The one thing YOU think they should NOT have left out of the TI-99/4A.

[The one thing YOU think they should NOT have left out of the TI-99/4A.]

A Zilog 80A chip with 32K would have been a good alternative to the 9900 with 256 bytes.

 

There were two working prototypes that had these Z80's in them.

 

The computers were altered and access to anything hacky about the machine was ultimately denied.

[Modified -- TRS-80 Models I, II and clones like System 80]

Yes, that's him! He does make some great videos. I envy the storage space some people have for all these computers.

Yeah, I know, me too! .... Wish I had that special room devoted to them, stacked on shelves ready to be plugged in. From the look of his videos, he's in his attic room. Must be nice!

[Speaker for TRS-80?]

The memories are hazy but I think it was wired into the cassette deck. You can have the sound come right out of the deck itself but it's meant to be worse, as I read earlier.

[Modified -- TRS-80 Models I, II and clones like System 80]

Terry Stewart. Love his videos.

[What are your 'top two' favorite TRS-80 Model I or III games?]

For me, it's Robot Attack and Attack Force. Both by Big Five Software.

 

Attack Force was a great Targ clone and I loved the visual effect it did between levels.

[I'm almost afraid to ask this emulator question...]

Another great game is Attack Force by Big Five software, it's a take on the classic TARG arcade game. Your player ship has two speeds of travel, and the nasty motherships are in the game too. I loved all these games as a kid, still do today.

[Modified -- TRS-80 Models I, II and clones like System 80]

I always found the HT1080Z and SYSTEM 80 a rather strange looking machine, but I suppose in a good way.

 

Like the lovechild of an Amstrad CPC464 and an Exidy Sorcerer.

[Speaker for TRS-80?]

 

Might it have been one of the Rip Shack 'Flavor Radios'?

No, it wasn't any of those .... it was more like this one, but blue plastic with a black (vinyl) coat & strap.

 

 

[TRS-80 Model 1 emulation]

By golly that makes some noise (floppy tape loading noise)..... last time I heard that sound was in '85 and it's still better than Justin Beiber.

 

 

Level III cassette basic works, good , now to find more floppy images.

 

 

I seem to remember having Robot Attack on Floppy Tape.

[TRS-80 Model 1 emulation]

 

Yep, I must have the ROM already in TRS32 .... I'll now attempt to load Basic III from stringy floppy

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Have a look at this page, I think it will answer your questions:

 

http://www.trs-80.org/exatron-stringy-floppy/

 

Do you have the esf.rom for it (to use with the emulator)?

 

[TRS-80 Model 1 emulation]

Hello everyone. I've been on and off over the years with TRS-80 emulation. I used to own a model 1, with 16K level II rom and a tape deck, monitor, no expansion box but I had this Aculab Floppy Tape unit ..... I understand most people would own, or at least think of, Exatron when it comes to floppy tape.

 

Which brings me to my question .... in emulation (TRS-32) .... what commands are used for loading and saving floppy tape images?

 

(I remember I used to be able to load the games but this was years and years ago!)

 

[Speaker for TRS-80?]

I used a little transistor radio for my model 1 system back in '85. Can't remember the brand but it was small, and blue.

[A game for the model 1]

I made this a while back, it runs on a model 1 level 2 machine ...... it's a .cas file for the emulators.

 

tictactoe.zip

[Internal GPL Interpreter?]

 

Being one that uses GPL equally as much as assembly, I probably would have given up the TI long ago were it not for the merits of the GPL interpreter.

 

"... there's something in the TI that isn't being used ..." is a completely untrue statement. Without it, there would be no ubergrom cartridges. I could not disagree more with your comment.

 

Mixing GPL and assembly code as a programmer is the best way to make full use of the TI's memory and take complete control of the TI. QED = Extended Basic v2.7 Suite.

 

Gazoo

" is a completely untrue statement."

Fine, okay, well, I came to that conclusion because TI stated it was not user accessible. So, if it IS user accessible, great, fine, that's cool.

 

"I could not disagree more with your comment."

Good to know. It's nice to have someone reply with such enthusiasm, I like a bit passion in written words, it portrays emotion.

 

One good thing came of my topic though, it got people talking about the GPL Interpreter. Who knows what will come of it?

[Internal GPL Interpreter?]

I was reading somewhere online, some time ago, that the TI has an internal GPL interpreter that is not user accessible.

 

So .... IS there a way to interface with it if you're really clever, or is it just sat there for no reason other than to accept GPL code from cartridges?

