Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Toucan

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    400

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Toucan

  3. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    58 minutes ago, Toucan said:

    I was talking to @Ksarul about this today and figured I would post this as it's not well known and maybe could lead to some interesting discussion. Probably about 20 years ago now, I received a bunch of disks containing released and unreleased cartridge dumps from a woman in Canada named Lucie Dorais (sp?). These disks contained games like Lasso, Wing War, Angler Dangler, etc. What was intriguing to me was that these disks were marked 1985, on a printout of the contents taped onto the disk sleeve. That was intriguing to me since 1985 was only 2 years after TI pulled the plug on the home computer, so these titles were discovered close to the time the TI-99 was still in production. Anyway, I decided to see if I could track down the source of these games, and who actually found them. As they seem to be the source for many of the unreleased dumps we have today (the disks auto load in XB with a nice menu BTW). So I talked with Lucie and she said she thought they were from the Chicago UG, which in turn I eventually tracked them down to the Atlanta UG somehow (forget how). Anyway, I came across someone who was a teenager while with the Atlanta UG named @dphirschler. He knew about these games (as I thought he would, as he was a teenager back then) and said his father had a friend by the name of Hal Kam (a member of the UG) who in turn had a contact at TI and was the source for many of the unreleased games that circulated in the UG back in the day (like the early versions of Wing War, Lasso, Fantasy, etc.). Apparently Hal Kam got these from his TI contact in 1983 while they were still in development and they eventually made their way around to the other UG's across the country. I tried to find Hal on the internet, but never could find him, as it would be interesting to know who his TI contact was, as there might be some other goodies that the contact had access to if we were to track him down. Was anyone else here a member of the Atlanta UG back in the day and remembers seeing these games? The disks also contain that early version of Wing War, and early version of Buck Rogers, an early version of Treasure Island (with Cavemen sprites), plus tons more:

     

    https://www.videogamehouse.net/treasureislandproto.html

     

    I was especially intrigued with these disks since the TI community was not known as a big gaming community. And there seemed to be hardly any new finds of unreleased games (or even efforts to find unreleased games) until I joined the community in the late 90s (although I could be wrong about that, but that's how it seemed). So the fact that so many unreleased games were available at all, and especially so early on (1985), made me want to find the source even more so. Could it be that since Darryl was a teen interested in gaming, Hal Kam used his contact at TI to get some upcoming games since he was a friend of Darryl's dad? Maybe without Darryl we would never have seen the likes of Fantasy, Lasso, etc? :)

    BTW, if you're wondering why those cool cavemen were replaced with solid color sprites, it seems it made the game flicker too much. Should also mention these disks contain the speech version of "Demon Attack", which is where I got that from.

    • Like 2

  4. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    I was talking to @Ksarul about this today and figured I would post this as it's not well known and maybe could lead to some interesting discussion. Probably about 20 years ago now, I received a bunch of disks containing released and unreleased cartridge dumps from a woman in Canada named Lucie Dorais (sp?). These disks contained games like Lasso, Wing War, Angler Dangler, etc. What was intriguing to me was that these disks were marked 1985, on a printout of the contents taped onto the disk sleeve. That was intriguing to me since 1985 was only 2 years after TI pulled the plug on the home computer, so these titles were discovered close to the time the TI-99 was still in production. Anyway, I decided to see if I could track down the source of these games, and who actually found them. As they seem to be the source for many of the unreleased dumps we have today (the disks auto load in XB with a nice menu BTW). So I talked with Lucie and she said she thought they were from the Chicago UG, which in turn I eventually tracked them down to the Atlanta UG somehow (forget how). Anyway, I came across someone who was a teenager while with the Atlanta UG named @dphirschler. He knew about these games (as I thought he would, as he was a teenager back then) and said his father had a friend by the name of Hal Kam (a member of the UG) who in turn had a contact at TI and was the source for many of the unreleased games that circulated in the UG back in the day (like the early versions of Wing War, Lasso, Fantasy, etc.). Apparently Hal Kam got these from his TI contact in 1983 while they were still in development and they eventually made their way around to the other UG's across the country. I tried to find Hal on the internet, but never could find him, as it would be interesting to know who his TI contact was, as there might be some other goodies that the contact had access to if we were to track him down. Was anyone else here a member of the Atlanta UG back in the day and remembers seeing these games? The disks also contain that early version of Wing War, and early version of Buck Rogers, an early version of Treasure Island (with Cavemen sprites), plus tons more:

     

    https://www.videogamehouse.net/treasureislandproto.html

     

    I was especially intrigued with these disks since the TI community was not known as a big gaming community. And there seemed to be hardly any new finds of unreleased games (or even efforts to find unreleased games) until I joined the community in the late 90s (although I could be wrong about that, but that's how it seemed). So the fact that so many unreleased games were available at all, and especially so early on (1985), made me want to find the source even more so. Could it be that since Darryl was a teen interested in gaming, Hal Kam used his contact at TI to get some upcoming games since he was a friend of Darryl's dad? Maybe without Darryl we would never have seen the likes of Fantasy, Lasso, etc? :)

    • Like 7

  5. Posted

    On 11/9/2020 at 6:20 PM, Stuart said:

    I like on page 3 "Game about a presidential election". I wonder if such a game would have considered the current reality a bit far fetched?

