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pc99 for Windows


blackbox

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Heads up- available from 1st November 2016-

 

The TI-99/4a emulator pc99 from CaDD is making the big jump to Windows (XP up to 10 excluding the rarities) on 1st November.

 

Now issued on USB stick or DVD it is being sold COMPLETE with a full set of files from The Cyc - a huge encyclopedia of TI magazines and programs. Price on dvd of US$49, with discounts for existing owners of the dos version, which is also on the supply media.

 

So- on one dvd, pc99w, pc99dos and The Cyc. And some utilities. Check out www.cadd99.com for information and ordering.

 

TI programs work at a very satisfying speed.

 

regards Stephen (who has been supplying magazine and documentation scans to The Cyc)

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I don't have Windows here so I wasn't part of the test group - but pc99dos is the only emulator I have that can run Myarc XB 2.12. I think speech has been added- I'll drop an email to Mike to see if I can get a list of exactly what has been emulated.

If you have bought the Cyc off Mike you can get a small discount off pc99w ( and an updated copy of the Cyc too, bound to be one or two new documents in there) - check out his web page.

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The sad part is he's missing probably 80% of the market due to his 1970's methods of payments..

 

I'd be happy to sell them through arcadeshopper.com and allow people to use modern payment methods. We could even mark it up to cover the costs.

 

Greg

That's exactly right. That's why I never bought the emulator or the cyc. To bloody difficult.

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Heads up- available from 1st November 2016-

 

The TI-99/4a emulator pc99 from CaDD is making the big jump to Windows (XP up to 10 excluding the rarities) on 1st November.

 

Now issued on USB stick or DVD it is being sold COMPLETE with a full set of files from The Cyc - a huge encyclopedia of TI magazines and programs. Price on dvd of US$49, with discounts for existing owners of the dos version, which is also on the supply media.

 

So- on one dvd, pc99w, pc99dos and The Cyc. And some utilities. Check out www.cadd99.com for information and ordering.

 

TI programs work at a very satisfying speed.

 

regards Stephen (who has been supplying magazine and documentation scans to The Cyc)

How much does it cost as I owned all versions and bought them as they came out. And how do you prove which one you bought?

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I understand this emulates a lot of hardware but it seems geared toward folks with a modded rs232 for connecting to apx. 50 bux is a pretty high price for someone who never purchased any of these individual software parts in the past.

 

What makes this package worth it to all of you without the proper setup on the ti side?

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How much does it cost as I owned all versions and bought them as they came out. And how do you prove which one you bought?

 

I'm sure they have a record, Rich. If you own the Cyc as well, the cost is $39. Otherwise, $44. $49 to first-timers. Check their website for details: CaDD.com.

 

...lee

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Before I consider dropping 50 bux on something I cannot see or try first, I'd like to know what I'd be getting.

 

Is there anything in the Cyc that is not already available for free on the Internet? Is it just a compilation of other peoples work just re-packaged, or is there original content not available anywhere else? Also, does this emulator have or do anything special that other emulators do not?

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I have not tested the suite, not having Windows, but pc99 is of value to me for the ability to use both Myarc XB and Triton SXB. It emulates TI 32k and Myarc 512k ram, Horizon ramdisk, super kart, TI and Myarc fdc and Myarc hfdc, speech, p-code card... and other things.

 

Can any other emulator allow you to run Myarc XB 2.12?

 

The suite is of value also for The Cyc, an immense collection of magazines, user group newsletters, disks, modules, with a huge index. These are not poor quality scans of copies of copies of newsletters, the text is hand reformatted, many hours of work. Some articles are cross-referenced. Fifty bucks for all this work (and value) is pigeon feed.

 

Check my comparison page at http://shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/cyccomp.htm (Cyc comparison at shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/cyccomp.htm) to see the difference between the whtech copy and The Cyc copy. And do not ignore the value of the supplied index and the cross referencing. Also if a magazine corrected an error 12 months down the line, the original article in the Cyc has been amended to make it less likely that you have problems.

 

If you bought pc99 / The Cyc from Mike, he knows who you are, no proof required- he never sold very many. pc99w is the work of one person, Eric Firestone, and is in native 32bit code.

 

The two support programs (Configuration and Utilities) are presently written in VB6 (hopefully to be transferred to C at some stage) and come with the required files, and require use of an installation setup.exe, whereas pc99w itself just needs files copied (and write only flag removed if your copier set it). Using cfg you select a module from a list and will be told if there are docs available for you to view. Any required disk for the module can be set here.

 

I have never connected my real TI rig to any emulator. My real TI rig is there when I want it but the emulators allow me to enjoy it without wearing it out by overuse!

 

regards

 

Stephen

Edited by blackbox
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I understand this emulates a lot of hardware but it seems geared toward folks with a modded rs232 for connecting to apx. 50 bux is a pretty high price for someone who never purchased any of these individual software parts in the past.

 

What makes this package worth it to all of you without the proper setup on the ti side?

