retroclouds

Found this "old" thread again, but interesting nonetheless. I have a couple of questions regarding TI Extended BASIC 2 Is there a user manual for TI Extended BASIC 2 around? Was it "faster" as TI Extended Basic on the TI-99/4a ? Was it very buggy or in a usable state ? Do any of the TI-99/8 owners on the forum have programs for TI Extended BASIC 2 ? Does the Tomy Tutor have Extended BASIC 2 as basic or do they have an own version ? What would it take to get TI Extended BASIC 2 running on a TI-99/4A ? I know, a lot of questions. But hey it's Sunday morning and a good time to think what could have been.

ok, have to ask this. What is Copy C ?

No magic involved. Sound list isn't compressed. Neither is the LPC speech synth data. Only have RLE encoded title screen patterns and tiles. I guess it could probably be compressed some more, but will have to do. You can check the source code here: https://github.com/FilipVanVooren/7th-Pong/blob/master/source/7thpong_cart.asm

The Molesworth Introduction to Assembly Language book is up for sale on ebay. New unused condition, 2 copies still available. I just bought one. Fair price, heck shipping to Europe costs more than the book itself. Not only for beginners. We have the book up in the devres thread as PDF, but I like the paper version nonetheless. http://r.ebay.com/Iq7ndm

Hi everyone! just a heads up; Ciro found a nasty bug in my 7th Pong game. The keyboard/joystick polling does not work if there is no speech synthesizer detected. This means that in such case you are stuck on the title screen I will work on a bug-fix this weekend. Easy solution for the meantime; plug in a speech synthesizer Thank you Ciro for finding this Filip

I played most of the games this evening. I haven't voted yet, want to try the games some more. It will be a tough decision. I do have a few favorites already. But the problem is that all the games are so good and ofcourse I also want to take a look at the source code and learn something new. That's also part of the fun!

That brings up some interesting questions. I started looking at scratchpad usage for the different DSR routines. I would like to come up with a scratch-pad memory map of minimal requirements to be able to call a disk controller DSR. Mind you, I don't think I'm going to use the console (GPL) DSRLNK. It uses too many GPL related memory locations and that conflicts with my own scratchpad usage in my spectra2 library/kernel. The goal I have in mind is to read/write files on disk devices (which would included CF7+ and Nanopeb). I'm planning to look into Paolo's DSR code and make my library compatible with that. This again does bring up some more questions: 1. What scratch-pad memory locations is a DSR allowed to change, to be compatible according to the specification? 2. Do the disk-controller DSR's use the GPL workspace in scratchpad memory at all ? 3. Did anyone ever do a disassembly of the nanopeb / cf7+ DSR, is it available somewhere ? ok, a lot more reading to do. Interesting stuff I must say. Also thank you @TheBF, your work on describing what you did in CamelForth is very interesting so taking valuable input there.

Thank you for uploading! Fascinating stuff. Anyone know if the accompanied disk is available somewhere? The document says "a 5-14' single sided, single density diskette containing utility programs is provided with the manual to assist the peripheral developer in creating DSRs and application programs. The purpose of including these programs with the manual is to provide in (the author's opinion) the "best" utility programs available to the developer such that DSRs may be quickly written, debugged and released."

Just a reminder that I need to add the following document to the Dev Res Thread. interface-standard-design-guide-complete ti99.pdf ==> http://atariage.com/forums/topic/262846-dsrlink-code-tutorial/page-4

.. and we are just getting started Seriously, love the spirit. Plenty of stuff going on and I really enjoy it.

Thank you Stuart! Looking at some working code certainly helps. I did not look at Ralphs Molesworth book. But going to check it out now :-)

