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Actually Hal has already set the date for the Faire next year in his Faire report on the Yahoo group (I forget but it's early November again). I am positive that Hal will be open to any changes we suggest, again because the dynamics of the TI community itself are changing. That said, we should respect all the work Hal has done over the years in maintaining and perpetuating the Faire against overwhelming odds, and I find it grossly insensitive when suggestions are made "to take our wares elsewhere", especially coming from some who have never attended the Faire before. And I personally have no interest in diluting the TI Faire with other classic computer conventions. If I want to see other computer systems, I can always attend other venues... My 2 cents...

You are right there Mike. I remember when every table was packed with goodies, then it kind of dwindled away. This year was the first time when we actually had a ton of stuff to look at and acquire. As far as time management, it definitely could have been better, and setting time limits is going to be essential with all the new stuff coming out!

The TI will be able to access the Linux file system. At this time, I do not intend to allow Linux to access the TI file system. This means the Linux machine can not talk to the TI disk drives. (But the TI can talk to both its native drives and Linux, so interop is preserved). I thought long and hard about it, but the Linux file system is not as abstracted as I originally thought it was (I thought it was more like the TI file system, which is pretty much completely abstracted). It turns out Linux needs to know about the file system itself, and doesn't just blindly ask for files -- at least, if you want a block device file system, which I was looking into. Given the vast number of TI file system formats, I didn't want to go there, and I feel it's less important since logging into the Linux machine to do work is not expected to be a normal operation. Maybe once everything else is done we can look into it, or maybe a Linux guru will get involved when it's a little closer to functional and can do that side of it. This is vaguely similar then to the P112 CP/M computer-on-a-card that I installed inside my PEB that connects to the TI via the RS232 and uses the ZT4 terminal program to provide 80 column display. The TI drives are still fully accessible by the TI as well as the IDE drive connected to the P112, but the CP/M OS does not see the TI drives.

Short cable = long arms ? I LOVED that system. I had to give it up when I moved to New York for space reasons

I do have a scanner, but I'd be hard pressed unfortunately to find the time to spend several hours scanning each page manually

It appears that these books were made for a variety of platforms including the VIC 20, C64, Atari and Timex-Sinclair. Amazon actually has a copy of the TS version on sale. The TI version seems to be pretty rare, so I think you have a very nice find here. If you can find someone to scan the book into PDF, that would be awsome

Excellent work! Are you going to make available a complete finalized package with documentation?

all my games were done in XB,I entered them in the programing contest when they had the meeting at triton college. the baseball game, was done because I didn't like the way MBX system handled their baseball game. my version you can tell what outfield can get the ball,instead of having the computer do it. I still have my orginal disk, but besides that CTIUG is the only place that would have the released copy. I started basic and went right into XB because I enjoyed working with speech and sprites. my second laserman on the 2600 is loosely based on my ti version. I did a sequel to it on the Ti but never released it(I'm considering revamping it to port it to the 2600) of course doing it on the 2600, I won't have speech. Dan, I would love to post your games on the tigameshelf.net site to share with the community. If you are able to email them to me that would be great, otherwise you could mail the disks to me and I'll make copies then return the originals to you. I could look for them in the CTUG library, but without a catalogue it would be a nightmare trying to locate them... Walid

Mike, is it possible to have a cartrige made with your modification using EPROMs? Maybe Jon can help us here. This would be a great replacement to the E/A cart. Walid

Mike, will the onboard Linux be able to read and write to and from the TI disk drives? In other words, will one be able to save data and programs directly on the TI and retrieve them later, all from within Linux? Walid

I personally had a heck of a time. In the end, it's the people you meet that makes all the difference. The technical wizardry is just the icing on the cake It's really amazing how dysfunctional each one of us is The hangover was a bitch however

You're right. Maybe the Faire should be spread out over 2 days instead of one. Something to think about for next year, given the number of pending projects currently slated to be completed and presented in 2011.

I hope you didn't have too much of a hangover after all the water you drank

Now that's a thought... I wonder if I could create a multiplayer version of Ultimate Planet that could potentially connect to the BBS and download/upload game data from each of the players. Hmmmm... Definitely worth looking into.

Err.. Is Coke OK? You're right though. We'll figure it out in situ. Planning anything with TIers is always dicey at best anyway

Marc, I don't think the rooms at the hotel are big enough for you are envisioning. I suggest we go to the Legion first, and then afterward come back to the hotel and check out the new hardware. We can even pick up some of Evanston's walking dead chicken wings on the way and make sure there is a fire hose nearby Huh ??? seems you got the wrong number Walid Oops! This was meant for Tim

Well! How uncivilized... Gentlemen, consider yourself slapped in the face by my white gloves. I graciously accept the challenge and wish you all good luck. Good day sirs.