 

Bare in mind I don't code in GPL but I find it fascinating that there's something in the TI that isn't being used.

[Desecrating TI's]

Such blasphemy! Be gone - heathen!

 

I must have burned literally thousands of hours on those rubber keyboards. Once you learned where all the keywords where they were really good!

Admittedly, they are surprisingly fast to code with, as you say, when you learn where the keywords are ... I just looked up the word "Heathen" and got this :

"a person who does not belong to a widely held religion" .... haha! I have to say the Spectrum WAS a widely held religion for us UK lot. If you didn't own one in our school you got looked at a bit funny. I had a TI99 and no one knew what it was!

[I have a project I want to do, but I need some information first.]

If the source is there, then you just have to worry about how to save the code to a disk image (or real disk?) and how to load (or call) it.

 

As i know nothing about it either, I'm no help at all.

 

Just so ya know - you're not on your own.

[TI-99/Sim is quite good ... however ...]

I was in communication with the author for a short spell, he mentioned something about updating the emulator in some way, but he's stopped communicating now. In the end, nothing I tried worked, I tried using the old convert-ctg from a previous version but with no positive results.

 

This is a real ball-kicker for me because when the emulator popped up on screen, it's speed was flawless, there was none of the sound issues or lag associated with other emulators, it was great. I just couldn't mount software. Which meant I was stuck with a base 16K console and no way to save. Hmph.

[I have a project I want to do, but I need some information first.]

Thanks senior-falcon, yep you are right - it should be called something else. did you notice the pause as I was confused about the filename

 

Really the only point to the video was to show that it can easily save out to EA5

[I have a project I want to do, but I need some information first.]

Hi Omega, if it helps, I'm using XB256 with it's 256 compiler at the moment to experiment with, I'm doing lots of small programs and learning how to do this and that, so that my horse racing project can look as good as I can get it.

 

XB256 allows for lots of things previously not possible without assembly, here is a quick and dirty video I just made to show how to save out in EA5 format from the 256 compiler

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkhT34EGQDo&feature=youtu.be

 

You might want to skip past the waiting period for the Assembler. the point to the vid is near the end

[XB256 + Extended BASIC]

GAZOO'S DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT (GDE)

 

You're welcome

[XB256 Musings & experiments]

The skyline looks like Activision to me!

Yeah, you are right, it does somewhat look reminiscent of Activision ..... I might throw in a couple of clouds, I could use the horses shadows in white and set them in automotion very slowly.

[The Missing Link + Extended BASIC]

I don't know of any other micro where you could knock out a game like that in BASIC. I know it's extended, but still - Basic .... look at the C64 and Vic 20 for example ... they would take at least a minute to generate the characters let alone attempt the game. One up for TI and a good show from Tursi. Brilliant stuff.

 

Also cheers to Harry W. for providing us with this great extension. After my horse racing game is done with I'll be having another look into TML to see what I can or can't do.

[XB256 Musings & experiments]

There are 32 sets of characters (256 total characters) to play with! Not to mention there are another 112 characters to use for sprites.

Excellent, better than I thought! .... I've got an attract mode title screen just about ready to show. No sound yet, but I will do all that last.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvGC9pNh1EU&feature=youtu.be

 

The youtube clip looks HORRID !!! .... So I provided the FIAD file for Classic99 / CF7 users, use Extended Basic to load it (it doesnt need 256 to run)

 

Also to note: the finished product will draw the racing track faster ..... I got impatient and botched it in somewhat hapazardly. Basically it has a RND of 4 numbers, and adds the character number for graphics to it, for example GR=GR+159 or whatever, is why it's sloooow. The character set is too high up for me to PRINT as a CALL LINK("DISPLY", xxxx)

 

ATTRACT2.zip

[XB256 Musings & experiments]

The racing game is having a good re-write right now. I did the old trick of putting bits of code at random spots ... I only knew what everything did for about 48 hours and after a break of more than 16 hours I was suddenly confused looking at the mess of spaghetti everywhere..... There's going to be six horses racing on screen .... sprites at magnify 3 because I want a little shadow under each horse, the test I did before I screwed up the code looked good enough to show, but I don't want to stack the thread with showboating videos every time I triumph.... The "leading horse" thing will be more advanced, and will show (hopefully) all the horses in order of position during the race.... I'm being very optimistic there..... Right ... so ... on with it, from scratch .... I'll have a title screen with attract mode to begin with. With an attempt to take advantage of the fact that we have 28 sets of chars (?!) which is going to be fun to play with.