Torrax

February 24

Love the Gauntlet reference. Welcome Green Elf! ;-)

February 23

Here is a list of the Parker Brothers & Atarisoft titles to help you with your renaming efforts.

Parker Brothers

PB1610 Frogger (1984)

PB1650 Popeye (1984)

PB1620 Q*bert (1984)

*PB1640 Super Cobra (1984)(NR)[no known copy]

*PB1630 Tutankham (1984)(NR)[Proto]

*PB16xx Astrochase (1984)(NR)[?no known copy?]

ATARISOFT

RX8500 Pac-Man (1983)

RX8503 Centipede (1983)

RX8506 Defender (1983)

RX8509 Dig Dug (1983)

RX8512 Donkey Kong (1983)

*RX8515 Super Storm (1983)(NR)[Proto]

RX8516 Protector II (1983)

RX8517 Picnic Paranoia (1983)

RX8518 Shamus (1983)

*RX8519 Robotron: 2084 (1983)(NR)[Proto]

*RX8522 Stargate (1983)(NR)[cancelled]

*RX8525 Joust (1983)(NR)[?no known copy?]

RX8528 Jungle Hunt (1983)

RX8531 Moon Patrol (1983)

RX8534 Pole Position (1983)

*RX8537 Missile Command (1983)(NR)[cancelled, all platforms]

*RX8540 Galaxian (1983)(NR)[cancelled]

RX8543 Ms. Pac-Man (1983)

*RX8546 Battlezone (1983)(NR)[cancelled]

*RX8549 Vanguard (1983)(NR)[cancelled]

February 23

If the cart didn't require 32K RAM. There was a disk version that was dumped to run from this space.

An E/A cart or an XB OPT5 loader was needed though.

February 22

Check further down in this thread on the X instruction emulation problems, and Tursi's fix for Classic99.

February 22

Electronic Games - January 1984, Issue 23, Volume 2-11

David Schroeder, Crisis Mountain - article, page 100

February 22

There was an article by David Schroeder in a 80's gaming magazine. Which mentioned that Creative Software (Funware) was doing the Crisis Mountain port for the TI-99/4A. It was one of these three: Electronic Fun - Computer and Video Games; Electronic GAMES; or Video Gaming Illustrated. Went through all issues (again ;-) ) a couple of weeks ago. All are available on the internet magazine archive. "https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack"

And yes, I have seen all your YouTube videos. Great stuff there coming from a fellow Albertan. Did you live in Red Deer in the late 80's? I remember meeting a red hair person there that was into the TI and video editing (ST:NG).

February 22

Bought the Software Specialties game disk back in the late 80's from either Tex-Comp, Tenex, or Triton.

It came with 6 games and I added one of the missing Micro-Pinball's to it.

Breakout
Burger Builder
Go-Cart Racing
Midnite Mason
Micro-Pinball
Micro-Pinball II
TI Toad

Played the heck out of Micro-Pinball II and TI Toad. TI Toad had me going to see what creature was next on the higher levels. There was some Midnite Mason once in a while.

February 22

Does any one have a list of what games/programs were out sourced for companies like Funware/Navarone/ROMOX etc..

Who was it that released the partial Vanguard scrolling demo? Jim Dramis or Paul Urbanus?

Found a reference: Vanguard - Garth Dollahite, Jim Dramis and Paul Urbanus

The Astroblitz disk came from a massive disk collection that was being uploaded to the Internet in the early 2000's. It might have been Bill Gaskill that was doing this. As the upload stopped and went offline after several months. Could have been longer 1/2 to 1 year.

February 22

Does anyone know if Software Specialties was formed by programmers from Funware?? As I found a disk image in my collection that has the program and source code for Astroblitz an unreleased Funware title. The source code lists Software Specialties, 08/83. Never seen them referenced to Astroblitz before.

Here is the disk and a GROM OPT5 converted image.

ASTROBLITZ.dsk

FW_Astroblitz (1983)[gDSK]G.bin

February 22

We copied a disk image called CF_EXTRA_UTILS.DSK to Volume #29.

