kl99

Hi! Maybe we should avoid confusing people how you got to the F18A. The F18A is not released yet. Willsy is one of the few beta tester in the world. I am the second beta tester in Europe so far. We both met matthew180 at the TI Chicago Faire 2011. PAL (versus NTSC) shouldn't be an issue for the F18A but that is what beta testers are for to find out, right? I also pimped one of my ti-99 with the F18A, my vga cable goes out at the cassette port right now, but I hope someone in our group will make some nice cut hole (don't know the english term) for a vga port in my black console. And I already ordered a 19" TFT monitor with 1280x1024 resolution just for my new programming setup. As the F18A outputs 640x480, the display can upscale it to its native resolution of 1280x1024 quite easy. btw: I still don't have a TurboForth 1.1 Cartridge, and I think I will keep my TurboForth v1.0 Cartridge as it is for collection reasons. maybe you can PM me something Willsy. Klaus

Hi guys, since I am currently learning TMS9900 assembler and find the language and its opportunities most interesting and powerful, I came up with a crazy idea about having a regulary broadcasting featuring an assembler course, with a specific topic for each lesson, using a chat to have room for all questions and input. I would like to get your feedback about this idea. Is it the wrong topic because tms9900 assembler lacks a target audience today? If there is enough interest, and no ones else wants to do the lessons, I would take the broadcasting role, even though my knowledge is still very limited, and I might do things inefficient. My goal is not only having an interactive show with enough participants when broadcasted but have these streams avaiable along with the chat log for everyone who wants to watch them at a later point, along with a comment opportunity on every stream. Klaus

This ti-shop has cartridge port adapter, brand new, for around $5 dollars: http://www.texintreasures.com/ (currently offline) Kyle offers them on ebay for $10 dollars: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 130464156675

regarding the hybrid: gerhard w. from our austrian ti group brought one of these boards to our ti meeting: http://ti99blog.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=124346176 as you can see, tom seems to love it

I know that Berry Harmsen, Netherlands, has got his hands on a lot of faire dvds (which have been videotapes before). Don't know about their origin and copyright status though but I am interested as you to see those. Where are those avaiable you uploaded? Can you post a link?.

I can post them on ti99ers.org as well. My ti99blog is space limited, but I will try to find some storage for all the pics from the meetings (any suggestions?). I even have a nice video of the F18A demo from matthew (between 14 and 20 minutes long) we did in the hotel room in the evening before the faire.

It was a great event, I will definately come back. I will prepare some game and maybe even an animation/sound demo on the next faire. I want to do a demo contest anyway some time next year with an official winner-election on a ti-meeting (either US or Europe). Klaus

I did enjoy my trip to the USA as well as you guys. I am so lucky that I have passed the weight limits for air travelling on the way back. Got so much new stuff. Anyone who wants to have another TI meetings, there is one tomorrow evening in Vienna, Austria I will try to show off the F18A, a photo tour on the chicago faire and a nice review of everything that is going on. I would like to stay in contact with you: I got skype and Facebook, just give me a private message for my usernames. On Facebook I have 123 faire pics

you mean Terrific Games for the TI-99/4A. It was translated in several other languages. I have it in german language for example. Programs: Zombies in the Swamp, Galactic Monsters, Keyboard Memory, Las Vegas a Go Go, Parrot, Kentucky Derby, Rainbow Square Dance, Qui Vive, STM, One to Five, Escher, Genius at Work, Shark Hunt, Shakespearian Shuffle, Explosion, New York, New York, Key, Black Box, Treasure Hunt, I.T. — The Adventure of the Century, The Wolf and the Five Little Goats, Highway, Road Race, At the Market, Fallout, Ship's Attack, Mini Mancala, Stop It!, BABA, Vowels and Consonants, Astrology Info extracted from the Cyc DVD (cadd99.com)

this is becoming a nice collection!

the more ti-99 stuff the better! i will be ready friday/saturday/sunday! just give me some breaks for eating

nice

Hi Matthew, i have to agree, the TI community - although quite small - is quite inhomogene. ) showing the own hardware/software projects ) getting news about other projects ) collecting / trading / selling stuff ) talk about good old ti-times ) meet old friends Well, i believe everyone once worked with these machines and spent whole nights infront of them. So if you encourage the others to talk about ti-99 instead of football, the event could turn out more the way you prefer it, with on-topic chat. Matthew, I really hope to see you there!

Hi retroclouds, love your new youtube video. looks really really nice. Wish you best "elan" for the upcoming programming nights. Klaus

i will be coming from europe (austria) to chicago, staying from 2nd of november to 7th in best western university plaza. hoping to meet some ti friends!

