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An intention on my back burner for a while has been a plan to take my TI-99 software manual archive online at some point in an appealingly organised and accessible way. It feels silly for everyone to have to just maintain their own collection in this regard. And it's worse yet for every new or returning community member to have to hunt this content down individually, when it's honestly spread all over the place so chaotically. WHTech is great and all, but it's not exactly user-friendly and discoverable. So I figured organising my own manual library and making that library searchable and accessible to others could go hand in hand. Anyway, I've made a manual library at my hitherto never-used eponymous domain: https://pixelpedant.com Currently, there are 242 titles with at least one scanned manual version. Though many have multiple manuals or scans thereof and the total number of manual scans was actually 304 at last count. That's all thanks, ultimately, to the members of the community who've gone to the trouble, over the past years. Virtually all manuals are in PDF format, though some ephemera I've included along with them are not (image of the game disk, advertisement in MP/99er, or that kind of thing). It's pretty intuitive. Lots of manuals, searchable, browsable, and classified by software vendor, software media, and the nature of the software. It's a work in progress and will always be, but it's already very, very large. Partly, I needed to get my manual archive in order, but partly, when it comes to manuals, I just want there to be something more inviting than WHTECH for folks exploring the world of the TI-99 for the first time in a while, or for the first time altogether, looking for relevant documentation. After all, in a world dominated by flashcarts and emulation, most people, most of the time, don't have the manuals for the vintage games they play.

My game and demo cartridges at http://sometimes.planet-99.net have been modified and tested to make them V9938/58 compatible.

Gaming History Source on YouTube is premiering this right now. I tuned in late just in time to see Rasmus' TI version playing among official home computer releases. Will be 17:09 in the playback.

I'm glad she enjoys it, I love stories like this. Bob from the Atari 5200 Podcast loses to his daughter at RealSports Curling on a regular basis. I guess my games are popular with people's daughters. OK, I'm calling this release candidate 1. So sayeth the build string, "Release candidate 1, 5/8/2021" This has the last of the sound effects and a few other little things here and there. I'm going to test it for about a week, and if I don't find anything crazy, I'm calling this thing done. At that point I'll make a final release build that includes the full source code for any folks that want to try an A8 port or whatever. Another round of thanks to @Synthpopalooza for doing not only the music and sound effects, but also contributing the code needed to actually play them. Also, don't forget @vhzc for providing the Recognizer Identifier design without me even asking for it. And of course, all the people who helped test the builds over the span of this project. I've wanted to make this one happen for a long time and I'm glad I finally did it. intellidiscs.bin

Very nice website, everything just works. Accessible too, usable with a screen reader. Nice to see a website that does not insist on scripts. Good colour contrast. Several ways to browse the content. The website has a lovely search box as well but as an alternative I keep my own "universal TI" search web page and have added pixelpedant to the list of sites- http://shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/tisearch.htm Thanks for the work. I think there remain a few more to go yet.... see attached lists! best wishes s omegalist.txt softwaremanualsamalgOct20.pdf

