TI-99/a4...

[blastermaster]

What can you tell me about it? I am buying one and was wondering about it. Do atari controlers work for it? How easy are games to find? Are they fun? Any other info would be nice, thanks!

 

 

~Jon

[CaptainCaputo]

What can you tell me about it? I am buying one and was wondering about it. Do atari controlers work for it? How easy are games to find? Are they fun? Any other info would be nice, thanks!

 

 

~Jon

917503[/snapback]

 

The Ti-99's a good system, atari controllers i believe they work i havent tried them on my system yet, there are some fun games, but aside from the ones i got i havent seen then outside of ebay, i posted a topic a month back about my Ti-99 if you back a few pages youll find it has games that people say are good....hope ive helped

 

found the link http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=73690

Edited August 24, 2005 by CaptainCaputo

[JB]

What can you tell me about it?

That it's a TI 99/4a, for starters.

Was my first gaming hardware. Has a 16-bit processor, too.

 

 

I am buying one and was wondering about it.

Good call.

 

Do atari controlers work for it?

No, but an adapter is easy to make. Just takes a male DB9, a female DB9, and a soldering iron. 2 female DB9s if you want 2 players, as both 99 joysticks connect to the same port(TI's own controllers came in a pair on a y cable).

 

How easy are games to find?

Dunno. Haven't looked too hard.

Not as easy as a lot of others, though. 4 and 4a were really too pricy for the market.

 

Are they fun?

As with everything else, it varies. There's some damn fine gaming to be had, though.

 

Must-haves include Parsec, Microsurgeon, and Tunnels of Doom.

Moon Mine wasn't half-bad either.

 

Super Demon Attack is a blast, and has both stages.

On the down side, your turrent looks like a train caboose.

 

There's a fairly respectable port of Sega's Star Trek arcade game, too, if MAME isn't your thing.

 

Video Chess was a quite respectable computer chess game at the time. I suspect it still holds up well today.

 

The knockoff games are amusing, as well. TI Invaders and MunchMan are good, clean, and strangely familiar fun.

 

 

 

If you find a speech synthesizer, grab it. It adds another layer of immersion to the games that support it.

[jaybird3rd]

The 99/4A is a nice machine; in fact, it was my first computer (got mine in 1982). The TI joysticks, as has been noted, both connected to the one DB-9 joystick port on the system. They weren't very comfortable compared to any of the Atari sticks, but there was an Atari joystick Y-adapter made for it if you don't want to make one (I've got one around here somewhere).

 

Cartridge games are fairly easy to find on eBay; I picked up a box of about 20 of them for around $25 or $30 not long ago. Some of the most common games (Munchman, TI Invaders, Car Wars, etc.) are also some of the best; I still think TI Invaders is more fun than any other Space Invaders clone I've played. I also have to put in a good word for Parsec; it's one of the best games from TI and is a LOT more fun with the speech synthesizer (also a fairly common item). I would also STRONGLY recommend picking up a composite video cable, also available premade on eBay. The 99/4A came with an external RF modulator which was not very reliable, and you're highly unlikely to get one without sensitive cables.

[SteveW]

When you use joysticks on the TI-99/4A, make sure that the Caps Lock key is up. After the hardware was designed and already being manufactured, they realised that up won't register anything if the Caps Lock key is on.

 

A lot of the cartridges you'll find available will probably be educational titles. Kid's learning games were really popular, and they make up a lot of the carts that can be found in the wild.

 

All the Atarisoft games are good, other than Pole Position. Most third-party games are pretty good, all around. A lot of the early Texas Instruments published cartridges are a little dull, but the late releases (beige cartridges) are just about all winners.

 

Tunnels of Doom is a good game, but you'll need a cassette tape player or floppy disk drive to use it. The game is on the cartridge, but the levels had to be loaded off of tape or disk. The cartridge by itself won't play the game.

 

 

Toucan has a great website with info and reviews about TI Home Computer games.

http://www.videogamehouse.net/

Edited August 24, 2005 by SteveW

[JB]

The 99/4A is a nice machine; in fact, it was my first computer (got mine in 1982).  The TI joysticks, as has been noted, both connected to the one DB-9 joystick port on the system.  They weren't very comfortable compared to any of the Atari sticks, but there was an Atari joystick Y-adapter made for it if you don't want to make one (I've got one around here somewhere).

