Airshack

Does size really matter here? I think the important factor is just how long can one maintain his daisy-chain. Word on the street is Greg @arcadeshopper can keep his up all weekend long.

Works as a multi-cart on 13 retro systems which is especially clever. If only this was available five years ago when I began buying multi-carts for my retro systems. Good going @evietron!! Enjoyed your video.

Arno was delighted that you were able to see his presentation. He would like to hear from you Micheal @mizapf. Arno’s info: arno@retrostore.org

I was advised by this AtariAge TI group to try the community edition a few years ago. Since then I haven’t looked back as the 99/4A plug-ins (for BASIC and Assembly) are especially helpful. The software does not badger you to upgrade at all.

I was really impressed to see the assembler working in real time. Also very cool to see the graphics screen editor auto-load data into the source code as it was being modified in real time. The seamless integration between the editor, assembler, emulator, and even graphics editor was pretty amazing. A bit of a dream come true for the TRS-80 guys as the room erupted with applause mid-presentation.

Tandy Assembly mind blowing demo. Enjoyable even for 99/4A folks! Start at 30min mark, second presenter, awesome Assembly dev tool: Would love to see this for our TI system. Skip ahead to 30:40 into the video. The longer you watch the cooler it gets!

Finally! A game idea even more politically incorrect than the beloved Butt Plug Simulator. “Just to be very clear…” 😂 FullSizeRender.MOV

I found getting started was a slow process because I didn't know what to use on the PC: Which Editor? Which Assembler? Which emulator? Just about 100% of what I've learned on the subject came from this link: Perhaps some sort of summary of the lessons learned in this thread would be helpful as many of the Assembly related books from the 1980s are extremely outdated. Many if not all of the modern programming techniques which make games fast in Assembly (rolling your own VDP read/write routines, self-made keyboard access routines, avoiding slow console routines, using the CPU RAM to store your workspace registers, etc) are nowhere to be found in ancient 1980s Assembly books. In my experience these books all start off with a few very dry chapters on hexadecimal mathematics which is enough to scare most people away. Today's potential Assembly programmer needs documentation centered around game programming specifically -- speed. They need to see some simple examples which produce results to include graphics on the screen and some sound. Something to motivate the potential programmer to continue. Something not so completely unrelated to game programming which sums up just about every TI-99/4A book I've ever read to include TI's Editor/Assembler Manual. Another giant hurdle for entry into the Assembly club is the workflow tools. Do I program on a PC or the TI-99/4A? Okay, we all know the answer is a PC. What newbs don't know is which modern editors are especially helpful with plugins designed to support TI-99/4A Assembly programming? Which modern assembler is most convenient to use on the PC? Why a PC emulator can help you speed up the process of building a game? How does one get a file from the PC to the real metal TI-99/4A for testing? My personal experience was that I had a ton of questions before I began to write a single line of Assembly code. Seems the answer to each question was quite simple which was kind of frustrating because the knowledge is out there to make this easy but it's really difficult to find it all in one convenient place. The other retro computers and game consoles are all ahead of us in this area. That's my take for what it's worth. I am far from being an IT Professional so I'm probably not far off target here. I'm still learning and continue to find the link Assembly on the 99/4A extremely useful. Everyone else programming in TI Assembly on AtariAge has been extremely helpful for which I am grateful.

I'm working on a game loosely inspired by Crazy Taxi which was a favorite of mine on the original Xbox. Check out my progress on Crazy Uber here:

I spy a 99/4 (no A) AND a sidecar disk controller: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125498831317?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=lEwi1RBXRI-&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=breNDD7WTsy&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Are these of any interest or value to collectors?

I just located the first article in this series in the May 1991 MICROpendium.

Funny keyboard description in TI-99/4(no-A) listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/115513603406?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=QMNOurdmSOW&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=breNDD7WTsy&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Great point! Computers meant an endless supply of free games.

I'm up for more sports titles. Nice project!

Thread Hijack: I did not know this about the Plus/4. Interesting. I'll need to do some research on the matter. 6502 plus 4 - CPU and RAM expansion for Commodore +4 /16/116 (retrolemon.co.uk)

Paul, Dogs generally bark a lot when they need attention and love. Poor Barky Barkington. You should set up a nanny-cam to see if your wife is berating this distressed animal while you're gone.