     

    Page 9 - "Something to get the wife involved."

     

    Page 9 again - "Medical emergency remedies First Aid etc" on cassette. "Will you just bleed quietly for a moment dear while I load this program ..."

     

    Quite surprised how many of the users are wanting to use the computer for business or technical stuff rather than just games - assembly language stuff, cypher & data compression, home energy control, statistics, financial stuff, ...

    I have to wonder why TI didn't do a Pong game for a 1979 release. They eventually made a Pabble Ball game in 1983 that was planned for cartridge, but they should have put that out first in 1979 with the launch of the system. I think that would have been a biggie. Another mistake I think was not putting TI-Trek on cartridge (and programming it in assembly). I feel it too would have made a big splash as an early title, as it was a fun game but most have never heard of it since it was disk based and not many had disk drives in the early days of the 99/4.

  6. Posted

    1 minute ago, Omega-TI said:

    Collectors are a different breed from me.  First they obviously have way more money to blow, second they must like looking at things and dusting stuff more than me.  No matter how much I try, I cannot wrap my head around $2,500.00 for a system that will not even run all the cool software out there, even if I did have that kind of money.  I know this hobby is many different things to many people, but I guess in life there are things some people will never be able to comprehend.  I guess I'm one of those limited people.

    Actually, since that 99/4 has been up there for months at that asking price, it makes sense that you can't wrap your head around it, as nobody else has been able to either judging by the length of time it's been on eBay :)

  7. Posted

    4 hours ago, Ksarul said:

     

     

    The machine in the auction is NOT a Dimension of any kind. It is a TI-99/4 motherboard in a Dimension case. See the product tag on the bottom (Serial Number 739, which puts it in the same range as the engineering prototype that someone was trying to sell earlier this year).

     

    Good catch. The other 99/4 is here:

     

    https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Texas-Instruments-TI-99-4-Engineering-Prototype-717-No-Serial-Number/133474657047?hash=item1f13b5a317:g:iOoAAOSwBi5d3JS6

     

    It's number 717. So technically the CB Wilson auction 99/4 is newer than the one already up, and one above is in better shape as well.

    • Like 3

  8. Posted · Edited by Toucan
    Added more info

    11 hours ago, acadiel said:

    Some experimental videos - for science.

     

    Saving on a TI-99/2 and attempting to load on a 99/4A:

     

     

    Saving on a TI-99/2 and attempting to load on a CC-40:

     

     

    Saving to a Waftertape drive:

     

     

    Interesting. All this time I thought the Waftertape drive used those little microcassettes from answering machines. Didn't realize they were something completely different. As an aside, how much data could you save to a microcassette if you could use one to save data?

  9. Posted

    I noticed that the mockup CC-70 sold for the $2500: https://www.ebay.com/itm/VTG-RAREST-Texas-Instruments-COMPACT-COMPUTER-70-Mock-Up-CB-Wilson-Est-40-Plus-/203128653296?hash=item2f4b6945f0%3Ag%3ATiAAAOSw8jJfelgI&nma=true&si=4VJzfBI6bbp068%2BlVhQrTJqHqVE%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

     

    Also, assuming someone here got that clear cart (https://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-Texas-Instruments-TI-99-Cartridge-Clear-Case-Prototype-CB-Wilson-Dimension4/203129767775?hash=item2f4b7a475f:g:0wQAAOSwrxBfe5Ig), I would love to hear what is burnt on the cartridge (if anything).

  10. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    Fun Fact:

    The kid in the brochure for the MBX was Stephen Langieri, son of Mike Langieri who was one of the VP's of MB's Advanced R&D, who was involved with the MBX project. You'll notice the name "Stephen" used in some promo screenshots. I also believe the other names used in the other game screen shots were of others involved in the MBX project. 

     

    Mike is a big Yankee's fan, not Red Sox like you might think.

    • Like 2

  11. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    3 hours ago, pixelpedant said:

     

    Indeed, and yet another alternate version is visible in the final promotional poster, in the top centre:

     

    image.png.084380d3ac259a2ac8eee603b7f81378.png

     

     

    Which is kind of funny, given the final overlay is pictured several inches below.

     

     

     

    Interestingly enough, there is a variant of the overlay in press materials that looks like the final one, but has one extra button for "Screw Ball". It has an additional orange button so instead of one button in the second row of orange buttons, there are two, with a gap in the middle where the final "Curve" button is located. It's actually in that image that you called the "final overlay", so I guess neither of those overlays are the final ones :) Also, note the "Time Out" button on that one.