Opened mine up the other day, and it looks like the mushy feel is intentional. They have a 2-layer plastic circuit like the INTV, and foam blocks under the contact points.

Best guess is that the foam was there to reduce stress on the plastic and prevent premature failure of the traces. Shame really, as the foam block seems to be largely responsible for the stiff and mushy feel. If the contacts landed directly on a plastic surface, the stick would likely feel a lot nicer.

 

I would also STRONGLY recommend picking up a composite video cable, also available premade on eBay.

Can also get a standard DIN5 connector and solder your wires on.

If I recall, the pinout is diffrent from Commodore's and Atari's DIN5s.

[Cobra Commander]

I just cut up my modulator-box cable and used this info for the composite video.

[jaybird3rd]

Can also get a standard DIN5 connector and solder your wires on.

If I recall, the pinout is diffrent from Commodore's and Atari's DIN5s.

917952[/snapback]

Yes; in fact, you can even cut the cable off of an old DIN5 AT keyboard and use that. I built my composite video cable that way using information I found on a site very similar to the one Cobra referenced above. Another alternative is a set of DIN5 MIDI cables from Radio Shack.

[jaybird3rd]

Opened mine up the other day, and it looks like the mushy feel is intentional. They have a 2-layer plastic circuit like the INTV, and foam blocks under the contact points.

Best guess is that the foam was there to reduce stress on the plastic and prevent premature failure of the traces. Shame really, as the foam block seems to be largely responsible for the stiff and mushy feel. If the contacts landed directly on a plastic surface, the stick would likely feel a lot nicer.

Yeah, it's too bad about the cheap TI sticks. They seemed to be added to the computer almost as an afterthought: the joystick port is controlled by the keyboard decoder, which is why CAPS LOCK has to be up to avoid conflicts. Here is a site that has lots of good information on the TI hardware, including the joysticks.

[maibock]

Here's a TI-99/4A story I'd like to share.

 

Remember getting the TI and having aspirations of making games yourself with BASIC? We had a programming book which stated you could make games just like the ones you could buy! It had colorful descriptions of the games you could program. Well I'd spend hours typing all the code in, going over all the mistakes, and then the "what? is that it? All that typing for this game?"

 

I shared the disappointment with my 12 year old

 

Having hooked it up a few months ago to toy around with, my kid and I played a few games to which he enjoyed. I said, "hey, you know, you can program your own games with this, here's a book".. he seemed excited.. *snicker*

 

I checked back in after about an hour, he was still furiously typing in a game program.

 

a few hours after he began typing, I hear him trudging up the stairs. "How did the game go?" - "a lot of work and the game was pretty bad" - "Ha! take that! now you know what we had to do for fun!"

 

he later kicked my ass in Halo

[ScottHuggins]

Maibock,

 

Well, I agree about those "regular" basic games...but did you have Extended Basic? With that you could do a lot more (Sprites and bitmap mode graphics). Still not as good as TMS9900 Assembly language, but still much better than the built in basic language.

 

 

 

Here's a TI-99/4A story I'd like to share.

 

Remember getting the TI and having aspirations of making games yourself with BASIC? We had a programming book which stated you could make games just like the ones you could buy! It had colorful descriptions of the games you could program. Well I'd spend hours typing all the code in, going over all the mistakes,  and then the "what? is that it? All that typing for this game?"

 

I shared the disappointment with my 12 year old 

 

Having hooked it up a few months ago to toy around with, my kid and I played a few games to which he enjoyed. I said, "hey, you know, you can program your own games with this, here's a book".. he seemed excited.. *snicker*

 

I checked back in after about an hour, he was still furiously typing in a game program.

 

a few hours after he began typing, I hear him trudging up the stairs. "How did the game go?" - "a lot of work and the game was pretty bad" - "Ha! take that! now you know what we had to do for fun!"

