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Airshack

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Posts posted by Airshack

  2. Posted

    I believe the popular Scott Adams text adventures were licensed.

     

    A. How much RAM in that VIC?

    B. Good question. They even modified the rev2 beige TIs to lock out Atari carts. Perhaps they were aiming at the education market and homanagement apps to sell it. They probably didn't see it as a game machine console but something more sophisticated. A big mistake. Games sold computers back then. Who knew? Everything was new back then. They were probably arrogant being Big Bad TI. With Speak and Spell, watches, etc. The consumer division was on a roll and probably didn't care about what was happening outside Texas.

    C. It actually has unique looks which elevates it above the others, cosmetically. A TI-99/4A in 2017 looks the same as it did 35 years ago. It hasn't turned several shades of nasty yellow. This is actually a strength. It looks faster than it is.

    D. Back then they probably figured the users too unsophisticated to need more power. Originally, TI locked users out of Assembly programming and even simple peeks and pokes. This indicates an approach of,"...let us do the programming and we'll put it on a cartridge for you."

     

    Conclusion: It's widely accepted now that TI didn't know what they were doing back then. Abandoning the market and killing the 99/8 is all the confession you need.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 3

  3. Posted

    I was just 14 so I mowed lawns all summer/fall and scrimped and saved up for a TI, right before Christmas of 1983. I saw an ad in the paper that K-mart was going to have a limited supply for just $50 (!) and since I just had to have one, I got up early and rode my bike to the store, hours before they opened. There was a huge line of people already there, and some guy was handing out numbers since they only had 25 or so. I remember I got the second to the last one.

     

    Getting a computer this young in life changed my life and from then on...

     

     

    Long live the TI! :)

    This is a great story! Second to last at K-Mart. I can only imagine your excitement taking that machine home.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    Good times were had. I posted my game in the development thread as promised. Great meeting you all.

     

    Legend of Tilda looks like a 16-bit console game to me. Amazed! Excellent work sir!

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Cheers Lee. Hey there was also a bug in version 100 of XB for the Ti99/4 that did something similar to what you mention but up to sprite num 28 even if no sprites were present (am i right? sure i read that somewhere!)

     

    I believe this to be correct.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  11. Posted · Edited by Airshack

    "I'll be the big bald guy with a tattoo on his head. So as not to make it awkward, It's a symbol of a black dragon in embryo..." -- Sinphaltimus

     

    A TI user's group meeting with no characters is a meeting with no character.

     

    The freakier the better!

    • Like 3

  12. Posted

    Speaking of which, is there a simple calculator program for the TI? I don't recall if there ever was, but one would be nice in FlashROM format.

     

    Just buy a straight TI-99/4 off eBay and everything is built in via menu option 2. ;)

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  13. Posted · Edited by Airshack

    The entire VAST (Valley of the Sun Ti) User's Group will be flying standby to PDX on Friday. We plan to arrive around 11:30am if all goes well with the open seating issue. Are any of y'all (Lubbock talk) going to be in the area Friday? We're staying at the Best Western...not far from the meet up. Let us know if you want to hang out....

    • Like 4

  15. Posted

    About 60% of the Console ROM is taken up by the GPL interpreter.

    ROM 0 is mostly dealing with Device access and control along with menu systems for access to memory and input / output controls.

     

    The book TI Intern lays out all of it.

     

    To be blunt there is no possible way to make the TI99/4A with Console only run from VDP RAM when it only has 256 bytes of it and 16K of VDP only.

     

    So basically everyone is bitching about a design of the original TI99/4A and this is due to chip costs at the time.

     

    1. The 16bit CPU was hamstrung by 4 cycles each step using byte accessed on 16 bit words.

    2. Using VDP over RAM further slowed the performance.

    3. This made GPL line VDP slower by delays in access each step of read before write of a byte in a byte only language and control from VDP/GROM.

