iKarith

That'd be me with the shoebox… There's one caution for a developer… As PeteE discovered working on Legend of Tilda on it, the OG VDP has limitations the F18A does not. If you intend F18A mode to be optional in your developments, you probably want to test on OG hardware just to be sure you don't run into any VDP limitations.

Apple II Raspberry Pi nerd here: You totally should change the passwords for this like for any system. Raspberry Pis connected to networks and the Internet are often left with the default passwords. People discovered this and started developing hacking tools to detect and infect these little machines and do all kinds of not nice things. Even us retro nerds need to be aware of the potential for abuse with this stuff. In fact, we need to be more careful because a lot of these old systems we use have known, unpatched vulnerabilities that can't be fixed today.

So shiiiiiny… I need a wall to put that on. Cool, but missing what's so cool about the one Ω posted. I likes me some light blue on black! MUCH easier for me to read anyway, especially on a screen. And I do need to read a lot on screens! Which brings me back to… This is kinda where I started the thread. Since we've had at least one major election since I've looked at the thread and I've more or less abandoned my idea due to serious lack of interest, this link illustrates a great resource and the problem with that resource particularly for someone like me. (I'm legally blind after all.) Probably the first and most obvious book for a n00b (which in many ways even a couple years later I still am) is TI's own manuals particularly since your console may not have come with one. Mine certainly didn't, and I tend not to spend much time with printed books anymore. My head is happier for the lack of headache when I don't do that. So the Beginner Basic manual is there. but it's hard to read. The pages are skewed, and a lot of the lines (including those making up key symbols and the like) are broken or otherwise didn't survive the scanning process well. What I was after was converting the text into some format perhaps with CSS markup to recreate the inline text symbols for keys and the like, and perhaps running the graphics through SVG autotrace algorithms. The idea being that with just a quick CSS edit, you could change the font, size, or color of pretty much everything. That's what nobody was interested in back in 2016. I'm still interested in doing it if that's changed at all by 2018. If not, I'm glad to see that PDFs of schematics and the like are being made, cleaned up, and collected. That's a good thing for the electronics people around here, and there's a few of them.

Who else is in your neck of the woods Omega? I think John's out in Longview.

BEWARE, I LIVE! Count me as going! It'll take me 70 minutes to get out to the library from home and takes three buses. It can take 55 minutes less if I am arriving at noon instead of 1pm. Anyone interested in meeting ahead of time for lunch?

True, but .ti would not be the first TLD that didn't allow it. ETA: Although, the rules for some of the country code domains are far more arbitrary than that. Local governments get to set them, and technological limitations are sometimes the least concern in some countries.

Start it with a letter and it won't be invalid.

Very much other for me because it needs to be divided into two separate categories: FPGA replacements for the standard TI-99/4A (and possibly related/similar machines), vs something new that happens to kind of be backward compatible. I don't object to recreations and updated versions of things--the supply is limited and if these things are to be preserved, then the actual hardware which won't last forever needs to be preserved as well. For the time being, there are a lot of consoles out there, and they're cheap and easy to find. Ten, twenty years from now, who's to say our GROMs won't all have suffered from bit rot or some of the custom chips in these machines may no longer be working or replaceable. If for that reason alone, I favor FPGA and other sorts of recreations focused on accurately recreating the console. For the TI, that's going to mean a need to recreate the sidecar and cart connectors, and allow for a lot of configuration of the FPGA's recreation of the system. You're essentially going to want a configuration screen with a lot of knobs. People have had 32k RAM in sidecars or PEB or nanoPEB, but some folks have the option of making the RAM be 16 bit for speed, for example. And 32k or 1MB or no expansion might be desirable options. And what hardware is or isn't present? If it's not part of the FPGA (and it might be very hard for it to be), MBX folks would like to be able to connect that device as well. There's a ZX Spectrum FPGA board about to ship for < $100 in its basic configuration that can pretty much replace any existing Spectrum and for the first time fits into the 48k Speccy shell--I dunno if I'd want that for the TI-99/4A since the Speccy is small, there are lots of empty shells with long dead boards, and there are now new 3rd party shells so no cannibalism is necessary. That last one is big for me: I don't like raiding working hardware for parts. If the parts are available separately or there's NOS or even just new stock available, that's another thing entirely. But if a part is not made anymore and custom, it feels WRONG to pilfer from one machine for another to me. (That's why I've been on this GROM thing on FB lately..) And it leads to the other issue: The Super-TI-99. You can make it as tricked out as you like, I suppose, but I consider base compatibility to be the #1 goal. If you can double the CPU speed and give it access to more RAM or GROM than anybody knew what to do with in 1983, go for it. F18A, sure. An "F18A for sound", sure. But all of that has to come after the TI itself is recreated. And I really feel like the result needs to target a US$200 price point. That might be hard to do with an FPGA that can truly do all the things, but if it costs $300+ and the developer is losing money at that price like with the Turbo Chameleon 64, that's not a good thing. Lots of folks would love that in the Commodore community, but they just can't justify the money, and Commodore's got a much larger community. There's a Commodore UG that meets within bus distance of me every month. Man, for the TI, we get together twice a year in different parts of the country. We don't have the userbase for something to be successful if it winds up being something that not everyone's gonna want (purists are a thing and what they do is respectable even if I can't justify it myself) and those who do want it have a hard time justifying the cost. Just random thoughts from a wandering albino who needs to read the forum more often.

