pixelpedant

TIIF2 can encode and decode CC-40 BASIC programs (and TI-74, and TI-95).

Any beat up or non-functioning CC-40 like this I'd generally keep even just for the battery door, cartridge door, kick stand, and rubber feet, as replacement components.

Wouldn't have been me. I was just a kid in the heyday of the TI user groups, and out in Halifax at the time actually. There was a user group there I gather, but I never ran into it, sadly. I only *really* got full bore into TI-99 lore and development in later adulthood. But making up for lost time now.

For Funware (these are from a pair of videos I did on Funware's history, a while back) Funware's commercially released carts were: And Funware's announced but unreleased carts (some survive, some were never undertaken) were:

Nope. And the timeline is kind of the opposite, in that Glen Groves (as Software Specialties) had already released two assembly programs onto the market (TI Toad and Burger Builder) before Funware debuted their first carts. His greatest achievements in the long run (and in my opinion) being Midnite Mason and Micro Pinball. Astroblitz was a one-off contract job he did for Creative Software, after it had acquired Funware's assets and was not commercially released as far as I know (nor were any other post-Funware Creative Software titles announced for TI-99).

Genuinely curious to see what Legends II goes for these days. I've talked it up enough in my YouTube videos that maybe someone will in fact be cruelly tricked convinced to put a few bucks into buying and playing it.

I hate to say it, but $100USD for a TI-74 CI-7 cassette interface is pretty justifiable. These things are not common, sadly.

And though the TI-74 is almost completely compatible with Enhanced (CC-40) BASIC, it doesn't support CALL CHAR or CALL INDIC without the PCIF being used to load assembly routines, so what you can do out of the box with its native BASIC game-wise is far less interesting. Really just text games.

Well, a CC-40 10 liner certainly wouldn't be much trouble, so I could see it alright. Never written a full-fledged game for it, so could be fun. I'm working on TI-99 YouTube content right now rather than programs, but I'll be back at work on HH2 shortly I think. Much of the hardest work (dungeon generator, all graphics, interpreter, all core interpreter subprograms) is already done. Funnily enough, my "crossing of the rubicon" as far as getting HH2 finished is mainly just monster encounter and event-based menu interactions, as these use a subinterpreter with support for all sorts of abstruse nonsense like conditional jumps and constructing message text from a combination of string tokens representing n-grams of length 2 to 5, and variable tokens representing the contents of three core game variable arrays (the main two being strings of byte values - not arrays per se). This approach being inherently necessary, given that without some kind of compression, all menu/encounter/event text totals to a minimum of 1884 characters at present, which may grow. I've got a few weeks off work starting late March, so that'll hopefully be a chance to really get things sorted out then.

Plus, there's always CC-40 BASIC if someone's feeling up to it.

The 18K isn't a custom mod. It's just a rarer version with more RAM. It's original hardware. Here's a fun little demo I wrote up a while back to run on your new CC-40, if you feel like it: 10 FOR C=0 TO 6 20 CALL CHAR(C,RPT$("1F",C)&"0E04") 30 NEXT C 40 FOR C=6 TO -5 STEP -1 50 F$=F$&CHR$(ABS(C)) 60 NEXT C 70 FOR P=1 TO 12 80 DISPLAY AT(1),SEG$(RPT$(F$,4),P,31) 90 NEXT P 100 GOTO 70 1861208319_Demo2-ShortClip(edit).mp4

Here's a substantially modified XB single line spin on a demo concept I designed a while ago for TI BASIC (where it was seven lines): 10 RANDOMIZE::CALL CLEAR::CALL COLOR(1,2+INT(RND*3)*4,8)::FOR X=1 TO 30::P=P*-(P<9)+RND*6+1::S$=S$&STR$(INT(P))::CALL CHAR(32,S$)::NEXT X Draws one of a large number of possible patterns in one of four possible colours, then displays the finished pattern for a few seconds.

Perhaps you're thinking of Fundamentals of TI-99/4A Assembly Language by M. S. Morley when you say the blue cover version? If so, yes, that's a different book by a different author.

This will work from TI BASIC (and include both "transparent" and "black" as discrete colours, merely for the sake of custom): 10 CALL SCREEN(1) 20 FOR X=1 TO 16 30 CALL COLOR(X,X,X) 40 CALL VCHAR(1,X*2-1,24+8*X,48) 50 NEXT X 60 CALL KEY(0,K,Z) 70 IF Z=0 THEN 60 Waits for (any) input after display.