This is something I'm working on in last 3 weeks, or better said in last 13 years. So, putting all those hard disk adaptations which I released in last 13 years, and are available on 8bitchip site. There are diverse images with plenty of games online. This one aims most of games on small storage size. Yes, that's 1 GB - as limit of Basic ACSI hard disk protocol, or as limit of internal ACSI-SCSI adapter what was by factory in Atari Mega STE and Stacy. In those times that was pretty large capacity. Of course, today it's far from being impressive or expensive, but still, for Atari SW it is plenty of space. So, I worked on putting as much as possible games (hard disk adapted, installable) in 1 GB partition - yes, that's possible with my iTOS. Knowing that it will need some changes by older game adaptations. Changes are done with common files D15R*.FIC - which are some kind of DLL files. For easier usage, I included them with every game DL. But there is simple way that all it can access it from one location: C:\GAMEX - what is mentioned in instructions too. So, if disk space is tight, users just can delete it from game's DIR, and it will be loaded from that System DIR. And it is same with files HAGA, HAGE ... Can save plenty of space, like over 100 MB in case of 1300 games. I copied games with removed those above mentioned D15R*, HAGA and like files into single 1 GB partition. And after did it for about 70 % if was clear that will not fit more than 1250 (rough estimation) . While sum of all file sizes, when all it is copied in is not over 850 MB. Why ? Because so called slack - FAT filesystem (FAT16 in case of hard disks) means that there is minimal size what some shortest, short file will take on drive - and it is in this case 16 KB - like for 1 byte long file. And that means a lot in case if Atari SW, where we have lot of short files. Btw. it is less with smaller partitions, so it is 8 KB in case of 256-511 partition under iTOS, or 128-255 MB under regular TOS 1.04-4.02 . So, I decided to try with 4x 255 MB partitions. And it worked - much more fits. Actually about 1350 games. That's not all what is on DL page (little over 1400), but I discarded very long variants (like Xenon 2 with audio tracks (32 MB), some older not so compatible ones ...) . That minimal size is called cluster, and is 4 KB instead 16 KB with 4x smaller partition size - gain is about 150 MB in this case. It looks like: And I used possibility to give custom drive names - here obviously they are composed of begin letters of file name DIRectories. Total 27 (letters + 0 for those starting with number) . And there is some free space in each partition for state saves. Hey, where is letter F ? This is done in Steem Debugger, where F is GEMDOS drive, so G is letter for fourth logical drive. On real Atari it will be F . For those who already got iTOS from me here is DL of not complete image: http://atari.8bitchip.info/TestMe/Gamit4pFin1.zip 166 MB. Only last partition. 369 games. Works with all decent ACSI adapters on ST, STE (no TT, Falcon support), Steem with Pasti, Hatari . Even if partition sizes are only 255 MB it needs iTOS - only with it it all fits in 1 GB space (planned 1350 games) . And there are updated DLL like files for it in C:\GAMEX . Some may ask: why iTOS ? Look upper 1 line. Beside it, this was needed to be done 3 years after solving real FAT16 in iTOS - now old game adaptations using TOS 1.04 GEMDOS part in RAM are compatible with iTOS and it's more efficient partitions - it is now actually iTOS core in RAM. Plus, this was good chance to finally put together image with all those D15R*, HAG* system files present only in shared DIR, according to original idea, and to my rational attitude ? Final image will be DL-able soon at MediaFire.

It’s so easy to crash. I’ve had many games where I crashed before the “start of the game tone” is even finished. Defender is giving me an abs workout making me lean forward so often to hit the reset button! ?

Relevant chat comments: (Speaking of the Atari ST version) Not a lot of people in the chat for the premier. Will have to see what happens in the comments section later.

Bob Puff, Computer Software Services https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-414-bob-puff-computer-software-services Bob Puff is owner of Computer Software Services, a company that began creating hardware and software for the Atari 8-bit computers in 1982. Bob became president of the company in 1991. He designed a bevy of hardware products for the Atari computers, including The Black Box, a hard drive host adapter; The Multiplexer, a networking system; the UltraSpeed Plus operating system upgrade; upgrades for the XF551 floppy drive; the Super-E Burner EPROM burner; and others. He also created a number of popular utility programs, including the BobTerm terminal program; Disk Communicator, to convert boot disks to a single compressed file for transfer over modem; and MYDOS version 4.53; among other software. This interview took place on April 27, 2021. So many people have asked me for a Bob Puff interview over the years.

Sealed 2600 silver gravitar within a few feet of the unattainable holy grail for the 2600!

Here is the latest version of XB 2.8 G.E.M. with the HCHAR and VCHAR modifications shown in the video above. Because it fills the entire screen, what is shown in the video demonstrates the greatest increase in speed. It actually is a tiny bit slower (1-2%) if only printing one character, but it will always be faster if more than one character is printed. Also there is a tiny fix to The Missing Link. One of the TML extras did not work-I was switching banks when I shouldn't have been. XB28GEM20200506.zip See post 426 on page 18 for the latest version, XB 2.8 G.E.M. version 2.820210712

Classic99 399.046 Just responding to people in the Realms chat... this one fixes the keyboard not responding for one key after an emulator Function Key press. It wasn't what I thought it was! http://harmlesslion.com/software/classic99

you may also take a look at this (old) topic: Commodore and Atari flippie disks One of the inventors of the multi-format disks replied there in post #33.

128 K Green beach towel level. There’s those great Coleco graphics!

48925 Intellivision hardware

Label project for cartridge is done Now time to print it

...Celery?

This is so sad. Oystron was the homebrew that made me wanting to do my own one. And it always had (and will have!) a special place in my heart. RIP Piero

Snatched this up for 40 bones, free ship.

Yeah baby!

A baiter got me when I had just one swarmer to kill to finish the wave, or I would have made my 30k goal!

I'm actually wondering if Classic99 v4.0 or Tilda will get released first. Probably Tilda .