I've been talking on FaceySpace about my interest in the idea of a pin-compatible GROM chip replacement, possibly made out of a small microcontroller with enough pins. It'd be kind of a waste of the microcontroller to replace a settable counter, a tiny (by today's standards) ROM, and a couple of basic gates, but the fact is that size and cost for those things would be more than the microcontroller. I figure a drop-in GROM might be useful for developers as well, and who knows how long the original GROMs will last anyway? Still, if you wind up with 2.2 on a console, just swap the GROMs and you're good to go unless you have a QI board. There'd be no more need to try and forage for dead consoles to raid chips from. And if you do have a QI, all you'd need to do to properly "unimprove" it with a GROM replacement is to wire CRU to the cart port as well, but that's soldering most people can probably manage with some instruction. For these reasons, I'm kind of looking for a QI board at some point.

I think the right way to hook this up is to put it in an enclosure with ventilation and simply add a fuse and power switch to the input. You can actually get a fuse holder, switch, and IEC power connector in one combined thingy. Then it's just a matter of wiring the output somehow to your console. I'm still not quite sure how best to handle the console's power switch, aside from having three poles to switch 12v, 5v, and -5v on and off. Probably fine to leave ground connected so you don't actually need a 4PST. I much prefer the ATX-style standby + power signal, but this PSU doesn't have the means to do that. Wonder though if we could find an even better switch to replace power, maybe one with off, on, momentary that could also provide a reset? Hmm. They you might actually need the 4P.

Sadly my Katie and I share a studio. Yeah. (This might explain my PEB aversion?)

Being not a java developer, may I just resurrect this thread (I'm neglecting the forum again...) to say THANK YOU for taking the time to explain even in brief how you build this thing? The one thing I've discovered about projects written in Java is that the idea that anybody else on the planet might ever want to build your jar files on their system is at best an afterthought. I've been banking my head against AppleCommander off and on for a few weeks now.

If only we had a good way to test for the presence of serial controller and clock a shift register. Could easily implement a SNES sort of thing. You'd need to power it of course, but that's required for doing anything interesting with that port.

It's only "available" if you can use it. I generally can't. Fuzzy text, hard to read, can't be read by computer to put it into a better format. Though there's no reason why you couldn't just make chapter PDFs out of the already scanned book, then chop up sections into a series of page images, and go through and gradually turn these into test and PNG, then ultimately text and SVG. Ultimately though what's needed is a better scan.