I suppose the authoritative answer or all cases should simply be: 1) Feed the command name to Terminal Emulator II's Text-to-Speech routine. 2) Habitually use whatever pronunciation comes out and treat it as authoritative. Or for a more radical approach: 1) Feed the command name to Speech Editor's (or XB's) CALL SAY command. 2) Habitually use the pronunciation "UH OH" and treat it as authoritative.

Another age-old debate: CALL CHAR CALL "care" (as in Character)? or CALL "char" (as in Charcoal)?

Well, I've got a bunch of folders of my own creation as well, so that's not necessarily representative of the WHTECH archive. And I've added any number of cart images from here and there, over time. But as to the WHTECH archive, it's here: http://ftp.whtech.com/Cartridges/FinalGROM99/

Yeah, as far as DBT carts (which are all pretty uncommon), Munchman II doesn't seem super rare. Probably because it's actually a reasonably playable game that might be worth owning (unlike Boxer and a couple others). As far as the Munchman II copy in the standard FGROM archive on WHTECH, it works and plays fine for me.

New, shorter variation on my contribution. This one, rather than asking for user input for colour and pattern, just randomly selects a (background-contrasting) colour, and randomly seeds the generated animation pattern. Patterns are also a little more diverse. Bringing the sum total down to 7 somewhat shorter lines, instead of 9: 10 RANDOMIZE 20 CALL CLEAR 30 CALL COLOR(1,2+INT(RND*7)*2,13) 40 P=P*-(P<9)+RND*6+1 50 SP$=SP$&STR$(INT(P)) 60 CALL CHAR(32,SP$) 70 IF LEN(SP$)<30 THEN 40

Here is a succinct TI BASIC animated demo that I've put together. I felt like doing a 10 liner. Though it ended up as a 9 liner, as it turns out. User input defines color and seeds a pattern for an animation. Generated animation patterns are reasonably varied if not numerous. And any out of range values for the inputs are just treated as "0" in both cases. 10 CALL CLEAR 20 INPUT "PICK A COLOR (0-7)":C 30 INPUT "PICK A PATTERN (0-7)":S 40 CALL CLEAR 50 CALL COLOR(1,2+C*(C<8)*(C>=0)*2,13) 60 P=P*-(P<9)+S*(S<8)*(S>=0)+1 70 SP$=SP$&STR$(P) 80 CALL CHAR(32,SP$) 90 IF LEN(SP$)<30 THEN 60 The conclusion of the animation is displayed on screen for a few seconds statically before exiting automatically.

Well if any given solution assumes the availability of CTRL and FCTN key combos, no dice, right? Also, no direct input of the following characters { | } ~ ` \ [ ] could interfere. I would think any feature-rich terminal software not designed for compatibility with the 99/4 keyboard would fail for simple lack of analogous keys.

I have used TI's own TI PILOT to a degree. You can see some limited use of it in a video I did a while ago on the p-code card and p-system. Note that Pilot99 (provided in the above-attached file) is not the same thing as TI PILOT. It is an independently and separately produced freeware implementation of the Pilot language for TI-99/4A. TI's own TI PILOT is a p-code program (implementing the Pilot language) whose capabilities are consequently largely defined by those of TI's provided p-system libraries (but further limited by its extremely simple syntax). So that being the case, I find TI PILOT per se pretty uninteresting. Since it's just a less feature-rich, less flexible, less performant way to access capabilities the p-system provides you via Pascal. It's intended to be a very stripped-down educational language. And I don't see much shine in it outside that very specific application, personally. Here is the disk for TI PILOT itself (requiring the p-code card and p-system environment): TI Pilot [PHD 5066].dsk

I'm very pleased with how the overall vision came together, though it's perhaps an absurdly overambitious one (which is trying to be more so a proper RPG, with a totally different dungeon generation/exploration model). I do hope to get back to it in earnest. TI stuff has just taken a back seat lately, and I haven't been online in the retrocomputing space much at all. I'll hopefully get myself back in the swing of things, in the next month. Real life has just taken precedence, of late.

TI's early home productivity carts are TI BASIC, yeah, but at least some include supplementary subroutines not otherwise available to TI BASIC (like PRK has a DISPLAY AT equivalent - CALL D - for example), and so cannot be regarded as pure TI Console BASIC. Notably, regular TI BASIC programs can access these subroutines when the cartridge is inserted, making PRK a de facto Very Slightly Extended BASIC.

Midnite Mason, TI Invaders, and Munch Man all have very good difficulty curves which always leave a greater challenge to be overcome.