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majestyx

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Posts posted by majestyx

  1. Posted

    To Retrospect's point - in other words, include more features and functionality with the unit instead of a rather anemic "starter computer" for which many expensive and hard to find add-ons were needed to get it near to what the Apple ][+ and Atari 800 offered for the same amount of money. By the time Commodore released the 64 in 1982, the TI was already looking under-powered and overpriced.

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    I got a TI either at the end of 1982 or early 1983 when they were discounting them below cost and it's about all we could afford at the time. What saddened me back then was how expensive it was to get this computer into a form in which it could do what the competitors could. The cost to add storage (I only had the cassette program recorder), additional memory, and a more useful programming language were all out of reach for this poor 13-year-old back then. Add to that TI's refusal to allow third-party vendors develop for the machine and keeping the architecture under lock and key (to the point that they redesigned it to purposely lock out Atarisoft's cartridges, a company who was willing to support TI's computer) while the other major brands had so much more software to choose from, it all spelled doom for the computer and sure enough, it died unceremoniously. Their entire approach to marketing it by spending money on getting Bill Cosby to endorse it instead of doing something more useful with that money, attempting to treat it as an educational and business machine while scoffing at the entertainment side of it until far too late in the game - well, we all know how that turned out.

     

    The part I never understood is that the Beginner's BASIC book that came with the computer was so well done that it was what made me want to learn how to program computers. TI even had many add-on lessons available as commercial software that helped continue educating the user on how to program it, yet their corporate stance was to discourage anyone from doing any serious commercial development on it for it themselves. After the keys on my TI started repeating while typing more often that not (something that happened with their handheld calculators as well), I finally sold it to a friend, saved up and with my mom's help, got an Apple //c which, looking back, I'm sad to say that it was so much more fun to use (even though I really loved the TI) and there was tons of software available for it and quite easily accessible by that time.

     

    The TI still holds a special place in my heart as it is what hooked me on computers way back when I was 13.

    • Like 3

  8. Posted

    Okay, thanks for the explanation. It looks like I have old images of these multicarts (files were dated 8/14/2014, which was when I must have downloaded them). When I set them up originally I used 3 as I previously explained, but when I changed them to 8, they did work as far as presenting the 2 menu option, but dumped me back to the initial TI screen when I chose 2.

     

    So I've been able to find replacements for Gamecarts 3 & 4 (not to mention "new" ones, for me at least, 5 & 6) while paging through this thread along with an updated Utilities megacart, but didn't find replacements for 1 & 2. Is there a central hub from where they can be downloaded?

     

    Thanks again for all the work that has gone into compiling these~!

  12. Posted

    Eric Bray posted something on the Yahoo! group to describe a Plato setup he'd built for demonstrations, but it was on a Windows machine (and I think he was using Cory Burr's emulator, not MESS).It was about a year ago, IIRC.

     

    Thanks for letting me know. I've no idea why I thought that was a RaspPi distro other than wishful thinking... which could be used to add the rest of the TI software library to it!

     

    Considering the RapbPi's raison d'etre, I'd think something like this (the entire PLATO educational software library available in one place) would be a natural for the platform.

  13. Posted

     

    Yes, I saw that site thanks to a Raspberry Pi Handbook magazine I picked up a few weeks back, which is what prompted me to go looking for it. Since I thought that someone had already put together a TI version of it, I figured why reinvent the wheel?

     

    It looks like there are two emulation projects running for the RaspPi, but neither have incorporated the TI. They are PiPlay (formerly PiMAME) and The RetroPie Project .

     

    Thanks, mizapf, for the info on AdvanceMAME/MESS.

  14. Posted · Edited by majestyx

    Maybe I'm having a false memory or something, but I could have sworn someone posted a thread sometime last year, either here or at the yahoo group, that contained a distro for the Raspberry Pi that used MESS to run all of the PLATO software on it. Now I can't find it. So am I remembering incorrectly, or did someone actually put something like this together? I recently bought a Pi and am playing around with it every few days. Just amazing how technology has advanced.

     

    Thanks to anyone who can verify this and point me in the right direction! (Or set me straight and tell me I was dreaming...)

  16. Posted

    I agree with OLD CS1. Yahoo made those groups so user-unfriendly, I've pretty much given up on it, too. Terrible searching, too many useless views that make it even more confusing, and just an all around horrible interface equals killing a good idea dead.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    Is there something I have to do to get this to run in Classic99? From what I've read in this thread, I'm supposed to be using the Backwards file, but when I try it (and the other one), I still only get select 1 for TI BASIC, nothing else. I'm using the first file that was posted on page 6.

  19. Posted

    Comparing what the Amiga could do with its custom chips is a bit unfair to the TI due to its use of bitplanes. Jimmy Maher goes into great detail of how the Amiga achieved what it did in his Platform Studies book "The Future Was Here," and includes a Psygnosis game as an example.

     

    Speaking of Psygnosis, their audio and visuals were top notch, but gameplay... certainly not pretty! Beast was one of those games back in the day that you showed friends and said "look what my Amiga can do," but you wouldn't let them play it since they'd very likely give up in frustration a few minutes after handing them the joystick. Even using a trainer, I had an incredibly tough time beating it.

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    As I was exploring my Cyc DVD, I came across module PHM 3065, Compact English Trainer, which was apparently released in Germany. The ROMs are present, but the accompanying disk or tape image is not. Does anyone know if this disk image has been dumped and if so, where it can be downloaded? Thanks to anyone who can help!

  23. Posted

    I was thinking the same thing as OLD CS1 when it comes to the keyboard. And the fact that Retro Pie doesn't have a TI emulator made me wonder why they did this in the first place.

     

    As for the distro itself, I see that there is an Amiga emulator for it, in addition to some later generation video game systems. From what I'm seeing online, the newer the system, the slower it runs, at least at this point. Trying to figure out why older computers would run slower than, say, a SNES. More parts to emulate?

  24. Posted

    Other than it being a challenge to program or to see if it could be done, I'm not quite sure porting old arcade games would be at the top of my list for new TI software. I personally would simply use MAME to play the original, but that's just me. Of course, it helps that I have an X-Arcade Tankstick to do so!

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