 

he later kicked my ass in Halo 

918372[/snapback]

[maibock]

Hmm I'm not quite sure.. We just had, and I still have it today, the one book to program games. How did the Extended Basic work? Was that something you needed to load up by tape? We had a few cassette games..

[Christophero Sly]

I taught myself basic programming on the TI. It was my first computer. My friend and I would spends hours and hours creating these elaborate sprite-based animations (basically little movies) in TI basic. Our first code was extremely bulky and our techniques crude, but we improved rapidly. I vividly remember the moment when I realized I could easily move sprites using for-next loops. It seems so obvious now, but at the time it was a real "eureka!" moment, one of those moments when you feel your brain grow. We saved those animations on cassettes, which, over the years, were thrown away or re-used for something else. I'd really love to have those cassettes now. I don't think there could be anything more nostalgic than running the programs you wrote when you were 11 years old.

 

I didn't see extended basic until I got back into collecting. I can only imagine what effect it's sprite-manipulation sub-programs would have had on those animations... COINC, MAGNIFY, MOTION

 

Oh, and I remember typing in basic games from books or magazines and then being disappointed.

[JB]

Opened mine up the other day, and it looks like the mushy feel is intentional. They have a 2-layer plastic circuit like the INTV, and foam blocks under the contact points.

Best guess is that the foam was there to reduce stress on the plastic and prevent premature failure of the traces. Shame really, as the foam block seems to be largely responsible for the stiff and mushy feel. If the contacts landed directly on a plastic surface, the stick would likely feel a lot nicer.

Yeah, it's too bad about the cheap TI sticks. They seemed to be added to the computer almost as an afterthought: the joystick port is controlled by the keyboard decoder, which is why CAPS LOCK has to be up to avoid conflicts. Here is a site that has lots of good information on the TI hardware, including the joysticks.

918330[/snapback]

Actually, tying the joysticks to the keyboard was a logical move. It meant nothing REQUIRED the joysticks, because they were just keyboard keys.

The caps lock issue was due to changes from the 99/4(which was fixed case) to the 4a.

 

And what I was saying about the foam is that it looks like the joysticks weren't really cheap. They TRIED to make a good device, they just neglected to actually ask any gamers what they wanted from a stick.

 

Here's a TI-99/4A story I'd like to share.

 

Remember getting the TI and having aspirations of making games yourself with BASIC? We had a programming book which stated you could make games just like the ones you could buy! It had colorful descriptions of the games you could program. Well I'd spend hours typing all the code in, going over all the mistakes,  and then the "what? is that it? All that typing for this game?"

 

I shared the disappointment with my 12 year old 

 

Having hooked it up a few months ago to toy around with, my kid and I played a few games to which he enjoyed. I said, "hey, you know, you can program your own games with this, here's a book".. he seemed excited.. *snicker*

 

I checked back in after about an hour, he was still furiously typing in a game program.

 

a few hours after he began typing, I hear him trudging up the stairs. "How did the game go?" - "a lot of work and the game was pretty bad" - "Ha! take that! now you know what we had to do for fun!"

 

he later kicked my ass in Halo 

You deserved it.

 

Hmm I'm not quite sure.. We just had, and I still have it today, the one book to program games. How did the Extended Basic work? Was that something you needed to load up by tape? We had a few cassette games..

Extended BASIC was a cartridge. You loaded it just like any other cartridge.

 

And once you got it up, you had TI BASIC, only with PEEK POKE, a whole slew of sprite controls, some other junk, and the ever-loquacious CALL SPEECH(Ah, the time I wasted just making the computer say random things).

[JB]

I taught myself basic programming on the TI.  It was my first computer.  My friend and I would spends hours and hours creating these elaborate sprite-based animations (basically little movies) in TI basic.  Our first code was extremely bulky and our techniques crude, but we improved rapidly.  I vividly remember the moment when I realized I could easily move sprites using for-next loops.  It seems so obvious now, but at the time it was a real "eureka!" moment, one of those moments when you feel your brain grow. We saved those animations on cassettes, which, over the years, were thrown away or re-used for something else.  I'd really love to have those cassettes now.  I don't think there could be anything more nostalgic than running the programs you wrote when you were 11 years old. 

