globeron Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 I have in hardcopy the Oscar Barcode - Funware - Awari game without having the Oscar device itself, is there a way to load the program into a TI-99/4A or emulator ? The scan in PDF format is attached. BarcodeOscar-09930011-Awari-TI994A.pdf Example magazine with more programs: https://ia800401.us.archive.org/23/items/DatabarMagazineTI994A/Databar magazine TI994A.pdf https://archive.org/details/DatabarMagazineTI994A http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/hardware/oscar/oscar.html 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
globeron Posted July 12, 2020 Author Share Posted July 12, 2020 and .jpg format Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 I heard of this back in the day, but I never played with it. The format doesn't appear to be documented online, but from the manual published at Mainbyte, apparently you could load software with OLD CS1, so the format of the ultimate data must match the cassette. Further we can see the thick black bars at the end of a line are an end marker, since you go left to right, then right to left when scanning. Looks like the Atari version was similar. The fact that the wand had enough intelligence to detect a scanned line and beep makes me think there's a format, maybe additional checksums, but at the same time I can't help but wonder if the data there is literally just bits for the cassette port... I guess if it was, it needs to start with a constant tone, so on the assumption they didn't make the hardware that different between machines, it must be there in the barcode. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 Didn't try it, but I did find this: https://github.com/doegox/Oscar Links to a descriptive page as well! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+acadiel Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 6 hours ago, Tursi said: Didn't try it, but I did find this: https://github.com/doegox/Oscar Links to a descriptive page as well! Nice!!! I'm always impressed when I see a writeup like this. They honestly spent a decent amount of time doing it, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 So this is the Nintendo e-Reader of the TI world? ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 7 hours ago, acadiel said: Nice!!! I'm always impressed when I see a writeup like this. They honestly spent a decent amount of time doing it, too. Looks like they didn't make it to the last step of actually getting the data INTO a TI... so maybe the last step is converting it into a WAVE file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 It can output some kind of data file. I did not look too closely, but I suspect since the data is in cassette record format it is just the contents of a program as saved to cassette. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HOME AUTOMATION Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 I had one of these ...about 20 years ago, as I recall, I never got any sense out of it, at all. I noticed the stencil from it, in a box the other night. I think I left the main unit behind ...on the last move. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wierd_w Posted July 16, 2020 Share Posted July 16, 2020 (edited) Now I wonder... It looks kinda like one of the more standard linear barcode formats out there. I wonder if I can run those scans through some OCR type barcode scanner apps... For some reason, 90s abandonware "cuecat" comes to mind. (It was a linear barcode pen that went on the PS2 port, that was a failed marketing gimmick. With today's ubiquity of laser printers, it would be an interesting thing to still have around. The USB keyboard mod could theoretically allow it to be attached, via a PS/2 keyboard converter dongle.) Oh well, let's see if we can figure out what that barcode data is. Edit- Pays to actually click the github. I see the guy already did the legwork. Still, it looks very similar to Plessey code. I think we could do basically the same thing, just for "Very fast keyboard entry" with a cheap CueCat. Just hang it off the USB Keyboard mod, then drag the pen over the codes. Fast, rapid entry of basic/extended basic programs, similar to fast-paste, just on real metal. Edited July 16, 2020 by wierd_w Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 (edited) Just for fun, i downloaded the Oscar-master.zip from https://github.com/doegox/Oscar and unpacked it. Inside the Oscar-master/results/TI99-4A/Databar_Oscars_Match_TI99-4A folder, is the file databar_payload.bin . I opened up the BASIC editor at http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/ , and uploaded that file. I downloaded it, as basic.bin , and renamed it to MATCH using tidir. I then used a windows file explorer to remove the .bin ending. Attached is the MATCH program and screenshot (TI BASIC). MATCH Edited July 19, 2020 by jrhodes 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 47 minutes ago, jrhodes said: I opened up the BASIC editor at http://nivelleringslikaren.eu/ti994a_basic/ I had no idea that existed (or forgot, one.) I want to integrate this functionality into TIdBit99.com and have been writing my own function to do it... but then this pops up. Thank you! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrhodes Posted July 19, 2020 Share Posted July 19, 2020 (edited) By following the process outlined in #11, here are the remaining TI programs from Oscar-master.zip (All TI BASIC) I will not be attempting to process the awari scans, feel free to try for yourselves though. DRILL FQUIZ HEALTH LAW MATHCHONE MPG TRIANGLE WORDHABITS Edited July 19, 2020 by jrhodes 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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