...and it doesn't let you attach .svg files, so here's the code: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- vim: set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 filetype=svg: --> <svg version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 1224 1524" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> <title>TI-99/4A Beginner's Basic cover</title> <rect x="0" y="152" width="1224" height="1372" fill="#4aa4fa"/> <rect x="0" y="0" width="1224" height="80" fill="#fff"/> <rect x="0" y="80" width="1224" height="72" fill="#c2c3c5"/> <rect x="0" y="224" width="1224" height="72" fill="#3990f1"/> <rect x="0" y="296" width="1224" height="72"/> <rect x="224" y="462" width="1000" height="1002"/> <g fill="#fff"> <rect x="226" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="726" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="976" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="476" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="726" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="976" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="226" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="476" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="976" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="476" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="726" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/> </g> <!-- = --> <path d="m976,464 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m476,714 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m226,964 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m976,1214 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z" fill="#fff"/> <!-- right arrows --> <path d="m226,464 m49,36 m-49,55 h248 v66 h-248 z"/> <path d="m476,464 m49,36 m60,11 h20 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-44 h-111 v-66 h111 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m226,1214 m49,36 m-49,55 h250 v66 h-250 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m476,1214 m49,36 m60,11 h20 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-44 h-109 v-66 h109 z"/> <!-- left arrow --> <path d="m726,964 m49,36 m70,11 h20 v44 h111 v66 h-111 v44 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-44 h10 v-11 h10v-11 h10v-11 h10v-11 h10 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m976,964 m49,36 m-49,55 h248 v66 h-248 z"/> <!-- BASIC --> <path d="m226,714 m49,36 m10,0 h110 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v22 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-110 v-22 h100 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-22 h-70 v-20 h80 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-80 v132 h-20 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m726,464 m49,36 m70,0 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v44 h-20 v-33 h-10 v-22 h-90 v22 h-10 v33 h-20 v-44 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v44 h-10 v22 h-10 v22 h50 v-22 h-10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-10 z"/> <path d="m976,714 m49,36 m40,0 h80 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-60 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v44 h-30 h120 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-90 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-22 h20 v11 h10 v11 h70 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-90 v-11 h-10 v-66 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> <path d="m476,964 m49,36 m30,0 h80 v22 h-30 v132 h30 v22 h-80 v-22 h30 v-132 h-30 z"/> <path d="m726,1214 m49,36 m40,0 h80 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-60 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v88 h10 v11 h10 v11 h60 v-11 h10 v-11 h20 v22 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-80 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-110 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> <!-- 2 --> <path d="m726,714 m49,36 m50,0 h60 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h80 v22 h-120 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-40 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> <!-- TEXT --> <text font-size="32" font-family="Helvetica"> <tspan x="60" y="48">Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Computer</tspan> </text> <text font-size="60" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic" font-weight="bold" fill="#fff"> <tspan x="692" y="204">Beginner's</tspan> </text> <text font-size="60" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic" font-weight="bold" fill="#fff"> <tspan x="692" y="280">BASIC</tspan> </text> <text font-size="18" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic"> <tspan x="692" y="396">Step-by-step hands-on approach to learning</tspan> <tspan x="692" y="418">the fun and power of programming</tspan> <tspan x="692" y="440">in the Tl BASIC language.</tspan> </text> <!-- TI logo --> <path d="m 1152,25 v 12.83 h -8.7 c -0.6,2.18 3,2.9 3.7,4.69 0.7,1.78 1.2,3.99 3.2,4.84 2.1,0.94 3.5,-2.37 5.7,-1.47 1.7,1.13 2.4,3.2 3.4,4.95 1.2,2.58 3,5.48 6,5.97 0.3,0 0.5,0.1 0.8,0.1 2.2,0.1 2,0 2.3,-0.37 0.4,-0.36 -0.3,-1.2 -0.5,-2.28 -0.5,-2.86 1.3,-5.57 3.7,-6.96 2.1,-1.3 3.9,-1.85 5.3,-2.75 0.9,-1.85 0.6,-5.01 0.1,-5.68 -1.2,-0.19 -1,-1.67 -1.1,-2.31 -0.3,-1.45 0.1,-3.12 -0.8,-4.36 -0.8,-0.12 -1.8,-0.31 -2.6,-0.31 h -3.4 c -0.1,0 -0.1,0.23 -0.1,0.33 l -0.5,2.81 h 2.8 c 0,1.01 -0.6,2.29 -0.7,3.31 -1,0 -2,0.1 -2.9,0.1 l -1.4,6.53 c -0.1,0.24 -0.1,0.46 -0.1,0.49 v 0.18 c 0,0.1 0.1,0.14 0.2,0.17 0.2,0 1,0 1.3,-0.15 0.2,0 0.3,-0.1 0.3,0 l -0.2,1.06 c -0.3,1.74 -0.3,1.59 -0.6,1.7 -0.9,0.26 -2,0.41 -3.1,0.41 -0.7,0 -1.7,-0.11 -2.1,-0.23 -1,-0.28 -1.7,-0.71 -2.2,-1.61 -0.5,-0.93 -0.3,-2.1 -0.1,-3.13 l 1.1,-5.41 h -3 l 0.9,-3.33 2.9,-0.1 0.6,-3.09 h -0.6 c -0.5,0 -0.9,-0.26 -1.2,-0.62 -1.1,-1.53 -0.1,-4.18 -0.5,-6.33 z m 13.5,3.76 a 1.6489,1.6574 0 0 0 -1.6,1.66 1.6489,1.6574 0 0 0 1.6,1.65 1.6489,1.6574 0 0 0 1.7,-1.65 1.6489,1.6574 0 0 0 -1.7,-1.66 z m -2,4.27 -2.5,11.65 h 3.7 l 2.4,-11.65 z"/> <metadata> <rdf:RDF> <cc:Work rdf:about=""> <dc:format>image/svg+xml</dc:format> <dc:type rdf:resource="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage"/> <dc:title/> </cc:Work> </rdf:RDF> </metadata> </svg> Just select it and save as something like ti-beginners-basic-cover.svg and you're good to go.