    4. All interrupts tied into a single line meant very little PC like design.

     

    Blaming GPL for being slow in a hamstrung design is not really fair as if GPL had been designed to run from RAM instead of slower GROM/VDP it would be as fast as C.

     

    Item1. The competition had 8-bit CPUs (6502 & Z80 mainly) with 8-bit data buses with no speed bumps akin to the 16-to-8 bit multiplexer TI had to use?

     

    Item 2. So it's safe to say that money saving hardware design (VDP RAM and only 256bytes conventional CPU RAM) is why the BASIC interpreter HAD TO BE written in GPL, not Assembly; so that's why BASIC is slow. The problem is hardware and GPL is just a symptom of the problem?

     

    Question: Just how much cheaper was VDP over conventional RAM and why didn't Commodore/Atari/Tandy/Apple have this design-altering cost problem with their machines?

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    While watching that video I really enjoyed the look and feel. Sent me back to my Radio Shack groupie days in 1979...cool!

     

    Did the Trash-80 have a sound synth? I'm thinking no and that was all generated in software?

     

    If you wanted the voice synth to be part of the game you can't use the compiler. Speech Synth is not supported with the compiler. Again, assembly wins.

     

    I'd guess someone clever could probably tackle that game in pure XB.

  18. Posted

    I've been plugging away at XB256 and the compiler for the past six months and assure y'all (Lubbock talk) that the IF-THEN issue is not a big deal. It may cause a few more lines of code to be written but that's well worth the 25X-plus speed increase.

     

    If you plan for it in advance it's absolutely no issue. If you're trying to

    compile pre-written code you may have to add some code/logic and tweak a little.

     

    More to come on this matter in the near future...needing to talk with the falconator.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    I'd like to thank EVERYONE on this thread for providing answers and helping the less esteemed members understand BASIC's issues on this wonderfully mysterious mess of a computer. Wow!

    The experienced and most knowledgeable members of the TI AtariAge group are doing a fabulous job of educating and entertaining the rest of us.

     

    THANK YOU! Peace and Love!

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 5

  22. Posted · Edited by Airshack

    "You may compile, but many programs won't compile, and those that do often fail or misbehave."

     

    ^^^^^ Sounded like you were referencing legacy code.

     

    I haven't found the compiler unable to compile or noticed any misbehaving at all?

     

    If a programmer writes with the compiler as part of his/her workflow the process is as smooth as silk.

     

    Additionally, the compiler solves more problems than it creates. Example: I recently wrote a 24k program which compiled down to about 22k. I was able to unexpectedly "over-code" some features into the program near the end of development. My code was too large for XB, yet Compiled and ran with room to spare!

     

    I believe there's some misunderstanding here as well. The compiler does compile TI BASIC as well as XB programs. XB256 extensions are not required. I'm not claiming BASIC and XB are dead.

     

    That's silly!

     

    GAME OVER is more a snarky comment about the 35+ year old BASIC programming workflow.

     

    The compiler injects new life into the process by lowering the cost of entry for game programmers especially.

     

    So, things aren't going away as much as they're changing.

     

     

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    I'd love to... I have quite a bit of stuff out there already... but it would be pretty cool to create a uniform format.

     

    My computer is down right now... bad HD.

     

    If nobody takes on the task by the time I have access to a computer again, I will start the process.

     

    Will need help from some experienced GPL and Assembly programmers. I can demo some stuff in assembly, but I am not an advanced programmer.

    There's a dude on here named Rich who seems to have a firm grasp of the fundamentals of GPL.

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Despite the fact that others have have success with this build....

     

    I can't get it to work. Pretty much the same results. It's behaving as if the wires are straight through with no switches attached. So I can use anyone port independent of the others as long as there are no other carts installed. That's about it. I'm at a complete loss. the switches are new, they pass continuity testing and all my wires and resistors are in place as they should be. I guess i can bring it to FW to show off how not to make a switchbox.

    Hang in there buddy! We need you back writing games anyway. Software is where it's at!

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    • Like 1
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