Ed in SoDak

It sure works a treat for me! A nice and tidy Mac Classic app, same as MacV9T9. Open a DSK image, save to a new folder named DSK1 to the desktop. Rename my previous DSK1 to DSK1whatever and drop in the new one. I have a couple dozen DSK1s to rename and put in use on the fly. I have so few PC99 DSK files it would not be worth it when excellent alternatives exist for pc/win. I have to boot up a Windows emulator to use programs like TI99Dir or others, so FIAD Extractor is not one bit obsoleted on my system. I am your fanbase! -Ed

Hi Lucien, Thanks for both the clarification and for writing FIAD Extractor! It's been a godsend compared to how I used to do it, if indeed I could at all! I was able to convert individual V9T9 or TIFILES and that was about it till I had FIAD Extractor to work with disk images. Since then, I become more familiar with emulating DOS and Windows on my Mac and finally I'm able to run programs like TI99Dir, Classic99 and others. For years I've kept some old DSK downloads around, but have never been able to open them. Now I know they must be PC99 DSK files and I can see if it was worth keeping them. -Ed

I see after running Kwikfont that it is by Wayne Stith and includes a nice assembly tutoial based on the program. -Ed

WOW! Thank you both! I'd been trying with V9T9's utilities and FIAD Extractor, which usually works. Now I have the files and the method. -Ed

I hope somebody here can help. I'm trying to retrieve Harry Willhelm's Kwikfont program from this disk I found at WHT. It seems to be in V9T9 format, but I haven't figured out how to mount disk images yet so I need the individual files. I can open and extract from TIFILES disks, but not this type. Can someone lend a hand? Thanks in advance! -Ed BOX7033.DSK

Mine's like 43 inches and it simply works. I just put my TI system back in action after about 4 years and some things got a little separated. That extender cable, for one thing. So I hooked it up the old way, and it simply sucked having that giant dongle hanging off the side. It kept wanting to succumb to gravity and pull away from the console. So relocating my extender became a priority. When I finally found it, instant joy. I folded it under the console to run beneath it to the left, from thence off the desk and down to the floor, where gravity could no longer attract the dongle. Shoved it all out of the way. I just have not experienced any interference issues or loss of data that others speak of, and the connectors are supremely secure, even after all the years of use, storage in less-than-ideal conditions and several variations in how I route the cable about from one setup to the next. Simple and it works. But it's also unobtainium. I wonder if the lucky guy who eventually gets my junk when I die (out of a dumpster, no doubt) will know what he has in this simple-looking, obsolete, pos cable? I asked this question once before, some here may recall: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/224648-fire-hose-to-ribbon-cable/ -Ed

Well, that depends... TI used several keyboards, Some good, other not so much. It's pretty easy to pry up a keytop and see what's beneath. Some are separate switches, but the contacts are hidden inside. Others have a pair of fingers that make the contact when you press the key. Accessible, but for some reason harder to keep clean. I'd blame it on weak spring action on the long fingers plus more exposure to air. Another keyboard variation has a membrane inside similar to the buttons in your TV remote or the Timex TS1000 (well known for it's frail keyboard). These are crap and almost impossible to repair. I'm not familiar with the Hi-Tek to guess which design route it takes. If it's not a membrane style, it may benefit from a contact cleaner. The QD brand from CRC works well and is sold at places like Ace Hardware. De-Oxit is another product some folks prefer, generally costs more and it comes in several flavors, so read up on that product first. Other people like plain ol' WD40, which is actually a pretty good answer, and who doesn't already have some? Not to muddy the waters. Basically if you can see or guess where the contacts are, a bit of spray in there and work the switch (safest with power off, of course), wait awhile to let the volatiles have time to evaporate. Power up and test. QD happens to evaporate pretty quickly and does not leave much residue. I haven't seen it harm plastics, but it might leave a liitle film evidence that can be wiped off if it bothers you. If you have a radio with a scratchy-sounding control or switch, this is the answer for that trouble as well. That's kinda why I went in to such detail. All that aside, I've been spraying and tweaking the fingers of the Function and right Shift keys on my beige TI to not much avail. I'm about to swap it out for a Black & Silver to see how well it has aged. So, YMMV. (I'm suspecting a bad solder joint in the beige unit's keyboard at this point). I don't personally know how the Hi-Tek kbd is made, so this is all kind of a shot in the dark. Pop a keycap up and have a look what's beneath. Here's one recent thread, there must be several others to read up: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273929-alps-keyboard/ -Ed

Since I recently posted this question anew, I figured I may as well dredge up the original post I made in 2014. Did anyone ever take their conceptual ideas further? There were some interesting ideas, some of them foreshadowing today's expansion options. A lot of discussion was generated by my innocent little post. Fast forward to today, with more options on the table to make our imaginations a reality, is this worth revisiting? Meanwhile, my ol' low-buck original still works as good as when new some 30-odd years ago. I don't set up my TI and PEB without it! -Ed