Hi everybody, I'm looking for some good working examples of doing disk file I/O operations in assembly language. Already looked at section 3 DSR (Device Service Routine) / Disk & File Management in the development resources thread. Lots of good stuff there, but seeing some working code definitely would help. What I want to accomplish is to create, read, update text files and load binary files. Basically I'd like to write a small programmer's editor for running on the TI-99/4a. For keeping things simple and compatible with as many disk devices as possible I would only focus on level 3 I/O calls. Now here's where things get tricky. I want to use my spectra2 library for most of the stuff. I learned that scratchpad memory and VDP memory must be setup in a certain way for DSR calls to work successfully. Currently I'm exclusively using scratchpad memory for all my stuff, so will have to reallocate that to somewhere else. That should be possible easily enough. Now here are my questions: 1. Does a scratchpad memory map exist, with the minimal requirements for calling DSR routines ? 2. How do I need to setup VDP memory so that file I/O is possible. I understand that a PAB must always reside in VDP memory. But the disk controller DSR also uses VDP memory for work buffers during file I/O. Does the disk controller DSR always loads files from disk to VDP or is it possible to directly load to RAM ? 3. Is it possible to do file I/O calls in pure assembly language or do I have to involve GPL in some way? The documentation being focussed on Monitor, Basic, etc. seems to imply that GPL is always involved. Is that a necessity? 4. What is the easiest way to "interface" with DSR memory setup. I mean would have to switch between my "application workspace" outside of scratch-pad memory, into the "DSR workspace" in scratch-pad memory and return safely. 5. Any good examples out there? On a sidenote, I remember a discussion with InsaneMultitasker many moons ago where it was mentioned that a file operations document was in the works. My memory is a bit blurry on that, can't recall if this was finished or not. Cheers Filip

Nice! I like the way the colors are chosen. It gives the game an extra twist.

7th Pong 7th Pong is a 2 player game that runs on the unexpanded TI-99/4A Home Computer. No additional RAM is required to run the game, joysticks are supported but not required. The speech synthesizer is supported as well, but not required. *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** The game has a strobe effect both on the game title screen and during gameplay. The strobe effect may cause seizures. If you are sensitive to fast shifting color variations and fast repetitive music, then please do not play the game. No Joke! Language: Assembly Size: 4092 bytes (after subtracting cartridge header) Source code and documentation: https://github.com/FilipVanVooren/7th-Pong Download: 7th-Pong.zip Game Play: You are trapped in the universe of the 7th Pong. Normal physics as known in our universe do not apply. To start the game press the fire button on one of the joysticks or press the space bar when playing with keyboard. Both players start with 500 points. If you hit the ball with your paddle, then you get +25 points. If you miss the ball, then you lose -100 points. The game ends when one of both players has a score of 0 points. Player 1 (Joystick) or keyboard E = Move paddle up X = Move paddle down Player 2 (Joystick) or keyboard O = Move paddle up , = Move paddle down Credits: Music sample taken of "OLD CS1" rendition of Ballblazer Speech samples taken from "Bluewizzard" Cartridge label designed by "Ciro" of Team Retroclouds Cartridge picture by "Ciro" of Team Retrocouds

Hi Jim, I would be very interested in buying one. Id like to setup my 2nd PEB and SAMS would fit real nice :-)

Welcome home Kracker! :-)

I Like the graphics. It's also quite hard to play, so challenging.

Very impressed with the quality of all submissions!

Thanks. I currently don't have the possibility to check, but at the time it was between 4-5 KB if I'm not mistaking (the runtime library I'm using there was the current version of my Spectra2 library). For the game contest I started reworking the spectra2 library. Besides doing some major bugfixing I made the code more modular, allowing me to exclude stuff I don't need. So for the simple "Hello World" program a lot of stuff could be thrown out. I haven't looked at b99 for quite some time, but as far as reducing code size is concerned a lot could be handled on assembly source code level (part of it even in an automated way). The game I'm working on for the contest is so simple it could be a good candidate for b99 (which ofcourse is not a real language at this time, there is still plenty missing). But starting from this "imaginary" language I could then craft the missing features in b99.

That is so nice! I love the white colour!

Absolutely magnificent. Really hope these sources are still readable. Cant believe this really shows up after all these years.

Oh I see a short n sweet multicart coming. For your unexpanded TI-99/4a, no extra RAM required :-)

It seems you guys had lots of fun. Really wished I could have been there.

I also thought about that. My game could be a candidate for a ROM cartridge as Im only using scratchpad RAM. Anyone else on scratchpad only?

Thank you for posting the video. Very nice! So this is a homebrew for the tutor? If that is the case I wonder what it would take to get it to run on the TI. Should be possible especially as source code is then available.