     

    Bill Gaskill made the joke that I should have become a detective when I grew up (I was 14 in 1998 when I was looking up all this TI info with him), since I would spot those little details.

    • Like 3

  13. Posted

    20 minutes ago, Keneg said:

    I have a question about this.  I know that on some computers programmers used these video issues in inventive ways to enhance games.  Was this done much on the TI?  If so some games might look much different if the TMS-RGB mod or an F18A is used.  
     

    thoughts?

    Parsec maybe? With the multi-colored twinkling star background?

    • Like 1

  14. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    7 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

    What was the mark up on the Russian machine?

    Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk
     

    Forget what he was asking, but I seem to remember paying $50 for it. This is from a 2002 e-mail when this all went down. So not a bad price luckily. He described it as follows:

     

    TI 99 4/A Equipment

    8     9" monitors:  1 working & 7 non-working (use for parts)   (sold??)
    1     13" monitor    (sold ??)
    2     expansion modules, 1 with floppy drive
    10  TI 99 4/A systems: 2 new still in the box (1 in Russian) 8 used
    ( 2 in box sold)
    1    TI Program tape recorder
    420  Blank 5 1/4" floppys (use on expansion modules)
            missalanious user guides and plugs and cables
     

    • Thanks 2

  15. Posted

    1 hour ago, OLD CS1 said:

    @Toucan Not funny, but funny. :)

    When I first saw screen 11111110 on that page, I was like, hey, that's the Russian screen! :) Maybe I could edit it to give it that name, hehe. Actually, if you look at it, the TI logo could even be a sickle/hammer :)

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    17 hours ago, GDMike said:

    I never heard of that

    In terms of the Russian console. I was in talks with someone who was in turn in talks with a former TI employee. The former TI employee said he had a console in Russian. I was intrigued to say the least, considering the TI came out during the Cold War/Iron Curtain days. Anyway, since the TI contact said the computer was in Russian, I was envisioning a box in Russian, screen in Russian, etc. So I ended up paying for it and had it shipped to me. When I got the TI, the box was just the regular box. So I plugged it in to see if the computer was really displaying Russian text. When the computer came on, it displayed one of these screens found on this page:

     

    https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Troubleshooting?fbclid=IwAR3KzYrHfdDjjrciXy7Gk_QfGJxuNaZCIcS0B7RJeXyJgi6Ba7SPZYeP6co

     

    Care to guess which screen is the "Russian Screen"? :) 

     

    So all that for the scrambled TI unit.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
    • Haha 1

  17. Posted

    27 minutes ago, Ed in SoDak said:

    I have the same theory regarding as-new transistor radios, often still with the box and papers. A gift from Aunt Edna? But it didn't work, so rather than make her feel bad, and not worth it to them to have it fixed and no way to return it to the store, but they can't just toss it either, so it gets stuffed in the back of a drawer.

    This thread brings memories of the infamous "Russian TI-99/4A console". That was an interesting one to say the least.

    • Thanks 1

  18. Posted · Edited by Toucan

    21 hours ago, Shift838 said:

    So I purchased a 99/4A that was supposed to be like new and only used once.  cosmetically it looks great, you can tell it's never had a PEB plugged in.

     

    However, I am having some video issues.  

     

    hehe. I've had this happen a lot. When I see a cosmetically new-looking TI-99 I figure it might have video issues (usually it's only the beige ones). I found there was a reason it was never or only lightly used, since some of these units probably were like that from the factory.

  20. Posted

    On 8/6/2020 at 3:33 PM, dgrissom said:

    I'll give this my best shot.  My son and I actually went through a similar exercise on a UK Amiga 600 last month with similar questions about non-US plugs.

     

    Modern USA power receptacles are polarized.   However, when the TI power supply was first manufactured the the power supply plugs were not polarized.  Those types of PS plugs can be inserted without polarization worries.

    There was a recall/retrofit in 1983 on some of the power supplies that added a polarized extension.  (Green label on the extension cable. Fig3 below)   This can only be plugged in one way.  (I help retrofit some of the recall/consumer alert power supplies in the field in 1983.)

    https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/1983/texas-instruments-providing-adapter-for-ti-994a-computer

     

    TIPowerSupplyPlugs.thumb.jpg.46a067469f65ca50307e65ad6e165cf6.jpg

     

    I hope this is both useful and accurate.  🙂

     

     


    Here's a question I have, which I have wondered for some time. For the wall mount power supply, there's a little hole at the top of the unit. It aligns with the screw hole on a power outlet cover. Was the idea to take the screw out of the power outlet, plug in the TI power supply, and then screw it back on through the hole? I figured this might help with the weight of the power supply on a wall mounted outlet which is why they might have did that. Only problem I could see is if you needed to unplug it for a fire hazard and couldn't get it off quickly.

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...