My scores for the 1 Lap Series: NTSC MALIBU: 24,350 NAMCO: 22,550 ATARI: 24,300 I need to oil the machine.

Yeah, I don’t like that when they show box but not selling it. Seems shady.

I believe ti99dir, can open them ...haven't done it myself though... https://www.ti99-geek.nl/Projects/ti99dir/ti99dir.html

A bit of technical info: As mentioned before, the scrolling background requires far more than 256 characters in total, and it's very close to 256 at the individual screen level. If I need to save some patterns for displaying score, fuel etc., I need to find the best alterative for some patterns. That's what I have been working on for the last couple of days. The original hardware had sprites with a size of 32x32 pixels. The TI sprites are only 16x16, so I'm working with virtual sprites that consists of 1 to 4 hardware sprites. One example of a virtual sprite is the orange fuel tank, which consists of 4 hardware sprites. I have worked on offloading a substantial part of the work to the F18A GPU, so currently the CPU is only aware of the virtual sprites while the GPU is handing everything to do with the hardware sprites. The GPU is sorting the sprites according to their 3D distance from the user and is applying priorities (which sprites overlap each other) accordingly. The GPU is also calculating collisions between sprites and reporting this back to the CPU. That alone would take almost half of a CPU 60Hz cycle. The last thing the GPU does is to generate sprite attribute tables from the virtual sprites. Since there are up to 16 virtual sprites, and each consists of up to 4 hardware sprites, 64 hardware sprites may be required. That's partially resolved by having one sprite attribute list at the top of the screen and another at the bottom. Sprites that overlap are added to both lists. And a scan line handler is changing the VDP register that's managing the sprite attribute table on the fly (that is also possible on the 9918A, but because of the 4 sprite per line limitation it has limited value). All this is done during blanking, between the last line of the screen and the first line of the screen are drawn. The CPU is still doing everything that has to with controlling the user input, moving the virtual sprites, and then it's doing the much simpler task of checking the sprite collisions reported by the GPU. There should still be time left on the CPU side for an advanced sound player and other game logic.

gotta love ole Gordo Cooper, one of the Original 7 Astronaut. Another Oklahoman that done good.

And we have another option to connect SID to Atari - NOMari. Many announce and foretell, and here we have a living example. Tori has already connected a lot of other sound circuits to Atari (OPL3 - YMF262, YM2149, AY-3-8910, SAA1099, SN76489AN, SID) so what another could be expected? You plug in and it works. http://atari.myftp.org/index.html There are a few novelties in this project, for some the advantages will be debatable: advantages: additional filter settings, reset button, mono-stereo button debatable: the ability to change the addressing with dip - but most will find it an advantage. disadvantages: difficult to buy, maybe someone will start production? this is not a comparison but it should be noted that SlightSID has a mix input and SwinSID does not. I'm adding a video and a few songs recorded directly from the SlightSID and NOMari card as if someone wanted to compare. and if someone would like to see how UltraSpeed works in xBIOS, see the video ? Overall: NOMari has SwinSID not the original SID. I was skeptical about it, I thought that can't compare to SlightSID but I have nothing to complain about, both products are excellent and fortunately I do not have to choose between one of them: DDD nomari-1.mp3 nomari-2.mp3 slightsid-1.mp3 slightsid-2.mp3

As some of you may already know, a new Atari 8-bit prototype called Cheez-Wiz was recently found. The title screen has a section for 13 different custom options (A-M) but no one can figure out how to enable them and or what they actually do (if anything). I was hoping that someone here could take a look in the game code and see if these options can be enabled or if they're just there for show at this point. I'll attach the rom to this post. You can see my review of the game here: http://www.atariprotos.com/8bit/software/cheezwiz/cheezwiz.htm Cheez-Wiz.bin

Well, WHTECH is served via HTTP as well, and that's how most people use it most of the time. The main limitation of a file archive like that is just discoverability. Does the trick once you've figured out where everything is. But we can do better than distribution via directory tree and file pile, at this point in history.

