TI-99/4A Roms

[Toucan]

There has been talk here (and in other places) about the lack of a site that includes TI-99/4A cartridge ROMs. Well, after distributing a ROM package through e-mail, I decided it was time to put up a site with the stuff The site is located at http://ti99.freewebpage.org/ . If anyone has any problems with downloading ROMs or getting them to run, let me know. Not sure if this is the forum for this or not, but if not feel free to move the post to the proper section. I posted here since this is where I noticed people asking for the ROMs.

Edited September 14, 2006 by Toucan

[AussieAtari]

Great list (although a bit risky perhaps?)! Now all I have to do is find a multi-cart for the TI and I'll be a very happy camper.

[jetset]

Awesome job man!

 

Any chance of getting them all in one file?

[Bill Brasky]

I think you can get them all in one file on 99er.net .

[+remowilliams]

I decided it was time to put up a site with the stuff The site is located at http://ti99.freewebpage.org/

Cool - nice work

 

Great list (although a bit risky perhaps?)! Now all I have to do is find a multi-cart for the TI and I'll be a very happy camper.

Good luck with a multicart. I really wish someone would make one, but the poor old TI is the red headed stepchild of classic computing.

[AussieAtari]

I decided it was time to put up a site with the stuff The site is located at http://ti99.freewebpage.org/

Cool - nice work

 

Great list (although a bit risky perhaps?)! Now all I have to do is find a multi-cart for the TI and I'll be a very happy camper.

Good luck with a multicart. I really wish someone would make one, but the poor old TI is the red headed stepchild of classic computing.

 

- very good analogy!

[Bill Brasky]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

[Toucan]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

 

Probably not. But since some images come with more than one file, I just zipped them all so everything came in a package. Anyway, from many of the pages I've seen they seem to ZIP the files, so I just followed their lead considering I never hosted a site like this for ROMs. Is there something I should know about placing a ZIP file on-line, such as if you can't download them on a MAC?

[Shannon]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

 

Prevents bad downloads due to the built in crc checking.

[JB]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

 

Prevents bad downloads due to the built in crc checking.

Not really. It just means you have a corrupt ZIP instead of a corrupt binary.

Edited September 18, 2006 by JB

[Pixelboy]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

 

Prevents bad downloads due to the built in crc checking.

Not really. It just means you have a corrupt ZIP instead of a corrupt binary.

Yeah, but Winzip will tell you for sure if you have a corrupt zip file, while a corrupt binary is more of a problem: Does a ROM fail to work because it's corrupt or because the emulator just doesn't support it properly? Not always obvious...

[Shannon]

Was it really necessary to ZIP roms that are this minuscule?

 

Prevents bad downloads due to the built in crc checking.

Not really. It just means you have a corrupt ZIP instead of a corrupt binary.

Yeah, but Winzip will tell you for sure if you have a corrupt zip file, while a corrupt binary is more of a problem: Does a ROM fail to work because it's corrupt or because the emulator just doesn't support it properly? Not always obvious...

 

What he said...

[Bruce Tomlin]

Not really. It just means you have a corrupt ZIP instead of a corrupt binary.

It means you knowing you have a corrupt zip rather than not knowing that you have a corrupt binary.

[Bill Brasky]

It means I have to unzip all of these which is a PITA. I'd rather just redownload a rom if it was bad.

[+remowilliams]

It means I have to unzip all of these which is a PITA. I'd rather just redownload a rom if it was bad.

How would you know for sure it was bad?

 

Without zips (or some sort of hashing) there is no way to ensure the ongoing integrity of the binaries, or to ensure that any particular downloaded copy matches the original.

Edited September 18, 2006 by remowilliams

[Shannon]

Downloading a bad ROM is PITA...

 

Winners download CRC checked files..

 

[JB]

It means I have to unzip all of these which is a PITA. I'd rather just redownload a rom if it was bad.

