JB

It is kind of ridiculous for the browser to force it to HTTPS, and then throw a big scary warning about the site hacking you because the certificate for the secure mode the site doesn't even support is invalid. I could rant for days about web browsers.

Well, it is an HTTP link, not HTTPS. There shouldn't be a certificate error at all unless the browser is forcing it to HTTPS erroneously.

Alpiner teaches us that just because your game CAN speak doesn't mean that it SHOULD speak. (Seriously, I used to unplug the speech synthesizer so I wouldn't have to hear the computer's harrassment.)

Indeed. That's the job of the fuze.

The stylish solution, if ever there was one. I stand by this statement.

It breaks the cup warmer? That's a serious flaw!

Well, first time in several years... I hated that minefield as a kid, and I hate it as an adult too. Maybe at some point in the next week I'll memorize the moves to get through it. Or at least remember the moves to get through the first leg, since I'm sure my younger self NEVER cleared the entire minefield before growing angry at what I recognized even then as blatantly unfair game design. An early example of my love/hate relationship with irem.

If I recall, the FPGA used for the F18A runs much cooler than a 9918a does, and needs no heatsink.

I have limited room to avoid your route. P-box came from the garage with a DSDD disk controller and a Horizon RAM disk. And I already want a Geneve, though they live outside my budget.

I was partially teasing. The 4a cries out a little more for upgrades than some systems, but a naked console is still a good bit of fun. You don't really NEED the expansions unless you're trying to do something more practical than just old game cartridges. But the system makes expanding so tempting! I've not ACTUALLY put a lot of money into mine, but... dad did when it was new. It was his system in the old days, and he loaded it for bear while I played games. I just fished it out of the garage and put current through the circuits again, restoring it to screaming jet-engine life(I really should replace the P-Box fan).

I found the biggest lie in the TI ream: "It's cheap to get into the 4a. Systems can be had for pennies on the dollar next to some of the other old computers." Fast-forward six months and you've bought memory expansion, RS-232 controller, floppy controller some sort of mass storage, a flash cart because you're already sick of swapping between Disk Manager, Editor/Assembler, Extended Basic, and Parsec all the time, and you're wondering where it all went wrong.

It isn't the 90s, there's no time for Klax.

Make a PowerMac 9900, so to speak?

The page numbers you're asking for are actually in the picture of the book. But between the book's apparent lack of any bibliography and the existence of multiple large errors in just those two pages, I would be very hesitant to use any part of that book as a source for ANYTHING. Every claim the author makes is suspect, and there's no way to fact-check him without actually doing the research yourself(at which point you may as well just cite the sources used in researching the book's accuracy and skip the book entirely). I'd wager the author's source for TI BASIC being written by MS was actually the very Wikipedia article we're discussing the (almost-certain) inaccuracy of, but since he didn't offer a source, there's no way to know. https://m.xkcd.com/978/ is relevant here. Because Wikipedia said so, never mind that the article was clearly written by someone with very little knowledge of the platform(seriously, last time I looked the 99/4a article was just AWFUL).

At least one exists, because I have a homemade one in a box of TI stuff we received from a family friend. It is just be jumper wires between two D-subs, none of the diodes that are considered "the right way" these days. I somewhat doubt any sort of commercial production exists, because who DOESN'T want to cheat at Parsec? the cost of being fully-functional isn't much different than the cost of a single-port adapter. Also, with the TI joysticks being identical and unlabelled, I'd be hesitant to guarantee that every game takes input from stick 1 in single-player mode. This adapter is rather thin and lays almost flush against the system, though. https://texelec.com/product/ti-994a-to-atari-2600-joystick-adapter/

Also, their first graphing calculator didn't come out until 1990, so their graphing calculator business very much wasn't flourishing in the early 80s. Hell, if the TI-81 came out in 1983, it would've been epoch-making for the display alone.

It most definitely is.

Design issue. Not actually a fault, though it is pretty annoying, and there's modifications that will reduce it.

Bit late, but I can verify TI marked other refurbished devices that way. My old Speak&Spell has the same sticker and branded R. Don't have a refurb 4a, though.

It is mostly just less cool-looking. Though the varying size of the qix makes getting around the "tail" a more interesting task. (Also, Taito's own Super Qix and Volfied use a chain of sprites, not a single one, with Volfied's segments even being animated like they're connected.)

I admit to being impressed that the Colecovision clone works as fast as it does, even if the not-a-qix is a square sprite instead of the dynamic lines of the original.

Exception 1 can happen easily on stages with 2 qixes. Exception 2 is probably a safety net to prevent the game crashing outright if something goes wrong.

I looked into this, and my gut was wrong. X doesn't do it natively, and the software that would make it happen hasn't been maintained for years and doesn't run on modern Linuxes. This suddenly became more complex, if you want to use the TI's keyboard. If you want to use an IBM keyboard adapter on the TI, it is dead simple. Get a KVM that supports keyboard-controlled switching and call it done. 'S basically all the Triton XT sidecar was anyways, a KVM switch.

MAME running on a Pi emulating a 4a with a Tipi. Seconds per frame.

Honestly, if X supports keyboard input over TTY, it'd be doable with nothin' more than RS-232 adapters and a terminal emulator on the TI. I don't know if X supports that, though my gut instinct is yes.