I guess I'm one of the lucky few who has one of these. With all the new add-ons being developed, maybe now someone has found a source for the connectors and could produce this handy item. Mine is about 36 inches, I haven't measured it in awhile. Long enough to put the firehose down on the floor with only the easily foldable ribbon cable connecting the PEB to the TI. Who needs that huge dongle laying on the desk, preventing the console from moving or breaking contact if it does move. Those of us with PEBs need this! -Ed

Cccould be a flaky keyswitch in the keyboard itself causing your pppppproblem. QD spray contact cleaner might help if it's a make/break switch rather than a membrane style. -Edd

Just guessing here. Have you tried console Basic? If line 240 has code referencing character sets 15 or higher than XB uses, that's a clue it's for console Basic.

Being a cheap bastidge, I've used short bits of tubing to contact the switch and clear the case enough to work. If the microswitch ends in a little post sticking up, a small inner diameter tube might grip the post well enough. Or fill the end of the tube with something. Even a short dowel might work. Keep it in the case with an o-ring on the tube inside. Not too elegant but might be better than stabbing semi-blindly though the hole with a stick. Or, yeah, actual buttons.

I have a similar PEB setup, just more floppy drives. When you have nothing but blank, unformatted disks, TI's Disk Manager cart will give you formatting, cataloging, copying, deleting; the basic things you need. Once you have a floppy formatted, you could write a simple program on the TI and save it using SAVE DSK1.MYPROG or whatever. Then with the TEII cart, you could send it to the PC. Another alternative is to use the Basic or Extended Basic plus the RS232 and "print" the program's listing to the PC. Type LIST "RS232" on the TI with your program loaded, and it should appear as a listing on the PC's text capture (log) screen (same as you're playing with now to send characters back and forth.) I think the default speed is 1200 baud. Save that to a text log file. Copy the listing to the PC's clipboard. You can then use Classic99 on your PC to paste into the TI99 emulator. TaDah! You just ported a program from the Real Iron to your emulator. Similarly, you can send a TIFILES type program file using Xmodem from the PC to the TI, and the Terminal program on the TI will save it to disk as it downloads (using the filename you provide like DSK1.MYXFER). Instead of TI's Term II slow 300 baud module, using Telco (once you have that program on floppy) I was able to transfer at 9600 baud or faster, which only took a short while to send a program from my TI to my Mac or back the other way. Using Archiver on the TI, you can take a whole floppy and turn it into a single file that only takes one longer transfer session and save naming and sending many files one by one. Then use Archiver to expand the file on the other machine. Of course, the FG99 will streamline all that, but that, in a nutshell, is how I've always done it since forever, since I don't presently own an FG99 or other similar add-ons. -Ed

Another quirk of the Timex was it didn't care if a line number existed or not. It would simply jump to the following line. That BASIC didn't have a resequence command, but you could run USR routines to add such things. While SXB might support GOTO(A) I don't use it. I keep my programs mostly compatible with TIXB. In my Timer program, I did a VERSION check and branched to code appropriate for whichever cart was mounted. A way to deal with losing a branch with GOTO(A) if you resequence, I kept REM statements at the front of the program noting where things took place in the code and it would be fairly easy to manually update such. SXB allows selective resequencing from line XXXX to YYYY only, so you could expand tight sections or move lines back to where they were or shuffle lines around. Sure, there's other and better ways, but the SXB is pretty flexible. I like elegant programs myself, but mine seldom reach that status. -Ed

Thanks Lee, your explanation makes sense. The T/S1000 has several ghosts of the ROM due to incomplete RAM addressing, I thought it may have been something like what happens on that machine. But the LSB truncating is the likely scenario. My "program" was essentially one line of code that used a for/next loop to incrementally display chr$(n). I just kept upping the start/end numbers and running again. After reading your reply, I wasn't able to quickly replicate the scrambled bit of my program line. When it happened the first time around, I was just picking higher numbers out of the air and not really noting what numbers I'd typed when the entered code listing went a bit screwy.. It changed the CALL CLEAR in the program line 30 with the for/next loop to a portion of line 20 in my little experiment that wasn't being run since I commented line 20 out with an ! exclamation point. Simply editing the line 30 corrected it and I was able to run it again. Trying to replicate this error, I came across the error report, but the code was not scrambled as before. Like I said odd, but useless. At first I lept to the conclusion I had discovered "hidden" charsets, but doubted that, so I wrote this code to see if I could redefine these high character numbers. You cannot redefine them, they only display or print. No redeeming value to having that "ability." -Ed