The grid contents appear to be 15x16 bitmap characters. I'll need the letters in BASIC, 2, =, and two arrows as well as a line for arrow continuation. I'll do these as SVG paths, which are made of commands like m(oveto x y), l(ineto x y), v(ertical lineto y), h(horizontal lineto x), c(urveto ...complicated ), and z for render. You move somewhere and then start drawing the outline of a shape. If you end somewhere other than where you started drawing, a line segment is drawn from finish to start. It's possible to turn off the fill and turn on a stroke (edge line) which allows you to test your hand-written paths, but OMG nobody does these things by hand. Inkscape isn't 100% trivial, but a blind guy can figure it out with some Internet reading. Of course, the blind guy is doing these all by hand because in THIS case, it'll be faster. Faster? I said above the squares are 248px. The font in them appears to be a 15x16 pixel font. I work out the best way to get what I see in the scan is for pixels to be a hair taller than they are wide and figure about 10x11 looks right (I did this by making 150x176 blocks in the middle of one of the grid spaces. It looks right so we'll use it. I think you can just draw your object's outline, then moveto an inner coordinate and draw the holes (for letters like B), but I don't try to do things like that because I'm always afraid I'm going to screw it up. Like I said, people don't do this by hand unless they're nuts. SVG path commands come in absolute and relative forms. I've saved myself some pain doing relative (lowercase) commands since it allowed me to draw characters like arrows and = only once and then just copy and tweak. (That's how I got it done so fast!) You can see my code for the = characters here: <!-- = --> <path d="m976,464 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m476,714 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m226,964 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z"/> <path d="m976,1214 m49,36 v55 h150 v22 h-150 m0,22 h150 v22 h-150 z" fill="#fff"/> You can see how I used the relative moveto to simplify my life a bit. Move to the offset of the grid square (the first moveto of a path is always absolute), then move again to the character cell, then move again to the top left edge of the character. Yes, you can just add those coordinates all up, and I will. But I assume y'all know more about the TI-99/4A than I do. I don't assume y'all know SVG because it's basically freakin' encapsulated-PDF-commands-as-XML! With CSS because why not? Although, I'm not using that here. Next I did the arrows. While the pointy bit behaves like one of the 15x16 characters, the line of the arrows extends beyond the cell and spans a second. Also, half of the arrow is always in an inverted square, and the arrow's line crosses the grid boundary as white. Some slight adjustments to geometry were necessary for this: <!-- right arrows --> <path d="m226,464 m49,36 m-49,55 h248 v66 h-248 z"/> <path d="m476,464 m49,36 m60,11 h20 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-44 h-111 v-66 h111 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m226,1214 m49,36 m-49,55 h250 v66 h-250 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m476,1214 m49,36 m60,11 h20 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-44 h-109 v-66 h109 z"/> <!-- left arrow --> <path d="m726,964 m49,36 m70,11 h20 v44 h111 v66 h-111 v44 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-44 h10 v-11 h10v-11 h10v-11 h10v-11 h10 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m976,964 m49,36 m-49,55 h248 v66 h-248 z"/> You can see that paths get complicated quickly. When composing, I tend to include whitespace. I collapse it when I'm done, and have done so here for message brevity. Again, I haven't collapsed the movetos yet. All right, no putting it off anymore. These are just long: 2 and the letters of BASIC. You have to take your time and preview often, that's all. <!-- BASIC --> <path d="m226,714 m49,36 m10,0 h110 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v22 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-110 v-22 h100 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-22 h-70 v-20 h80 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-80 v132 h-20 z" fill="#fff"/> <path d="m726,464 m49,36 m70,0 h10 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v22 h10 v44 h-20 v-33 h-10 v-22 h-90 v22 h-10 v33 h-20 v-44 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v44 h-10 v22 h-10 v22 h50 v-22 h-10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-10 z"/> <path d="m976,714 m49,36 m40,0 h80 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-60 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v44 h-30 h120 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-90 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-22 h20 v11 h10 v11 h70 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-90 v-11 h-10 v-66 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> <path d="m476,964 m49,36 m30,0 h80 v22 h-30 v132 h30 v22 h-80 v-22 h30 v-132 h-30 z"/> <path d="m726,1214 m49,36 m40,0 h80 v11 h10 v11 h10 v22 h-20 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-60 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v88 h10 v11 h10 v11 h60 v-11 h10 v-11 h20 v22 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-80 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-11 h-10 v-110 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> <!