chose. No one wanted it, but after creating all the graphics for TI-Asteroids (our first game), there were exactly 8 undefined characters available so be able to display a company name.... Software has 8 characters and since the three of us had first names that start with the let F (my real first name is Frederick, Rick is only a nickname), I took the F from the word software and tripled it to make FFF Software. After that, every possible character in the Extended Basic character set had its "shape" redefined.

Thanks for the link... I figured they had to be out there somewhere. There were two programs in the "Compute!'s TI Collection Volume Two" that I wrote which I think were pretty good (even if I have to say so myself )... Labyrinth on page 69 and BOG'L on page 82. BOG'L is an on-screen replacement for the 4x4 Boggle game you can purchase in any store (although they have changed the letter distribution on the dice several times across the years). Its "selling" feature is that the letters display randomly oriented like the real game as opposed to all upright like most similar type programs I have seen which tend to favor all letters displayed normal orientation. The Labyrinth program has an interesting history. When I first saw the program I modelled this after in the Compute magazine, there was no TI version of it, so I sat down and wrote one along with the article to accompany it. When I submitted it, they were a little surprised at how fast it was. Seems their resident programmer tried to write a TI version and it was so dog-slow that they decided not to print it. In later conversations, I found out why... the programmer tried to apply Commode, Atari and PC type graphic approaches to the TI... I catered the code to how the TI displayed graphics instead (redefined characters, then print those characters to the screen). Anyway, Labyrinth can be fun to play for a little while, but not for long continuous time periods.

$27 for the single manual?!!?!? You have got to be kidding. I still have a few originals of each of the manuals in my basement (some cassettes too, but I have no way to prove if they are still readable or not)... maybe I should put the manuals up for auction on ebay, hmm. Thanks for the info... very interesting... and surprising.

People are auctioning off FFF Software manuals? And people are bidding on them? Really? Do you remember how much they sold for?