Must be, and I don't even have Playground. I saw something digging in my sandbox out in the yard, then a scratching noise beneath the floor under my TI. Should I worry? -Ed

The Timex/Sinclair 1000's BASIC allowed either RUN 1700 or GOTO 1000 on the command line. Both from a program that hadn't been run since entering it or loading. Like you, I used that a lot when writing or debugging code to skip all the intro, ect. code. On the TI, I just add a GOTO NN to a program as the first or very early line to jump to where I'm currently working or testing my code. The SXB cart allows a CALL GOTO(variable) and a few other nice features. Set that up as an input in the front of the program and you could just enter the line you wish to jump to and execute from there. -Ed

Just a quirk of the TI99/4A I'm sure, but thought it interesting, though hardly useful. If you redefine A, it will show up at 14913 the same as CHR$(65). I was messing around and discovered the character set is repeated over and over as you increase the character numbers on upwards, till at some point around 32000 it scrambled part of my line of code I had written to enter and display it. Attempting to redefine char# 14913 or any number other than the usual results in an error. But changing #65 redefines all the repeating A characters wherever they may be, and there's many duplicated character sets as you keep looking. OK, I'm bored, how else to explain? -Ed

Yeah, normally with the remote jack plugged in, the player won't budge until you press Enter for a Load or Save. It's simple to use a Harbor Freight cheapy DMM to check continuity in the cable or within the recorder itself. I'd tend to suspect that first, since you already found a flaky cable. They get shoved around and everyone seems to like the cables folded neatly against the cases, which cables detest and soon protest with breaks near the connectors. On my own tapes, I never much used the remote, expect when dubbing with two recorders or back in the early days, using programs that saved data via CS1 or CS2. When making tapes, I unplugged the Mic connector to record an audio ending to the previous program on the tape and the next one to follow. These interludes usually include any off the cuff comments I or my brother who happened to be there might spout. (Music in background) "That was Sprite Blaster. What a POS!... Hey, bro, grab me a beer while you're up... Get yer own, a-hole!... Next is Sprite Master, maybe it's less chitty? ..." then I'd pause the recorder, hit enter on the TI and unpause the tape to let the mayhem ensue! Funny listening to these tapes decades later! With my audio intro/exit, plus a handwritten list of programs with the recorder's counter number, I could keep dozens of programs organized on a 90-minute cassette. To find one when loading, I'd lightly hit FFwd to let the reels spin, but have the head touching the tape just enough to catch some audio. When I'd hear the program ScreebaScreeba noise change to the constant lead-in tone or chipmunk talk, I'd return to play to see what the next taped treasure was. -Ed

I plod onwards with progress on several fronts. I have a fairly simple rewrite of UR with a couple additions. I have found a single small bug in the version Vorticon released. Simply remove line 191 to fix the end of game "replay? Y/N" display. It functioned as written, but did not display. I have kept the numeric score display I added early on, so sound is no longer needed to announce the roll of the dice with a small emulator display where the dice can't be easily seen. The speech commands could be removed if one does not happen to have a speech module or decent speech in their emulator, which should speed up gameplay. I added a short intro screen with description of the keys used and a couple options. One option is a beginner's "cheat" that prevents UR's AI from jumping you and removing your token. It can still jump you, but it lands hidden beneath, and you keep your token! Hah! Take that, TI! If your hardware or emulator can be accelerated, I added an option to add a delay to the player move code to slow down cursor movement. Set it to 0 for normal play or input a number that allows more exact movement of the cursor around the board. I run MacV9T9 at 190% speed and 4.5 mHz clock for manageable but much zippier play, especially during sprite movement and other logic-intensive sections of the code. Otherwise, it plays as before. I hope someone enjoys my minor enhancements! I also unpacked and plugged in my Real Iron. Stock TI and basic PEB, three drives and SXB as my main cart. Dragged out all my floppies in search of my favorite CHARDEF program. Haven't located it yet. I guess I rearranged my oh-so-perfect disk indexing system, but it should in there somewhere! Anyway, I'm having fun just revisiting things I've come across and it's good to see everything still works. I'm guessing some of these disks have not been mounted in 14 years or longer. Newest date was in 2014, some last-minute stuff I did before packing it away. Something's up with DSK2, but I have several backup drives if that's the problem. More likely it's due to flaky, jury-rigged wiring. All part of my efforts towards adding my redesigned-gameboard-in-progress to a revised UR game and making it work! Here's my rewritten UR4 program. In order to edit it, I was forced to resequence it, so line numbers are now very different from the original. Remove the ".txt" to reveal the V9T9 format program. -Ed UR4.TXT