 

I didn't see extended basic until I got back into collecting.  I can only imagine what effect it's sprite-manipulation sub-programs would have had on those animations... COINC, MAGNIFY, MOTION

WAitwaitwait... the 4a had a demo scene?!?!?!

[Christophero Sly]

I taught myself basic programming on the TI.  It was my first computer.  My friend and I would spends hours and hours creating these elaborate sprite-based animations (basically little movies) in TI basic.  Our first code was extremely bulky and our techniques crude, but we improved rapidly.  I vividly remember the moment when I realized I could easily move sprites using for-next loops.  It seems so obvious now, but at the time it was a real "eureka!" moment, one of those moments when you feel your brain grow. We saved those animations on cassettes, which, over the years, were thrown away or re-used for something else.  I'd really love to have those cassettes now.  I don't think there could be anything more nostalgic than running the programs you wrote when you were 11 years old. 

 

I didn't see extended basic until I got back into collecting.  I can only imagine what effect it's sprite-manipulation sub-programs would have had on those animations... COINC, MAGNIFY, MOTION

WAitwaitwait... the 4a had a demo scene?!?!?!

918488[/snapback]

 

[blastermaster]

Thanks! Now i know i will have fun with this console. Alos how hard is it to learn how to program? I have always wanted to know...anyway to teach myself?

 

Thanks!

 

~Jon

[SteveW]

Actually, there were some nice animated type programs on the TI, one series that stands out in my memory was some Christmas animations with Woodstock from the Peanuts comic strip.

 

Some of the magazines out at the time the TI was still on the market had program listings with some pretty good games. The old 99'er Magazine was pretty good, and it's successor, Home Computer Magazine, had even better games. MICROPendium had a few decent games, like Tetris style games, written in Extended Basic. There were one or two other magazines I used to read regularly, but nearly all their games were fairly lame.

[+Mockduck]

I don't have any sort of list in front of me, and it's been years since i actually had a TI99-4a (my twin brother got it instead of me and ended up killing it in college).

 

But - my list of games i really liked were:

 

Chisolm Trail

Hunt the Wumpus

Defender (nice port, actually)

Munch Man

TI Invaders (agree with the above poster - great version of the game)

There was a soccer game me and my brother played a lot, too, can't remember if it was just called "Soccer" or not

[Christophero Sly]

There was a soccer game me and my brother played a lot, too, can't remember if it was just called "Soccer" or not

919194[/snapback]

Probably "Indoor Soccer".

[JB]

I believe it's just "Soccer"

[ComputerCollector]

Ive got 2 TI994/a computers in new condition. They are quite nice, but Im still looking for some more software for it. Are these Y adapters hard to find? I usually have to use the keyboard to play the games.

[jaybird3rd]

Ive got 2 TI994/a computers in new condition. They are quite nice, but Im still looking for some more software for it. Are these Y adapters hard to find? I usually have to use the keyboard to play the games.

920066[/snapback]

I've seen them on eBay once or twice, but I don't know of anyone selling them now (or any other place to buy them). I happen to have one, and from the looks of it there aren't any kind of sophisticated electronics inside. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to wire your own, but I'm afraid I don't know the pinouts (perhaps the TI hardware site I referenced earlier in this thread can help in this regard).

[JB]

Ive got 2 TI994/a computers in new condition. They are quite nice, but Im still looking for some more software for it. Are these Y adapters hard to find? I usually have to use the keyboard to play the games.

920066[/snapback]

I've seen them on eBay once or twice, but I don't know of anyone selling them now (or any other place to buy them). I happen to have one, and from the looks of it there aren't any kind of sophisticated electronics inside. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to wire your own, but I'm afraid I don't know the pinouts (perhaps the TI hardware site I referenced earlier in this thread can help in this regard).

920432[/snapback]

Cousin used to have a 1-controller adapter. Was just a pair of DB-9s and a few wires.

 

Let me see if I can find the pinout...

Ah...

http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpa...conjoy_ti_99_4a

The test lines should be tied to ground on the relative Atari sticks.