-- 2 --> <path d="m726,714 m49,36 m50,0 h60 v11 h10 v11 h10 v44 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h80 v22 h-120 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 v-22 h-10 v-11 h-40 v11 h-10 v11 h-10 v11 h-20 v-22 h10 v-11 h10 v-11 h10 z"/> So what do I get for my trouble? That's not bad. Now I need some text and a TI logo for the corner. Text I did by hand. The font used is similar to Helvetica, but wider than that. I don't have Helvetica Neue Exp which is probably a better fit here, and it's not important to get this EXACTLY right, so I'm just gonna leave it at Helvetica. I should change these font specifications to CSS styles so that I can more easily specify fallbacks to Arial, Vera, FreeSans, sans-serif, etc. <text font-size="32" font-family="Helvetica"> <tspan x="60" y="48">Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Computer</tspan> </text> <text font-size="60" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic" font-weight="bold" fill="#fff"> <tspan x="692" y="204">Beginner's</tspan> </text> <text font-size="60" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic" font-weight="bold" fill="#fff"> <tspan x="692" y="280">BASIC</tspan> </text> <text font-size="18" font-family="Helvetica" font-style="italic"> <tspan x="692" y="396">Step-by-step hands-on approach to learning</tspan> <tspan x="692" y="418">the fun and power of programming</tspan> <tspan x="692" y="440">in the Tl BASIC language.</tspan> </text> Looks like this: That just leaves the TI logo. I've decided NOT to use an outline as is correct here, mostly because using a solid logo makes it easier to see when scaled. This I've just traced in Inkscape which created a crazy long af path. We don't need it, it's too long, etc. Select object, lock aspect, resize to 32 height (eh, close enough), and then simplify not so simply. Inkscape's simplify command has a problem: It wants to replace everything with curveto. If you have nice sharp lines, it assumes you don't want those. And you don't get control over that. Literally how I did this was to duplicate the tracing, and change color of the duplicate. I put the original in black at a specific location, covered it with mostly transparent white rectangle much bigger than the TI logo (as a guard against accidentally clicking the original logo's "nodes"), and then cut the "ti" part of the path out, leaving the Texas with a big chunk missing and a new path object containing the "ti" part. I moved the "ti" below the big safety rectangle--I didn't need it yet and repeated this process with the square part of the Texas. I selected the rest and did a simplify on it. Looked good except for one or two nodes I had to drag into shape myself. Helps if you understand Bezier curves for this. Fortunately, I do! I grabbed the square corners object and unioned it with the Texas. The aftermath left a couple of wonky spots and a node or two that didn't need to be there. Select and delete, which broke two nodes. Select one and hit the "make corner" button (which turned one of my preserved line segments into a wonky curve), then select the two endpoints of that and hit the line segment button to fix it. The other broken node needed to be selected and hit the smooth button. That left the "ti" part. I honestly just redid that using the draw path tool. I traced the outline of the t in line segments, turned the ones that needed to be curvy into curves, and unioned the result with the Texas. Another quick path for the "i" and an ellipse for the dot, select all three and union. That's what "simplify" looks like if you don't want to simplify the whole thing and turn straight lines into arcs and curves. Gah. That said, once you're used to doing it it takes longer to describe than to do. If it sounds complex, it is. I'll just show the code. <!-- TI logo --> <path d=" m 1152 , 25 v 12.83 h -8.7 c -0.6 , 2.18 3 , 2.9 3.7, 4.69 0.7 , 1.78 1.2, 3.99 3.2, 4.84 2.1 , 0.94 3.5,-2.37 5.7,-1.47 1.7 , 1.13 2.4, 3.2 3.4, 4.95 1.2 , 2.58 3 , 5.48 6 , 5.97 0.3 , 0 0.5, 0.1 0.8, 0.1 2.2 , 0.1 2 , 0 2.3,-0.37 0.4 , -0.36 -0.3,-1.2 -0.5,-2.28 -0.5 , -2.86 1.3,-5.57 3.7,-6.96 2.1 , -1.3 3.9,-1.85 5.3,-2.75 0.9 , -1.85 0.6,-5.01 0.1,-5.68 -1.2 , -0.19 -1 ,-1.67 -1.1,-2.31 -0.3 , -1.45 0.1,-3.12 -0.8,-4.36 -0.8 , -0.12 -1.8,-0.31 -2.6,-0.31 h -3.4 c -0.1 , 0 -0.1, 0.23 -0.1, 0.33 l -0.5 , 2.81 h 2.8 c 0 , 1.01 -0.6, 2.29 -0.7, 3.31 -1 , 0 -2 , 0.1 -2.9, 0.1 l -1.4 , 6.53 c -0.1 , 0.24 -0.1, 0.46 -0.1, 0.49 v 0.18 c 0 , 0.1 0.1, 0.14 0.2, 0.17 0.2 , 0 1 , 0 1.3,-0.15 0.2 , 0 0.3,-0.1 0.3, 0 l -0.2 , 1.06 c -0.3 , 1.74 -0.3, 1.59 -0.6, 1.7 -0.9 , 0.26 -2 , 0.41 -3.1, 0.41 -0.7 , 0 -1.7,-0.11 -2.1,-0.23 -1 , -0.28 -1.7,-0.71 -2.2,-1.61 -0.5 , -0.93 -0.3,-2.1 -0.1,-3.13 l 1.1 , -5.41 h -3 l 0.9 , -3.33 2.9 , -0.1 0.6 , -3.09 h -0.6 c -0.5 , 0 -0.9,-0.26 -1.2,-0.62 -1.1 , -1.53 -0.1,-4.18 -0.5,-6.33 z m 13.5 , 3.76 a 1.6489, 1.6574 0 0 0 -1.6, 1.66 1.6489, 1.6574 0 0 0 1.6, 1.65 1.6489, 1.6574 0 0 0 1.7,-1.65 1.6489, 1.6574 0 0 0 -1.7,-1.66 z m -2 , 4.27 -2.5 , 11.65 h 3.7 l 2.4 ,-11.65 z"/> Yeah. Thankfully I have a very nice little thingy that expands out the spacing like that. You can see the three pieces of the TI logo here. The Texas (with t cutout where you start seeing lineto commands in the middle), the lines at the end making the body of the i, and the thing between them which is the a(rcto) command which ... also complicated. Only thing now missing are some XML namespaces and a metadata block. I'll just grab those from my "complete" template (as opposed to "bare" that I started from for this) and ...

