kl99

Wow, what kind of treasures are on these disks... PHM3207, Crossfire. Never released Munch Man with original graphics/gameplay (more like pacman) TI Subocean Action Game TI Invaders with Cheat option: More stuff like Buckrogers, Slymoids, Demon Attack (no super), Burger Builder, Paddle Ball, TI Toad, Treasure Island, DStation, Congo Bongo, Jawbreaker, Sneggit in this special Format (like Microsurgeon). Adventure Source Code with original comments

The Disks from the Disk Storage Container named Extended Basic #1 - ... and those named E/A:Basic #1 - ... look extremly interesting. You should be able to those in the vidoes.

is this familiar software? ******* SUPER BUGGER VERSION 3.1 19-FEB-1983 ******** ******** Copyright 1982 by NAVARONE INDUSTRIES ********* SUPER-BUGGER is a stand alone program that may be loaded by the Editor/Assembler LOAD AND RUN option, or either TI-BASIC or EXT- BASIC CALL LOAD Options. NO special hardware is required, but this program will operate only on the TI99/4A with MEMORY EXPANSION,and a DISK CONTROLLER. The RS232 may optionally be used to get a hard copy printout on some operations. The SUPER-BUGGER is a very sophisticated and powerful debug tool which can provide funtions usually only available on very expensive develop- ment systems requiring special hardware. SUPER-BUGGER allows you to actually step through your machine language program, executing each machine instruction one at a time. Enabling you to examine the logic of your program as it is being run. As each instruction is executed, the SYMBOLIC interpretaion is displayed on the screen in the same format as it occurs in your assembley source listing, providing a trace of instruction execution. SUPER-BUGGER has a built in DISS-ASSEMBLER which you can use to decipher machine code to it's symbolic assembly language representation. It will interpret any instruction and show all types of operand uses. even displaying the JMP address of jump instruction. Operation of the SUPER-BUGGER is syntactally identical to the TI- DEBUGGER program, however there are features provided by the TI program that are not supported by SUPER-BUGGER due to memory size limitations. It is recommended you become familiar with the TI-DEBUGGER and it's documentation prior to using SUPER-BUGGER. The following is a summary comparison of the two debuggers. Both the TI- DEBBUGER and SUPER-BUGGER can be used to compliment each other to provide the best development tool in the industry. Edit: PHD5099, TI Advanced Assembly Debugger. This product was formerly Super Bugger, released byNavarone. See \vendors\ti\phd\disks\phd5099.dsk, HELP, for the documentation.

Yes, that is because Cadd99 was smart and knew that the Grom size is 6K. The Gramkracker dumps 8K for those.

I compared Security Analyis against the official Pc99 Dump of it. It's binary identical, only the header is different.

The Gramkracker Device doesn't support playing (loading) the MBX cartridges, since they contain a 2K Ram chip that is used, however the Gramkracker is good to do the dumps afaik. You could try to recreate a cartridge out of it. Klaus

Many thanks to those helping to explore the content of those disks! Sadly some of the disk I am dumping contain bad sectors, I am doing multiple tries to overcome some. And some disks I can't even read the first sector with Disk Utilities 2000 from. Many disk look (almost) empty in TI99Dir, but in fact they contain hidden Plato Stuff or no Files appear because they are Forth/Pascal stuff. Anyway the PC99 Image should capture anything on them to figure that out in the end.

enough maths for today, at least she used a TI calculator. back to Disk Dumping...

Here are those disks that seemed most promising so far. d007.dsk d011.dsk Please analyse and share you thoughts

Hi Ksarul, nice to have you here. Sadly most of those QA cartridges were identical to their production release. The ones that differed I have already posted. I interrupted the disk dumping process to open the 99/8, since Jens-Eike was so kind and opened his 99/8 in order to help me install the p-code chips. Before stopping dumping disks I discovered some nice GPL files for Story Machine and for TI Surgeon (released as Microsurgeon). They need an analysis. Also two disks containing text files for 99/8 parts which specify all kind of production numbers. Some similar disk was for 99/4(a) parts. I uploaded the various photos of the opened 99/8 to Facebook, including the p-code chips installation instructions sheet: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10153827945259844&type=1 It's hard to always post everything to atariage, FB and yahoo. Feel free to upload the pics to this thread. You would safe me some time. The p-code chips seem to be fine, however they need to be soldered before trying them out. Especially the middle board felt quite loose on those pins. Jens-Eike agreed that soldering is safer, before powering up and risk some damage. As I am totally without experience, I guess we all agree, it's wrong to do the first steps on a prototype computer. Before I forget, infos on the 99/8 Prototype #80 can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050113190941/http://aug.99er.net/ti-99_8.htm When my 99/8 #15 powers up the Version 3.0 is shown in the title scren, and it comes with Extended Basic II in the menu, returning 200 when using CALL VERSION. Overall the motherboard seems to be very similar to the 99/8 from Jens-Eike, which has some problems with Speech and Keyboard. Both is working in mine however, so there is hope to fix at least the Speech for Jens-Eike. Have to teach some math hours now for the cousin of my fiancee. More later...