That makes sense, though the listing is intact when loaded into a Mac text-editing program. It's just all strung together with slices of gibberish added. A straight D/V80 fie makes more sense and can be fixed more easily using find/replace. Here's a short sample clipped from my Timer program: -=-=-=-=-=CLIP=-=-=-=-=- XB list clip: 1050 DISPLAY AT(4,0):"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TIMER 6.04 ~~ 11/28/00 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"P1060 CALL GCHAR(1,29,T):: IF T=58 THEN GOTO 1510 ! checks for colon to skip e/a clock if already loadedˇ7745" :: RETURN 700 ! PRESCANˇash2,Wash3ˇP1075 IF VERS<120 THEN DISPLAY AT(16,0):"~~ TI's Extended BASIC ~~": :" ~~ TeKsting EA Clock ~~" :: VERS=130 :: VER$="EDXB" ! GOTO 1550 ! skip clock optsP1100 FOR CLKCHOICE=1 TO 20 :: DISPLAY AT(9,1):"CLOCK?": :" 1=Continous 2=ResetˇESCANˇash2,Wash3ˇN": :" 3=Sequence 4=None > 4" :: DISPLAY AT(13,27):"4" ! exb clock choices91150 CALL KEY(3,A,Q):: IF Q<>0 THEN CLK=A-48 :: GOTO 122551200 What a mess!! DV80 doc file clip: !Timer was originally created on a&Timex/Sinclair 1000, written to assist#me with the new home color darkroom%processes. The TS1000 computer had no$sound, and few screen displays otherˇ&than PRINT, so Timer v1.0 was a fairlysimple program. -=-=-=-=-=END CLIP=-=-=-=-=- With a short program, it's tedious, but relatively easy to clean up the listing, add returns and remove the gibberish like you see at line 700 above. For a long program such as Timer, it was much easier to port it from the iron via LIST "RS232" and capture it on my Mac using Zterm's screen log. If it was a file only on my Mac as an emulator file, I first had to convert and transfer it to the TI to be able to LIST it back to the Mac. So it's easy for me to say THANK YOU TURSI! for providing a way to get a clean listing. You guys earn my respect daily! -Ed

Thanks, you're being too kind! The 3x3 symbol gives a lot more graphic real estate than a single character. I need a better chardef program than I've found so far online. Looks like this Game of Ur will coax my ol' TI back out of hiding so I can boot up the chardef program I have on my floppies and transfer it. Fortunately I long ago indexed, numbered and cataloged all my 253 floppy disks to a single text file, so I'll able to find it quickly. What's amazing to me is the ruthless AI you added to the program! -Ed

Works for me, too, thanks! I had to put "CLIP" in quotes. On the real iron with the SXB cart, list "DSKn.fileLST" :28: worked great. The :28: option held it to a screen-width margin so it matched the on-screen listing. (Or use :80: or :132: to match your printer if going for a hardcopy.) That method (LIST "DSKn.file") doesn't work well for me in emulation. The text file is all one "paragraph" with no return at the end of a program line so it's all jumbled together. On top of that, it adds gibberish in random spots. That takes a lot of careful editing for just a listing. I'm running Classic99 under emulation using Virtual PC on my old Mac. So LIST "CLIP" is slow as molasses, but easier to make a listing since I don't have to "fix" the resulting listing. Tursi to the rescue! [edited for clarity]

I made a bit of progress. Using the chardef program mentioned above, and a couple short XB routines I wrote to help plot it out onscreen, I worked out a very basic board layout that uses the full screen width. So far, I have only the "bullseye" symbol and a few simple diamond border characters, but it was enough to recreate the board's form. I'll flesh it out with more symbols to refine and complete it. For now, I just Photoshopped a little variation into the symbols to see how it looks. Not sure I like the divider border characters between the short single blocks, so my design may shrink 2 characters to be 26 wide instead of the full 28. For the tabletop "real" version, I've made a set of 3-sided pyramid dice from two-part white plastic casting resin. That idea began when I decided to make a paper mockup to use as a crude guide for setting my chopsaw angles to cut them in oak, when I realized I'd just made a workable mold form to cast them instead. I printed out the layout on heavy cardstock and backed one side with wide packing tape so it would release. Folded them up, taped the seam and poured a mere 5ml of resin into each mold. They turned out fairly nice, considering, and kept that homemade look. I plan on spraying them in black and adding the white dots, but first I want to see how well they roll random results in a game or two. I spared no expense, using only the very finest cardstock, buttons, plastic resin, tape, magic marker and laser toner I had laying around. Splurging on a piece of oak scrap, some glue and varnish will probably put my all-in cost at about a buck. -Ed

100 REM RUN DAILY 110 If castigate then obsfucate else placate 120 If castigate=>evil eye then ameliorate else dinner + movie 130 on error then couch :: call wait :: call morning :: goto 110