chue

I put too much time into this, and the results are not as good as I would have liked. Here's my case... The coloring is FinalGROM RedTM to match the FinalGROM itself. In total I used 2 cases, ruining one. Disclaimer: Thanks to the magic of photography (strategic angling of subject, jpeg compression, depth of field), the imperfections in the case are not seen in the photos.

Wow I guess that was too easy. Your turn Shift838.

I have to give credit to Shift838 for that one... Hopefully this one isn't too easy for you TI game experts:

Living Tomb

I am a big fan of old school, turn based RPGs. This is definitely one of my all time favorites, along with SF II. Another one that I like is Vandal Hearts for Playstation. I did not like VH II though because of the changed game mechanics (simultaneous player and enemy movement).

That is a good option... I might go that way if I ruin another cart case.

Yes I have ruined 2 cartridge cases so far . I am going to see if I can repair those - if not I might have to sacrifice another cart.

Yet another PEB http://www.ebay.com/itm/TI-99-4A-Peripheral-Expansion-Box-w-Dual-Floppies-Manuals-PEB-Clean-and-Works-/162608814222

In thinking about it I'm not really sure it matters whether there is a "standard" layout or not. After all fire works no matter which layout it's on. I just use a different fire button than someone else - we each though are using our own preferred fire button. Having said all of that there is no harm in standardizing, I just don't think it's needed. You might if someone came up with a Vanguard or Smash TV type game where you fire in multiple directions. So the d-pad on the left is for moving the player, and the "pad" on the right is for firing in a specific direction (up/down/left/right).

I get the same errors in TI BASIC and XB as notwhoyouthink. However, if I try RXB (available in Classic99), it seems to work:

Interesting! It definitely looks like a cart related mod.

You can never have too many TI's so I always keep an eye out... I saw this one that has a hole cut out of the back of it. Anyone care to speculate about what the mod does? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Texas-Instruments-TI-99-4A-Home-Computer-tested-works-TI99-/222571481421

I also prefer the layout of the up, down, left, right buttons for player 2. To me it has a more "natural" feel. But that's probably personal preference. The down side of having both the move and fire buttons so close together is that it is hard to both move and fire at the same time. I think a good solution might be to use an SNES style pad with buttons on the top that could be used as fire. In addition the buttons on the right are already in the up/ down/ left/ right layout. The only snag is that the SNES joystick port is different from the TI port.

Thank you. Good thing I asked before I did it!

I've been using my FinalGROM for a few days now, and it works well. However, when I want to do a reset I find myself ALWAYS pushing both reset buttons, one after the other. In other words I prefer to get back to the option for the FinalGROM, as opposed to the option for the cart that I had chosen. So my question for Ralph: Can I just hardwire the two reset buttons together? That is, have one button that causes both resets to be triggered at the same time. Is there some other use case that I would lose if I did this?

It's already in and working - I tried it one or two days ago! The following post points to a FinalGROM archive that contains it: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260917-the-finalgrom-99/?p=3803976

I also wonder if the aluminum would scratch up the "coffee warmer" part of the TI. Still, an aluminum cart is a cool idea.

You aren't doing anything wrong there... I've done that dozens of times by now and it works for me. From my reading on this site, NanoPEBs are quite fickle... This could be caused by any number of things from the TI to the Nano to the Nano power supply and flash card. To give my Nano the "best" environment possible, I did the following: 1. Cleaned the edge connector on my TI. I used some cotton swabs and 90% isopropyl alcohol. It might not hurt to use a pencil eraser as well. 2. I made sure I had a good power supply for the Nano. My power supply reads 5.2 volts, unloaded. You can't go too much higher or lower than 5 volts. 3. I made sure the flash card is seated properly in the Nano - Mine at one point was a little loose and I had problems reading it with the TI. As for TI99Dir, I find it a little unintuitive to use. I can't seem to view/update the contents of a disk while they are on flash. I can however copy disks to/ from flash. Thus if I want to change the contents of a disk on the flash card, I have to copy the disk to my PC and make the changes there. As the final step, I copy the updated disk image back to the flash drive.

Ah, I missed that. No worries.

In Extended Basic, you can use CHARPAT to store the character patterns in a string variable. This example grabs all of the uppercase definitions and uses them to redefine the lowercase 'a' character: 10 DIM X$(25) 20 FOR I=0 TO 25 30 CALL CHARPAT(65+I,X$(I)) 40 NEXT I 50 PRINT "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" 60 FOR I=0 TO 25 70 CALL CHAR(97,X$(I)) 80 NEXT I 90 GOTO 60

Yes. From the FinalGROM homepage (https://endlos99.github.io/finalgrom99/):

Thanks for this, you inspired me to do the same mod. I did however do my button assignment a little differently than yours. I did mine as follows: x, y, a, b - are player 2's left, up, down, right. z - player 1 fire c - player 2 fire obviously the dpad still is for player 1. Also I did a BASIC joystick test program in the following link. It tests both joystick1 and 2, as well as the fire buttons: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/145666-any-ti-99-4a-basic-programs-you-can-share/?p=3803371

Thanks for uploading the SXBs, mizapf and blackbox! Unfortunately neither works in classic99, but that's ok since it sounds like they work in their respective emulators. At least now we have digital copies which can hopefully be tweaked to work with the FG.

you got it digdug, your turn!

Here's another screenshot (and hint)... The game was very popular at Fest West this year.