Dumping the first Disks with Pc99 using the RSector and WSector progs. The first small box containing 10 disk which is black and called Memorex, seems to contain Plato Disks, at least the first 4 Disks are all Plato. Could it be he was responsible to review the Plato Disk Software? The disk labels partially have "Test" and "Review" and Dates on them.

The following cartridges have different binary content within the first >2000 bytes, indicating some sort of prototype: MBX Championship Baseball MBX Bigfoot Tombstone City Q/A GROM (french Diagnostic?) (Jon Guidry seems to have that cartridge as well labeled Diagnostic Tester) I don't have a Securities Analysis cartridge with original label for comparison, can someone dump that with the Gramkracker? All other cartridges with custom labels have identical content within all the Bytes til >2086 of each Grom chip, which means they are not different than the production release. Still the board of those cartridges could be special in itsself, and those QA labels are collectors items themselves. Here we go, as promised: cartridgedumps.zip

I was doing dumps of all cartridges that didn't come with the original label. And I was doing dumps of an original labeled cartridge from my collection to have a comparison. I did the dumps with Gramkracker. What does it mean if two Grom Files have different content from Byte >2086 forward? It looks irrelevant.

Asked the seller. You are right Lee. He installed the chips only for testing them and removed them afterwards.

) The Tape Recorder cable for the 99/4a is not compatible because it has a 9 pin port (like Joystick) on the computer side. But i guess the ports are 2.5 or 3.5mm headphone type ports, or cinch. ) Unlike the 99/8 from Steve Eggers my 99/8 does not have any text next to the power port. The 99/8 from Steve Egger has the Serial Number, the LTA number and USA "printed" on it. http://www.ti99.com/ti998d1.jpg ) I tested several cartridges, the cartridge with the letters "BIG" is indeed MBX Bigfoot ) I didn't see any visual differences when plugging in those custom labeled carts ) TI Invaders was without Shift838 option ) The two cartridge with the custom "Securities" labels are Security Analysis ) The one with "Scott Adams Adventure" is not PHM3041 Adventure, but Return to Pirate's Isle ) The biggest cartridge surprise so far was the unlabeled "Q/A GROM" cartridge, which seems to be a french 99/4 PHM3000 Diagnostic version. TI Title screen gets french with that one. Posted snapshots on FB. Feel free to post them here. ) The 3 "Disk Manager II" labeled cartridge show "2.0" on the Title Screen, so no DM3 sadly. ) In the TI Writer binder there were some Disks hided, two labeled with "99/8", two without any label. ) P-code keyboard strips for the 99/4a did show up in the binders. Since the motherboard seems to be not ankered in its correct position, the power port and even a plugged in cartridge looks lopsided/oblique. I need to open the case before turning the 99/8 on again. I tried to open it with extreme care yesterday but without a guide I was afraid to break anything. Further the p-code option doesn't show in the master selection screen, however when the seller was doing a photo of the same 99/8 running, it was there. Either he removed it or it unconnected internally.

And how do you call this calculation? X-ma(th)s?

In Europe its already dark, will do pictures in the coming days.

How can I open the 99/8 without damaging it? It seems the motherboard is not in the right position.

what is the easiest way to read out the cartridge of those custom labeled ones and compare it against the standard release of the same software? With my GramKracker? what about the Disks? I could use RSECTOR/WSECTOR from Pc99 to create PC99 Disk Backups. Everything agrees to that approach?

Hi guys! The TI-99/8 that I have aquired from an TI employee on ebay in december has finally arrived in two big packages. I started a Youtube channel (kl99) and I am uploading some unboxing videos there. The first one is already up. This is meant as a very open thread on all we discover from those boxes. Klaus

#2: The beige version of the TI-99 never made it to Europe. #3: The TI Basic for the TI-99/4 was against all rumours developed by TI in house. Microsoft was NOT involved. Microsoft was contracted to develop Basic for the TI-99/7 (internal name SR-70) [this is from a not yet released interview with one of the original 99/4 engineers]. #4: Those who gave away their TI-99 setup are regretting it at some point. #5: Hardware projects (Ram, Rs232, Peb, ...) have been that popular in Europe because the original Hardware by TI was hardly available to order. #6: Extended Basic was originally called "Product 359 Basic" and TI specifications go back to January 1979. #7: Somehow the TI-99 gives its users a feeling that is not there on a Windows computer, it is almost like the TI-99 has a soul. Maybe it's the forced combination of the Hardware to the System Rom. Or the TI Hardware is felt as the only gateway to a certain range of Software. Since the system software was only available on the TI-99. ANd there was no other OS for the TI-99, if you leave out the p-system and opa. For a Windows Pc you can have any hardware, and two Pc Users meeting only share a part of their software, not Hardware+Software. So it's much less of a shared experience. I think that is why there will never ever be a Usergroup for a certain Pc model, because they are all interchangable.