Marc, I don't think the rooms at the hotel are big enough for you are envisioning. I suggest we go to the Legion first, and then afterward come back to the hotel and check out the new hardware. We can even pick up some of Evanston's walking dead chicken wings on the way and make sure there is a fire hose nearby

Marc, are you planning on selling the cards? If you are, please put me down for one. PLEASE!

Could we have the MOUSE file too ? I'm afraid I can't seem to find it as I don't have the Mechatronics mouse anymore. However, I do have a Horizon mouse, and I'm thinking I could probably adapt it for that purpose. And while I'm at it I may as well implement sound lists. I haven't touched that program in 13 years, so it would fun to revamp it a bit

Unfinished, yet! I always finish what I start, but usually after a fair amount of side-tracking Need an example? This year I finished no less than 7 ASCII based games in Turbo Pascal using a combination of the IBM PCjr and a TRS 80 model 4 running CP/M as part of a project to redo and preserve some of the original classic games dating from the early days of computing. Then the last three and a half weeks I frantically put together 3 mathematical demo programs for the TI in assembly Which I will present at the upcoming Chicago Faire this Saturday. I'm hoping to go back and finish Ultimate Planet this year. We'll see about that Remember, this is a hobby after all, and it should never feel like work

Nice work Owen A long time ago, I had created an XB program called Soundgen that had a graphical interface (including mouse support for the Mechatroninc mouse!) which let you set up the parameters for the 3 sound channels and one noise channel and printed out the needed values for the CALL SOUND statement as well as played the sound. I always regretted however not including the ability of linking sounds into a playlist, something that would not have been too hard to do (I may do that at some point still ). Are you considering adding the playlist feature to your program? I think it will greatly enhance its value. I dug around and found the Soundgen program. Here it is. Docs are included. Soundgen.zip

Hal is arranging transportation for all of us, and I also have my car, so that should not be an issue. Typically people bring in their laptops as there is wifi internet access available and run TI stuff on emulators. Most, if not all of the conversation is TI oriented, although things start going off on tangents proportionally to the amount of beer consumed The gathering is in the banquet room which we normally have to ourselves, and there are lots of tables to set up equipment. As to how late we can stay, I don't quite recall, but it's usually at least 11pm. After that, we can always "retire" to Tim's room or the local water hole for more chatting

If you have an IDE card or a RAM disk and SuperBug, it's really not bad. I still do most of my programming on a real TI system and only use emulators, and mostly V9T9 because it can run completely unthrottled, when I need to test out computation heavy programs that can take hours (or days) to complete on the real thing. My initial TI system back in 1981 consisted of only the console and a cassette cable, along with Video Chess and Adventure with Pyramid of Doom on tape. I did not even own an Extended Basic cart... And yet I still recall having a huge amount of fun programming in TI Basic, although I unfortunately lost all of my early programs except for TI Puck which now lives on the TI Gameshelf. I dropped out entirely from the TI scene after my dad got me a PC clone as a reward for getting into medical school in 1986, and to be honest the PC was light years ahead of the TI in just about everything except colors as I only had a CGA adapter and I absolutely went wild programming in Microsoft Basic. Also for the first time I was able to get my hands on things like Flight Simulator and a variety of wargames, something that was sorely missing on the TI. The TI carts in my opinion were generally very lame as compared to what was available for other systems, and without a disk drive I had no access to the 3rd party software that was starting to come out. Finally in 1994, having graduated from residency and with my first job secured, I decided on a whim to acquire a completely decked out TI system, the dream system I had always wanted but never could afford including newer additions like a SAMS card and a SCSI card. And then something funny happened: The PC (I now had a pentium system) became gradually relegated to utility status for the likes of word processing, presentations and internet, and the real fun was happening on the TI system. Now I had the tools needed to explore other languages starting with UCSD Pascal, later on c99 and eventually assembly. I also discovered Micropendium and the Chicago TI User Group (I was living in Illinois at the time) and attended my first Faire in 1996. I have not looked back since Owen somewhere on this forum had mentioned that he regularly contracts Cyan fever: I get you buddy

No need for a phone line if most callers will be "calling" from a PC or Mac via internet. The TI will however need to be connected via serial cable to the PC. Any old PC that can connect to the internet should do. If you also however want people to connect using their actual TI, then yes, you do need a phone line and modem, at least until someone decides to write a TCP/IP stack for the TI...