As well as very much apprecaited.

The National Video Game Museum just north of Dallas (Frisco, TX) had the joysticks connected in this manner on the day I visited. It was somewhat striking to me how they presented the system so poorly when its genesis took place in North Texas? PEB not hooked up, joysticks plugged into the cassette port, etc. The entire museum was a little disappointing IMHO. Very little depth beyond a large collection of consoles and 8-bit computers.

I still do and found three at Goodwill in maybe four years. Still, I'd prefer a new monitor with HDMI as well so thank you for this post!

Is it any good with two players? Most of the demos I've watched are just one guy fumbling through the game without actually producing any gameplay. Do you take turns or what? Seems easy enough to play by one person since MBX is a solo controller system, or am I wrong?

Imagining how popular a smaller non-firehose style PEB cable may be someday. @Shift838

FYI @Shift838: I have not had to perform dual-wipe maneuver since installing this: https://www.target.com/p/neo-120-mechanical-bidet-attachment-blue-luxe-bidet/-/A-80202372?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=bing_pla_df&fndsrc=tgtao&DFA=71700000012710494&CPNG=PLA_Bath%2BShopping|Bath_Ecomm_Home&adgroup=SC_Bath&LID=700000001230728&LNM=PRODUCT_GROUP&network=s&device=c&location=&targetid=pla-4585513251288317&ds_rl=1246978&ds_rl=1247068&ds_rl=1248099&ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=bing_pla_df&CPNG=PLA_Bath%2BShopping|Bath_Ecomm_Home&adgroup=SC_Bath&LID=700000001230728pbs&network=s&device=c&querystring=amazon bidet&msclkid=2a0f2efa158c1364be604cddf5e9d76a&gclid=2a0f2efa158c1364be604cddf5e9d76a&gclsrc=3p.ds

Yes, TI started a war with Commodore but earlier and in a different market -- calculators. They destroyed a number of clients and nearly killed Commodore pre-PET. From the Apple, Atari, Coleco, or Tandy point of view, it was Commodore destroying profit margins in the Home Computer market. A second tech-war which Commodore started and appeared to be the aggressor. Tramiel's race to the bottom in pricing cost even Commodore millions in profits. He spontaneously and unexpectedly cut all Commodore peripheral and software prices by 50% at the 1983 CES. He basically cut off his right arm in order to kill the TI-99/4A which contributed significantly to his termination. Commodore lost millions over that decision which was viewed as a disaster by the Commodore board, especially Irving Gould.

I'm pretty sure it was Jack whom declared war on the TI-99/4A and everything else on the home computer market. Tramiel learned all about vertical integration from TI after they used it to nearly destroy Commodore's calculator business in the 1970s. Tramiel purchased MOS technologies to control the 6502 brain-trust and CPU supply, in order to build a computer company with vertical integration, just like one of his competitors -- TI. Commodore sold 6502s to Apple and Atari, and made most of the Atari game cartridge ROMs. I believe they would have happily supplied 6502s to TI for the right price. MOS was shipping CPUs to everyone with money. In the end TI needed to execute around their vertical integration to compete with Commodore. The VIC-20 and C-64 destroyed the competition because they were cheap, better designs, and they were opened up to developers. The TI-99/4 was doomed when the eight bit TI CPU failed to materialize. The decision to shoe-horn the 16-bit 9900 into the TI-99/4 was the death blow. They should have shifted gears and just built a no-shit 16-bit low cost computer around the 9900. They didn't. The shoehorning was permitted because TI had no forward vision (1978) in the personal computer market which didn't yet exist. The TI-99/4 was intended to be a toy computer...a video game with a keyboard. Something closer to a Speak and Spell than a real computer. It was quicker to just shoe-horn in the 9900 than to start over...and it didn't matter because the TI-99/4 was rushed to market as a toy computer. I'd suggest the lack of vision at TI prevented them from being greedy because they couldn't see five years ahead. Had they known they could have produced an industry standard 16-bit personal computer well before IBM.