As one of my goals, I have the preservation of documentation for retrocomputers and the TI-99/4A among them. We have scans of most of them available on archive.org and elsewhere, but they're low resolution/quality scans, have poor OCRing with lots of errors, poor accessibility due to these two factors, and they just don't look very nice with things like moire patterns on the cover scans, etc. The bad news: Probably these manuals predate an electronic publishing format we could just convert to something modern. Even if they were in some format like Quark, someone from TI would likely have dumped them into the community and SOMEONE would have the means to convert it. That means a lot of work. I started with Beginner's BASIC from archive.org. There's a lot of illustrations in here, but they're mostly line art. That means HTML is probably ideal. The illustrations can be done as SVG files. With a suitably high-resolution scan, the drawings would take up very little space. If the text were done in a fairly light templating language like one of the more featureful Markdown implementations, it'd be easy to generate a PDF with page layout and a good index. But how realistic is this? Let's find out! Dimensions of this manual appear to be around 8.5x10.5, but since we don't care about print, I'm just gonna use px and estimate 1px = 1twip. Twip is a Microsoft/Word/RTF thing, 144/inch (1/2 point) for a size of 1224x1524. That means a 1pt line should be visible if the thing is scaled down to 612x762. Fine business for technical drawings. Oh and those colors on archive.org are wrong since multiple images suggests this is more correct: Okay, let's see what we can do with that in a skeleton SVG file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- vim: set tabstop=2 shiftwidth=2 filetype=svg: --> <svg version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 1224 1524" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <title>TI-99/4A Beginner's Basic cover</title> <rect x="0" y="152" width="1224" height="1372" fill="#4aa4fa"/> <rect x="0" y="80" width="1224" height="72" fill="#c2c3c5"/> <rect x="0" y="224" width="1224" height="72" fill="#3990f1"/> <rect x="0" y="296" width="1224" height="72"/> </svg> I'm happy with that! (Someone correct me if my colors are too far off?) The 4x4 grid appears to be just over 4/5's of the width, and the grid's contents are square. Black border is cut off on the right. Guesstimating 248 for the squares and 2 for the borders. That means 1000x1002, right-justified. Let's add the grid, then comment out the inverse boxes. <rect x="224" y="462" width="1000" height="1002"/> <g fill="#fff"> <rect x="226" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <!--<rect x="476" y="464" width="248" height="248"/>--> <rect x="726" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="976" y="464" width="248" height="248"/> <!--<rect x="226" y="714" width="248" height="248"/>--> <rect x="476" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="726" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="976" y="714" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="226" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="476" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <!--<rect x="726" y="964" width="248" height="248"/>--> <rect x="976" y="964" width="248" height="248"/> <!--<rect x="226" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/>--> <rect x="476" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/> <rect x="726" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/> <!--<rect x="976" y="1214" width="248" height="248"/>--> </g> I'll remove those comments going forward, but you can see how I basically generated these values once only. That gives us: Hopefully this is inspiring others to want to play too! I'll come back after I have filled in the grid.