 

Well, it used to cost $100 (or was it $99?) with an additional $25 – $30 for The Cyc. Now, it includes The Cyc for only $49! The Cyc alone is well worth the price. Mike is constantly updating The Cyc, which is a compilation of everything related to the TI-99/4A, including licensed copies of all known TI cartridges (Classic99 also has such licensing). Pretty much all documents are searchable text that he has cleaned up, edited and corrected over the years. He even makes an effort to verify that published programs actually work. Recently he was doing this for TI Forth programs and asked my help to troubleshoot a few that he couldn't get to work. I fixed a couple of those and they are now part of The Cyc.

 

...lee

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The posted minimum requirements for pc99w are extremely suspect, as pc99dos uses a mere 55MB of ram. I suspect this high figure may be related to requirements for Windows 10 rather than pc99w. Perhaps someone with Windows 10 could report back here in a little while to say how much memory is free before loading pc99w and how much when pc99w is loaded and running. Ditto for the two utilities. There have been some architectural changes to how memory is used but I really don't see 4GB as realistic.

3GHz is probably not very fast by todays standards but it is certainly going to be usable a little under that (I have been able to run pc99w at 2.6GHz under Wine)- again if someone running a Windows machine could report back?

 

stephen

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The posted minimum requirements for pc99w are extremely suspect, as pc99dos uses a mere 55MB of ram. I suspect this high figure may be related to requirements for Windows 10 rather than pc99w.

 

Ooops - Correction- 55MB ram is used by an early version of pc99w running under Wine and the figure includes Wine, so ram usage by pc99w alone is very small indeed compared to the quoted figure. But I can't say how much the utilities use as I can't run them here. Even if every program cartridge and disk was loaded into memory it would struggle to fill a GB though! stephen

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I hate money orders. -- Is there any service that can issue 'money orders' online?

 

And the pricing, I am confused, what is the CLEAR TOTAL AMOUNT needed WITH SHIPPING to get the complete set for someone that has NEVER owned PC99 or CYC in the past?

 

BTW, Not sure but the SOB ROM's I think are still included, I remember long time ago giving them permission to use, not sure if they are still keeping that up. -- Their site really needs work!

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Are there any comparison information between this and Mame or Classic99 for emulation features?

Are there any inventories of the contents of 'The Cyc' ?

 

The product description pages seem to assume buyers already know what 'The Cyc' is, and what features 'PC99 Full 6' was.

 

-M@

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I'd have a look on the Cadd Electronics site if you're not sure - for a kick off it states you need a computer with Pentium 5 3.0Ghz and 4gb of Ram. Jesus that's high requirements.

I have a Intel Mac Pro Xeon 2.93 (3Ghrz) and 4 Gig of RAM and my computer is from 2009.

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This is such a feature rich product.

I use Pc99 all the time whenever I transfer disks from TI to the Pc or the other way. It only requires a standard RS232 interface. No modifications to the RS232 are required in contrast to what others wrote!

I use USB on Pc side.

 

I admit, I aquired Pc99 Light because I wanted to get the Cyc. And the deal was totally worth it.

The Cyc contains more than 70.000 pdf pages (searchable text, not a scan or bad OCR), in 1641 pdf files.

It includes plenty of internal TI documents you won't find on whtech or other pages.

It includes 3339 disk images.

The Cyc main document is an Index, in 2015 this was 1860 pages large!

This is the root of every search you are doing, you want to know about who Jeff White is and what he did? Go to the Index. You will get a short bio and all public references.

You want to know about the Cortex? Go to the Index. It will link you to all public references. And you have those references in full text on your Cyc.

The GEnie File List (another pdf) alone is 4046 pages large.

You get all PHM, PHD, PHT manuals with all cartridge binaries and disk images.

You get the Control Data Console Files, the v2.2, the 99/4, the 99/4a and the OPA SOB console.

You get so many technical documentation, not just from TI but from Myarc, Mechatronic, MillerGraphics, Corcomp...

You get the Cartridge Collectors Guide (302 pages) from Bill Gaskill, you get a 122 pages edition with photos of his TImeline.

You get 43 complete books in full text (excluding technical data books here) and a 476 pages book list.

You get all magazines with their disks (if there were), updated with fixes and cross referenced.

You get 214 pdfs from Usergroups (mostly Newsletters), some of those files include the whole newsletter archive of a usergroup.

You have a licensed edition of all Disks/Modules/Roms with the suite.

 

Will include some feedback on the Pc99w once I have it.

 

Regarding Pc99 Dos Feature Set:

You can download the manual for Pc99 Dos (former Pc99 Stage6), it includes a Feature list for sure:

http://cadd99.com/pc99.pdf

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Are there any inventories of the contents of 'The Cyc' ?

 

 

The product description pages seem to assume buyers already know what 'The Cyc' is, and what features 'PC99 Full 6' was.

 

-M@

 

Klaus pressed enter before me so rather than repeat his content I have deleted what I posted - see above!

 

The present CaDD web page was put together in a rush for the Chicago show and is presently rather barren. pc99dos (New name for full 6) was written some years ago and ran in DOS- the sole developer moved on to other things. pc99w has a new sole developer, the extra utilities are from Mike Wright. Mike gave a presentation at Chicago but suffered from early lack of a promised monitor to check the run through and apologises to anyone who found it a bit rough at the edges.

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