So have your E/A cart plugged in.

From TI-Basic format an unused Volume number, with CALL FORMAT(new-vol#)

Then type CALL MOUNT(1,new-vol#), CALL MOUNT(2,2) and CALL MOUNT(3,29).

Type BYE to quit, and from the E/A menu select option 5.

And go through the following list to see if you can access the files on DSK2.

Try the CATALOG and FILE COPY options to see if they will list the files.

DSK3.CFMGR - CF7+ Manager v1.01 (CF7/NANO)

DSK3.CF2K - CompactFlash 2000 v2.6 (CF7/NANO)

DSK3.CFHDXS1 - CompactFlash HDX v2.0 (NANO)

DSK3.DU - Disk Utilities v4.2

DSK3.AR - Archiver 3.03G

Try to use one of them to copy the files to DSK1.

Once you have a successful copy of them to the new-vol#, and can list them from

a CATALOG of DSK1.

You can then do a CALL FORMAT(2) from TI-Basic. You need to use a CF Command

or CF Utility to do a proper format of a Volume/Disk.

And then re-copy the files from DSK1 to the newly formatted DSK2.

February 21

17 hours ago, RXB said:

Odd RXB was not listed above as it has been around since 1993 before most other 3rd party XB versions.

And since 1991 I bought and released the XB 110 Texas Instruments GPL and ROM source code for free.

Sorry there Rich. I was trying to list the commercially released 8K-GROM modules that were listed in the Tenex/Tex-Comp/Triton catalogs back then. Not sure if there were any other module releases, besides a limited run of Extended Basic 3 Super Module (1993 - Asgard). There was also a Multi-Mod (John Guion) upgrade for the Super Extended Basic cart. This used the review module library function to add E/A, TI-Writer, Disk Manager 3.0 from a second GROM bank.

There were a plethora of module hacks, extensions, disk conversions, and homebrew releases for the various GRAM devices over the years. With emulation you are no longer limited to owning one. Making it easier to develop for GPL now a days. You can now stuff a EA-OPT5 program in a GROM image and run it from a FinalGROM cart along 32K RAM expansion (interal/side-port).

February 21

Extended Basic 2.5, Extended Basic 2.7, and Avaris II use the upper 2K GROM segments.

A GRAM device or FinalGROM99 is needed for those, as they supported 8K GROM's.

Only a few commercial modules had full 8K GROM support. For example Triton's "Super Extended Basic"

and Mechatronic's "Extended Basic II+".

February 18

Try changing the "DSK2" to "DSK2.". And see if that helps.

February 17

1 hour ago, Ksarul said:

Notes from my master cartridge GROM list:

Personal Record Keeping also had a F/NL version, Hunt the Wumpus had two different multilingual variants, and Personal Report Generator also had a GB/DE version and a F/I/NL/S version.

There were also quite a few single language variants in languages other than English. Demonstration also exists in French and German releases, Statistics also has a German release, Video chess has German and French releases, Logo II has a whole series of single-language releases, and there are a few others that also duplicate one or another of the languages in a multilingual cartridge.

Are the module dumps different with Hunt the Wumpus, PRK, and PRG? Or are just the manuals different for those languages/regions.

Here are my other language variant module dumps:

Demonstration (1979) [En]

Demonstration (1979) [De]

Diagnostic (1979) [En]

Diagnostic (1979) [Fr]

Editor/Assembler (1981) [En]

Editor/Assembler (1983) [It][Proto]

Gestion Privee (1983)[Fr]

Household Budget Management (1979) [En]

Household Budget Management (1980) [Fr]

Number Magic (1979) [En]

Number Magic (1979) [M6][En-De-Fr-It-Ne-Sv]

Personal Record Keeping (1979) [En]

Personal Record Keeping (1981) [M2][En-De]

Statistics (1979) [En]

Statistics (1980) [De]

TI Logo II (1984) [En]

TI Logo II (1984) [De]

TI Logo II (1984) [Fr]

TI Logo II (1984) [It]

U-Boat Jagd (1984) [De]

Video Chess (1979) [En]

Video Chess (1980) [De]

Video Chess (1980) [Fr]

Some of them have the TI-99/4 equation calculator embedded in them. Which makes the TI-99/4A menu a bit confusing.