Florida is also a great place

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance...yessssssss!!!! https://www.polygon.com/22422800/baldurs-gate-dark-alliance-ps4-ps5-xbox-nintendo-switch

Just love the Intellivision game list, it's an easy grab for me for Shark! Shark!, Night Stalker, Astrosmash, and Frog Bog. The others are just bonus fun. I got into those InTV games way back with Game Room for the Xbox 360. It was a super neat idea where you would buy a game for like $2 and then would add it to your virtual arcade (that you could design) that your avatar would roam around. So I had "Arcade cabinets" of a bunch of my 2600 favorites, plus those InTV games I mentioned, and some other great stuff. The Game Room program actually got me back into retrogaming, made me remember my love for all the oldies & goodies. https://evercade.co.uk/cartridges/intellivision-collection-1/

Remind me about the scripting language sometime after 4.0 is out, I really do NOT want that hanging over me right now. Breakpoints with keys active is occasionally an issue for me too... usually I can get away with forcing the value I want rather than the key actually being down. Dumping registers to the log -- but you already have all the registers on the screen? Are you capturing the debug log with an external tool? The only correct answer to earn that feature is yes.

Hi Reklen, Thanks for the love! The box and manual should be coming to the Atariage store in the next few weeks. Cheers Marco

The XEP80 arrived today. Unpacked it, hooked it up, and booted from FujiNet with the stock NTSC XEP80 drivers. Connected the unit to the CRT TV's composite input, and here's what I've got: The TV is a late-'90s / early-2000s nothing-really-special model. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow for adjustment of the picture's vertical height or horizontal width via external controls (including the diagnostic menus), so I'll probably have to crack it open to get at those. Been meaning to do that for a while anyway since Atari Control Picture showed up that issue when installing the UAV in the 1200XL. In any event, the overscan at the top is evident. However, the bottom row is readable across its width, with the exception of two characters being cut off at the left-hand edge of the screen. The cursor is parked at column 80; I started numbering from '1', so there are only 79 characters behind it. Something unexpected: the stock driver disables the monitor port while it's running. No idea about RF as I haven't tested that, but it was something I wasn't expecting. Overall, given the type of display in use, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Sure, it's not the sharpest text in the world, but some fiddling with the brightness should take down the CRT bloom a bit and make it more legible. Definitely usable, but you'll find no argument from me that there are better displays out there. Internal 80-column upgrades aren't off the table either, but for now this will do fine.

No. But I did get the car on the road. I also got my geneve working. I also received a tipi. But haven't had time to install. I got FORTH+ working with no more lockups. I cleaned up where those Hogs tore up a section of my yard before I could mow today. And. .I'll be a little quiet on here for the next couple days because of life issues going on, but I think Monday will be FORTH+ day again and I can show Lee what my situation was with my new word. Can't remember what that was, but it's in a previous post.. Have a great weekend everyone!! I'm so thrilled my geneve works and FORTH+ works, absolutely thrilled!

Old news when I was throwing in the towel... but I found my way through it.. this was ooold.

I thank both of you for your input. BTW, it is on a Win10/64 PC.

Mommy, what is the snowman doing to that man? Don't look junior, they're just dancing...

@Harry Potter, it may benefit you to read the pinned faq for new comers. A lot of questions that are asked a mutitude of times are answered in there. There several different ways to open ark files on the ti as well as on a pc or mac, as the one just posted for the pc will do. If you get stuck just holler here in the forums and someone can probably help unstuck you, but the faqs will take you far.

Sure is, but that's a regular sample playback routine on one of the channels, meaning high frequency so not very useful for use with anything but a static screen

Should look good on Jaguar CD VLM!

I have Action Biker by Mastertronic on disk and has both versions on 1 side too. Mastertronic marketed these as "Double Play". This is what @Farb found out: "It appears there were two different Mastertronic release of this title - yours is a flippy version with Atari on side B and Fred’s is a (I assume newer) “Double Play” version with both C64 and Atari on the same side. The actual program data is identical between the two but your dump is blank starting at track 16 and Fred’s has missing sectors starting at track 16. So I assume that the “Double Play” release used that area of the disk for the C64 data. Pretty cool" Double Play version, both systems on one side: Disk version, on different sides: Flippy disk, different sides: Double Play, on same side

Another game: - TI-Trogman: a PacMan clone. ------------------------------------ Total compiled games: 285. [GAME] TI-Trogman (198x)(DCR Software)[Compiled by TMOP].zip

BITD I built this cart extender with a switch to disable the ROM so that hot-plugging isn't needed:

I think I have read somewhere that you can use it with the atr-8000 and you need to format it as an 8inch drive. (77 tracks). I think that gives you close to 1meg on the disk but I have never done it.

The dude who runs the local video game store told me that I am the only person who has an Atari 7800.

I just topped a pizza with... Pizza Rolls! At this point I figure I'm either an esoteric, mad genius or maybe I had little stroke...

Working on a 7800 version of this game: