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Goodbye (a thread for those who want to jump ship)


ramidavis

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I have come to realize that the "modern" TI community is pretty much the total opposite of what i enjoy using my ti for.

You people apparently don't care about games that managed to use a hack to get a sprite under ti basic,

or converting disk based titles to run off physical tape on an non-expanded console.

Hell, even Playground that was pretty much birthed by you guys got dumped in the trash.

I personally thought that was a pretty neat advancement.

I enjoy seeing what i can get my bare-bones setup to do.

Base console with tape, speech synth. and ti extended basic has served me very well.

I could share several wav files that can be loaded in such a setup of titles thought to be disk only, or even titles claiming to need 32k.

Sometimes i have to remove, for instance, the ability to save high scores, but the core game play in each remains intact and exact.

But would this community really care? I honestly don't think so.

But i care, whether anyone else does or not.

Atariage, being setup the way it is, requires an account to download forum attachments.

And it is for only this reason that i am not having my account terminated.

I basically will become a "lurker", logging in only when i need to actually download something.

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I do not believe you understand, or at least you underestimate, the bulk of this community. Every one of us enjoy seeing neat technical hacks, even those you describe. Now, whether every hack is practical or useful to every person is another matter altogether.

 

Labors of love often seem to be under-appreciated or dismissed, as many people who like or approve may be silent lurkers on a particular topic and, as the Internet and society at large is apt to be, those who disapprove and nay-say will be the quickest and loudest. For this reason alone I completely dismiss on-line reviews which are full of opinions and feels.

 

Around here you will find many levels of practical application of the TI. Sometimes, for instance, insists that his cartridge games run in the 8k cartridge space and do not require an expanded console. One of our users completely rejects the idea of any upgrades beyond the original TI hardware. The F18A, while largely accepted, has been poo-pooed by more than one user here and around.

 

This way of operating exists in every single "retro" community you will find: Commodore, Amiga, Atari 8-bit and ST, and so on, and I refrain from getting started with the strict emulation versus iron camps.

 

Why wire wrap a whole new circuit when you can have a full board made in China for a couple of bucks in a few days? Why write a game or utilitiy which does not take advantage of the 32k expansion or the SAMS? Why write a program or convert programs from other media, like disk or cartridge, to run on cassette? Why do we climb the mountain?

 

Because it is there.

 

Back in the late 80s I got hold of the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide" and learned a lot about 6502 architecture, as well as how the 64's KERNAL emulated the 6551 ACIA. I decided that if the system emulated it, and it actually existed, why not make an expansion for the 64 with a 6551 interfaced to the 6510? I talked it over with a few of my friends who were active in the BBS scene and was told, "why bother? The disk drive can barely keep up with 2400 baud, it would never be able to use 9600." Rather than see that as a technical challenge, or even continue on as my own curiosity, I took it as an attack on me and threw the idea aside. Then just barely a few years later comes the SwiftLink-232 with its own similar story of initial dismissal.

 

Giving up like that, even when no one else seemed interested, has been one of my biggest laments in life. Well, aside from my foot-in-mouth episode with my geek crush, Jeri.

 

Keep pushing forward with what YOU find interesting. That is what many of us here do, it just happens that in the current roster of participants there are some who share the same interests and goals. Just because it seems no one has taken an interest in your proposals does not mean that no one ever will, nor that you should just throw them aside. We all lose when we lose a member of the community, whether by passing or by not participating.

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[...]

Atariage, being setup the way it is, requires an account to download forum attachments.

[...]

Nope. I was pretty sure, but just double-checked - you can download attachments without an account.

 

If it's truly that upsetting to you, ditch the account.

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This is sad news to me Rami. I enjoy reading about lots of things people are able to accomplish with the TI, but do not always comment on due to my lack of technical skill in things like assembly language programming, Forth, and other related things like the cool Sandbox development. I cannot speak for others, but this time of year I'm really busy and cannot always get into or try things I'd like to. One example of this is the 80 column Extended BASIC wizardry by Senior Falcon. His development is a dream come true for me, but unfortunately I'm going to have to hold off on that fun until after the new year, not out of lack of interest. It's really got me excited enough to get back into XB programming.

 

I'd encourage you to keep with it. I'd use Forth as an example, it has a slowly growing user base, but that did not happen over night. When stuff is active, it stays up at the top of the threads and gets more attention and eventually gets some traction. Rich and RXB is a prime example, for decades it was little used, not because there was no interest, but because it was not readily available to a wider audience, but the man kept at it and eventually the cartridge technology made it available to everyone and now it's being used like never before.

 

Ultimately the decision is yours, but if you change your mind, know I'll be reading, as I'm sure others will as well.

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We do just about anything and everything in here. Sad that you feel that we aren't inclusive as to setups, but we are. We each have our own unique things to contribute, and sometimes that spurs others to take up the mantle and do something different with it. We are really all over the place in here. Feel free to contribute code optimization techniques; there are those of us in here that can do that in Assembly rather well (I'm looking at you guys who did the EA/5 loader and can code crap in the small scratchpad RAM space). And there are those of us with some BASIC and some Assembly code that could stand to learn from someone else.

 

I've had one or two arguments in here over things, but it's nothing that I couldn't get over and just keep on plugging along. 10 years ago, if I could have told you that people would have taken what started as my 16K cartridge board's idea and then spawned it into a dozen other variants including the 64K, 512MB, 2MB cart, the UberGROM, the FlashROM and FinalGROM carts, etc, I would have been super excited. It takes one person to start a spark that others take the mantle and continue with. It drives interest and curiosity.

 

I'm grateful for the spark and excitement I've seen in the community over the past 10+ years. It's truly amazing to watch it in action.

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Ramidavis,

i found all your threads very interesting instead... and i think that this community is the best of the ones in internet.

There are different levels of preparation in the people in this community. I am at low level but i really like to preserve all TI Stuff and oftwn publish on my DataBase website, so thanks for sharing your Zip file.

you can findo also some other .WAVs file of cool TI BASIC games on my Database online: http://www.ti99iuc.it/web/go?GFEZPT

 

I think that you should stay here and be present like you usual do. i really hope you will think at your decision please :)

Edited by ti99iuc
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Ramidavis, recognition is a fickle beast. I respectfully suggest that you just enjoy the hobby for what it is and stop worrying about what others here or elsewhere do or think.

No one is keeping score, and really that's what so great about it. It should be liberating rather than disappointing.

My 2 cents...

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I note you wrote that not enough people were interested in making games for the stock console, or words to that effect.

I would like to politely refute this claim as I myself will gladly make games that run on bare-bones setup. In fact one of my Castle Conquer games will run in Extended Basic on a cassette with 16K if anyone wanted to physically type it into a real TI99. This version is somewhere in the Castle Conquer thread.

 

There really is a mixed bag here, old chap. It's not just the hardware wizards there are all sorts of people present in this forum.

 

The only notable foible I noticed with forums such as these, in fact any retro programming/hardware forum, is that when anyone releases a game in say TI Basic, there's always someone wanting it released in Extended Basic or Forth or Assembly or they might want 80 columns instead of 28 .... but that is just enthusiasm. It's someone wanting to push the boundaries. If such a feat is outside your own parameters, you would never be judged for it. I'll give you an example, Senior Falcon released a new way of making compiled games compile faster. Could I get my head around it? Could I Hell. It was outside my processing power to do so but I wasn't judged harshly. If you feel you've been pushed in any way just say so.

 

Stick around!

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I would say that we all have our own areas of interest that we pursue in the community, and I believe the love and dedication we share for our TI-99/4a is what really unites us. I hope you choose to share your work and still participate here!

 

For example, I myself am focused on developing with the AMS card because despite being around since 1993, there is very little software designed to take advantage of it.

 

I FULLY expect to get requests to make my CRPG run on the FinalGROM and I will say no. If you want to play it on iron there is a minimum requirement. I'm even trying to keep the disk sizes to 180K and under so you don't have to have a disk controller beyond the original TI one. (Mainly because the Myarc and Corcomp ones are too rare.) The card is fully emulated in Classic99, MESS and PC99 so I'm not denying anyone the ability to play the game. (V9T9 Java as well? I couldn't determine it.)

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I'm sorry to hear that you seem so disenchanted with the community.

 

I'm a relative newcomer to the TI community here on AtariAge (since February of this year), but from Day One everyone that I have interacted with is extremely helpful and knowledgeable in their spheres of knowledge (and beyond).

 

I have made what I feel are several friends that happen to be 994A enthusiasts too. Being an enthusiast I think is what gives most folks their 'dog in the hunt' and why debate can be pretty heated at times- but never have I seen anyone be blatantly disrespectful or make someone feel like they weren't as smart as the other person.

 

Vouching for myself, I know Basic/Extended Basic and a smidgen of Assembly- so I know enough to do the projects that I would like to accomplish, and I'm learning stuff all the time! There's all kinds of crazy things I've seen accomplished here in just ten months of me participating in the community.