How could she even suggest such a horrible thing?

I saw swlovinist's video right away, but Omega's first video posted was the TIPI demo, which makes sense because it was the first presentation of the day. Editing video takes time if you're combining multiple cameras/angles. I'm still getting the hang of it myself and I do it on a Mac. God help him if he's trying to do it with Windows.

My first plans for the thing mostly involve fixing the cart port, replacing the firmware if necessary, and documenting that procedure. That may mean a pin-compatible replacement chip since I'd prefer to not need to pilfer custom chips from working systems. I'm sure there's a dead console I could pull GROMs out of somewhere, but ...that's a thing that can be done nowadays without even much fuss. There just hasn't been a huge demand yet. Yet.

Still want one of those QIs. MOD MOD MOD!

Sell the ROM to people and tag the ROM with payment info. If someone puts it up for download, you'll KNOW who they are. And if someone compares the pirate ROM to their own, they'll likely be able to deduce where you've encoded the details, if not how. Depending on what you'd be asking for a copy, I doubt there'll be much incentive to pirate anyway. We're all retro collectors--dropping a few bucks on a game as cool as Dragon's Lair for the freakin' TI-99/4A is not a major drain on the finances, comparatively. How many of us just dropped $50-60 on the FR99 and will do it again for the FG99, plus custom cases for each, etc, often despite having most of the things on cart already anyway? Besides, if the capacity is there and we've got the means to use it, who's to say that I won't start developing Last Daydream? I can already see the opening text in my head... This must now be made to exist. I guess I need to start learning assembly on the TI.

Also, +1.

I don't know about that. If he goes with a SMT microSD socket, possibility exists that the board can be made in small quantities at prices people will be happy to pay. For the Apple II, we have the Uthernet II cards. Glenn gets these things manufactured with the SMD components pre-applied. He solders the Ethernet connectors himself because the cost is prohibitive to have through-hole components installed on the board as well as SMD by the company he uses. Then it's just a matter of testing the things. He went through 500 of them pretty quick. I dunno if there's call for that many FinalGROMs out there, but as these systems are gaining in popularity and still have _wide_ availability pretty cheaply, it's not hard to imagine. Especially since people around here are likely to want more than one. If it can be done in some way that's compatible, I'd like to suggest some method of paging larger programs in. Mostly because Tursi's Dragon's Lair needs 128MB of ROM, and that's insane for any cartridge out there, but a drop in the bucket for a modern SD card. Also, is there a possibility to perhaps have a file provide a name for carts that don't have one? Or maybe for carts that do but are big?