Regarding the more than 4 sprites in a line problematic. If I understand this topic technically correct, there are four types of programs: 1. program simply ignores that the 5th sprite is not shown 2. program reads the 5th sprite status flag and the program reacts in some way 3. program knows by other variables (coordinate variables) that there are now more than 4 sprites in a line and react in some way 4. program always rotates the sprites even if there are less than 5 sprites in a line For now the F18A handles the first case perfect by simply setting the jumpers on the board accordingly Case 2, 3 and 4 however can still cause flickering on F18A machines. If the jumper settings would allow a mode that the F18A doesn't set the 5th sprite flag, even if more than 4 sprites are in a line, case 2 could be handled quite perfectly. The program from case 2 only reacts to the 5th sprite flag which will never be set in such a mode. So the flickering handling of the program is never triggered. There is no way to handle case 3 and 4 of course - without reprogramming the program itsself. I doubt there are too many assembler programs which doesn't use the 5th sprite status flag in their sprite handling mechanism.

for sure using assembler & bitmap, it could use 5 ko, but unfortunally iu never studied assembler in V1, i had to precalculate all pipe, with all level of water, in all ways possible ! ( 19 tubes X 9 waters postions, on 4 chars = 684 chars ! ) oh, i never studied tms9900 assembler as well (just 68k assembler). i guess you are currently using Extended Basic? can't the water be animated as sprites on top of the background-pipes? at least as long as it's not completely filling up one pipe char? afterwards you could replace the not filled version of the pipe char with a filled version of it and get rid of the sprite. kl99

I know this game but never played it yet. Looks really promising! Best wishes for your progress! Btw: The Gameboy version has a size of 24KByte. kl99

Got a link for this TI-GG Yahoogroup ? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tigg_nl/

I was told on tuesday, that this list got filtered by Berry Harmsen in the TI-GG Yahoogroup: Here we go:

I didn't want to sound uninterested or strong. If I was, sorry about that. Did you check out the games that are posted on the club errorfree page? http://errorfree.de/Menu08.html And about 100% completeness: I am sure, there will be revisions, if not done by you - but by others in the community. How are you handling localized versions of the same game? There are several games, that got translated by magazines or user(group)s. How are you handling game revisions? There were several little alterations of the source code on mostly basic games, also done by magazines or user(group)s? For example enhance the original code to use joysticks instead of keyboard, enhancing routines, speed up stuff, stuff like getting the player more lifes... Klaus

Thanks for the detailed reply on my questions Matthew. Regarding the 80 columns card: system-99 user-group (snug) from germany created two video cards for the PEB of the TI-99 in their past: http://home.arcor.de/system-ninety-nine-user-group/evpc/index_e.htm Maybe that helps you designing around the 9938. Klaus

Please don't wait for my additions. There is no way, I can quickly check through 1000 disk images for games and rapidly decide if they are copyright protected, public domain or not meant for public use. All I know so far: some are meant to be played from Ramdisk, some are meant to be played via 80columns cards, on GRam devices, some are for Mini Memory, Forth, Logo and other rarer programming environments. The rest is probably TI Basic, XB, E/A. All publishable stuff will be avaiable in my CMS program database project. You can read about it here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/176994-project-ti-99-global-database-project-started/ Klaus

Hi! I know, I am really late to answer here. This is phenomenal work you are doing for the community. As I am currently transfering disk after disk a huge ti-99 program collection from real 5.25" disks to disk image files on my pc, there will hopefully be even more games for your database. One disk collection (250 disk images) comes from a guy in Austria, who was there in the early days of TI-99. The other disk collection (~800 disk images) comes from a guy in Germany, who was there from beginning and active til the year 2008. I can't give you the disk images now because they contain private stuff and copyright stuff as well. You probably know better than me how much work it is to go through such a big collection of disks. It will take some time... Klaus

Wonderful news Matthew! Looking forward to meet you on the upcoming Chicago Faire! I am no way an engineer and have only limited technical skills, nonetheless would like to bring in these questions: Will the F18A be compatible with the MBX device for the TI-99? It's basically only input/output communicating with the TI-99 but as it once was meant to be a stand alone computer could there be any technical issues, that makes the system incompatible to use with F18A equipped TIs? If the VDP replacement uses lower power couldn't there be a power overload somewhere else in the system as a result? I mean that another chip gets too much voltage as a result? What is the current status on the 80column mode? You talked about it in this thread but as far as I know, there is no word yet whether it's part of the present features or not. Is the V1.0/1.1/1.2 featuring VGA 640x480 or SVGA 800x600? Do the boards feature Software Updatability? You talked about a FPGA TMS9900 CPU replacement sometime, maybe happening by you. What advantages do you see, that go beyond the original features/specs? I know by far too few about the system. Is it addressing issues? Is it timing? Maybe you can talk a little to give us non-pros a view what might be possible... Do you see a point in FPGAs replacing the sound chip and the speech chip? Please see this posting with deepest respect in your talent and hard work within your free time, not as a wishlist nor complaints. Klaus