You just have to press the right number to get the cartridge to load. Not sure who dumped them or are they originally that way?

February 16

** EDIT: Checked with Classic99 and Google Translate of languages supported **

TI MODULES with Multi-Language support

Alpiner (1982) [M7][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne-Sv]

Computergraphik (1979) [M3][De-Fr-En] (AKA Computer Art - English)
Disk Manager 1.0 (1980) [M3][En-De-Fr]

Disk Manager 2.0 (1982) [M3][En-De-Fr]

Disk Manager 3.0 (1983) [M3][En-De-Fr][Proto]

Early Learning Fun (198x) [Mx] (Don't have a known dump in my collection)

E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982) [M7][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne-Sv]

Hunt the Wumpus (1980) [M3][En-Fr-De]

Indoor Soccer (1980) [M5][En-Fr-De-It-Ne]

Mancala (1983) [M7][Proto][En-Es-Fr-De-Ne-It-Sv]

Mind Challengers (1980) [M3][De][Fr][En]

Moon Mine (1983) [M7][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne-Sv]

Number Magic (1979) [M6][En-De-Fr-It-Ne-Sv]

Personal Report Generator (1980) [M2][En-De]

Personal Record Keeping (1982) [M2][De-It]

Test Trainer 1 (1980) [M3][De][Fr][En][Proto] (AKA Examiner 1 - English)

TI Calc (1983) [M4][En-Fr-De-It]

TI Writer (1982) [M7][En-Fr-De-It-Sv-Ne-Sp]

VAT Accounting (1980) [M2][En-De]

Video Games 1 (1979) [M3][De-Fr-En]

Videotex Emulator (Viditel 1.2) (19xx)[M3][En][Ne][De][Proto]

-Addison Wesley-

Computer Math Games I (1983) [M5][En-Fr-De-It-Es]

Computer Math Games III (1983) [M5][En-Fr-De-It-Es]

Computer Math Games IV (1983) [M5][En-Fr-De-It-Es]

-DLM-

Alien Addition (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

Alligator Mix (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

Demolition Division (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

Dragon Mix (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

Meteor Multiplication (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

Minus Mission (1982) [M6][En-Fr-De-It-Es-Ne]

The last three DLM modules (Verb Viper, Word Invasion, Word Radar) had no multi-language.

February 16

It doesn't work in RXB 2023 either. Something got broken in his updates.

February 16

I was hoping RXB used the same syntax as SXB (Super Extended Basic). Guess not!

February 16

COPY <start line> - <end line>, <new start line>, <increment>

COPY 10-20,50,10

February 16

TI's built in menu selection has multi-language support. Several cartridges supported this feature.

February 2

1 hour ago, senior_falcon said:

A number of people have been having problems loading XB 2.9 G.E.M. into the final grom.

in the package the files are named XB29GEM_G.BIN and XB29GEM_8.BIN. My understanding was that this naming convention was needed to work in Classic99

When using the final grom, the docs say to rename XB29GEM_G.BIN to XB29GEMG.BIN, and XB29GEM_8 to XB29GEMC.BIN. People report that doing that seems to work. (This step is easy to miss in the docs.)

It would be nice if the same file names would work for everything. In testing tonight, I found that when the files were named XB29GEMG.BIN and XB29GEMC.BIN they would load properly in Classic99.

Is this something that I should do, or would this lead to other problems? Am I missing something? For example, would these changed file names work with MESS or JS99er?

Your file names of "XB29GEM_G.BIN" and "XB29GEM_8.BIN" are both 1 char too long. The FinalGROM99 needs the file name(s) to be 8 chars or less + 3 char extension. Try using "XB29GEMG.BIN" and "XB29GEM8.BIN".

January 29

My cat likes to lay on my keyboard, or have her paws streched across it. So I'm finding bits of cat litter in my keyboards the past 3 years. It's a constant battle of cat hair and litter in my cleaning woes.