 

I'm predominantly real-iron; i have a console, a PEB with controller, disk drive, 32k, and rs232, a Program Recorder, and a speech synthesizer. Admittedly I'm not a huge fan of tapes, but it's there. :)

 

I didn't start really using the emulators on any great scale for development or messing around until I had acquired the real thing. I had used Classic99 before, but it was primarily to learn how the memory addressing works so I could get cartridge-based games to the emulator to play. ;)

 

I'm being rambly a bit, but i do love the TI 99 4A as a computer. I have nostalgic feelings for it, and I think just the way the way it was designed and all the after-market support and hobby stuff is just fascinating.

 

I hope you'll come back and give it another go.

Edited by digdugnate
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I have come to realize that the "modern" TI community is pretty much the total opposite of what i enjoy using my ti for.

You people apparently don't care about games that managed to use a hack to get a sprite under ti basic,

or converting disk based titles to run off physical tape on an non-expanded console.

Hell, even Playground that was pretty much birthed by you guys got dumped in the trash.

I personally thought that was a pretty neat advancement.

I enjoy seeing what i can get my bare-bones setup to do.

Base console with tape, speech synth. and ti extended basic has served me very well.

I could share several wav files that can be loaded in such a setup of titles thought to be disk only, or even titles claiming to need 32k.

Sometimes i have to remove, for instance, the ability to save high scores, but the core game play in each remains intact and exact.

But would this community really care? I honestly don't think so.

 

 

The community is more diverse than you make it out to be. And to me, there are differences between caring and interest.

 

I have no interest in using a barebones TI. I moved beyond that in 1984/1985, and there is no reason I would want to return to it. That doesn't mean I dislike or don't care about efforts like Playground; I find it fascinating. Yet I have no interest in using or spending my limited time in an environment that restricts what I can accomplish. I like my 32k expanded memory, storage options, F18A, and other equipment and software (including emulation) made by the very same people you wish to divorce yourself from. I don't use an 8088 PC to browse the web, and I certainly am not going to use a bare bones TI for my hobby needs.

 

If you wish to cut your teeth on a bare bones system, no one is going to stop you - more power to you! If it serves you well, carry on! But don't put this community (yourself included) into such a narrow line of thinking.

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Additionally, I am hijacking this thread. There have been enough people who came in and were for whatever reasons discouraged from participating and numerous people, including myself, have left heart-felt screeds to try to save them.

 

This thread from here-on-out shall be the thread for everyone who wants just jump ship to read through and hopefully get a better understanding and maybe the encouragement they need.

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I reckon stick around. We are all different. For me, I love the combo of console & the mini-memory module. Most of my posts are about that combo. Just something that interests me. Wouldn't expect many people to be overally excited at that combination (ha!), but am sure some people searching for info on the TI might find info related to that interesting.

 

Reckon just do stuff 'cos it interests you. Noone will think down on you for doing that.

 

One of the quirky things about the TI is that you could actually do that. Console only, console + mini mem, console + ext basic, console with 32k, peb etc etc and now with nanoPebs/finalGroms etc

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One of the quirky things about the TI is that you could actually do that. Console only, console + mini mem, console + ext basic, console with 32k, peb etc etc and now with nanoPebs/finalGroms etc

 

I'm a firm believer in HAVING IT ALL AT ONCE, but since that is NOT a reasonable option for me, I'm planning ahead for retirement and the future need for a scaled down configuration, so as the time of my diminished capacity inches ever closer, I'm having fun running two different configurations. When they find me dead in a wheelchair in a small apartment... it'll be parked in front of my TI with the joystick stuck in the grasp of my cold dead fingers.

 

I'm staying here!

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I'm a firm believer in HAVING IT ALL AT ONCE, but since that is NOT a reasonable option for me, I'm planning ahead for retirement and the future need for a scaled down configuration, so as the time of my diminished capacity inches ever closer, I'm having fun running two different configurations. When they find me dead in a wheelchair in a small apartment... it'll be parked in front of my TI with the joystick stuck in the grasp of my cold dead fingers.

 

I'm staying here!

so what kind of joystick? i'm asking because.... reasons. :D

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Why would I leave... I just got here :)

 

Beside this community has already help me in finding a PEB and answering my noob questions. I hope some day to be able to help another new user as I've been helped. In the mean time I'm learning a lot by just following the many TI related threads.

 

But I might add, that as much as I would like having a complete system, I don't really see a tape deck being part of my setup for the simple fact that finding a still working tape player is getting really hard. Most needs new belts which are also getting hard to find.

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Well to each his own here. Not everyone is interested in a project that is counter to other projects.

 

Like I created and continue to write RXB and expand it so have little interest in other XB versions other then to compare.

 

Hacking TI Basic though is fun, has little value to me. I have a product to support and further...hence no support from me on competition.

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