How would you know for sure it was bad?

 

Without zips (or some sort of hashing) there is no way to ensure the ongoing integrity of the binaries, or to ensure that any particular downloaded copy matches the original.

I'd say feed 'em to a ROM auditing tool, but there don't seem to be any for the 99.

 

Honestly, I've never had a bad download that successfully completed.

Edited September 19, 2006 by JB

[Shannon]

It can happen, believe me. And what's the big deal anyways? Just select them all, right click, and pick "unzip here". It's not gonna kill you.

[+remowilliams]

It can happen, believe me. And what's the big deal anyways? Just select them all, right click, and pick "unzip here". It's not gonna kill you.

Yup. And since TI99 roms in particular usually have more than one file per game - would you really rather download 2-3 files for each game rather than one zip?

 

Just get yourself some command line version of unzip for your OS and open a command shell/terminal window, change to the directory you downloaded all your zips in and do something like 'pkzipc -extract *.zip' or 'unzip *.zip'

 

Problem solved!

[JB]

Ya know... I'm actually kind of insulted that there isn't a GoodTI99.

 

Not that Cowering's databases are all that great, but given some of the OTHER stuff that has a "good set"(The SuperVision? Is that some kind of a JOKE?), the 4a is more than deserving.

[AussieAtari]

I have not heard of these "good sets", could you eleborate for the ignorant please JB?

[Shannon]

A guy named Cowering released a set of programs know as the "Good" sets which contain a database of CRC's for each given system that he has created a good tool for. The database contains info like the ROM name, country, whether it is a good dump or bad dump, etc.

 

Most people and/or sites usually carry ROM's in Good format, for a certain amount of uniformity. Goodsets are pretty good, but I personally the no-intro sets because they filter out most of the junk.

[JB]

A guy named Cowering released a set of programs know as the "Good" sets which contain a database of CRC's for each given system that he has created a good tool for. The database contains info like the ROM name, country, whether it is a good dump or bad dump, etc.

 

Most people and/or sites usually carry ROM's in Good format, for a certain amount of uniformity. Goodsets are pretty good, but I personally the no-intro sets because they filter out most of the junk.

As far as issues go...

 

 

The "Good sets" are often carried to the exclusion of all other files on ROM image sites, making it far harder than it should be to find a ROM image Cowering hasn't added(or a system he doesn't support).

 

On a related note, bad dumps that should have long faded into obscurity are still passed around on a regular basis so people can have a complete good set. This is especially prevalent on the NES, where over 50% of the images are bad dumps or hacks.

 

The above are probably the largest and most commonly recognized issues.

 

 

Good naming schemes are inconsistent, and sometimes the names are just plain wrong.

 

His "informative" extension codes are also iffy. Most notably the PD code, which allegedly designates public domain but is applied to almost every app that didn't see a commercial release.

 

The Good tools are also the single largest propogator of the "The Japanese Nintendo Power magazine gave away SNES games in Japan" myth, because Cowering believes it to be so and informs everyone of this nonexistant business practice of a non-existant publication in his documentation(all the good tools share a single set of documentation).

 

 

For untold millena, GoodNES ignored file headers, which are critical to proper NES emulation(as they provide details of the physical construction of the cart, which has signifigant bearing on how the NES behaves).

This seems to have been rectified in the most recent versions, but I haven't tested to see how well it works.

 

 

Cowering has drawn heavy flak from fan translators by including their works in his efforts. The reasoning behind this is two-fold.

1. Lacking the attached documentation, there's no way for people to know where to get updates or important information, and again it encourages the propagation of bad images that should die(like beta translations and ones that just don't work right).

2. It also damages the history of the games, as many people have been led to believe that the fan translations were original commercial releases just because they're in the good set.

 

 

 

I think that's all the notable arguments.

 

 

 

As far as competition goes...

 

NESToy was everything GoodNES should have been.

It's database covered far fewer games, but it had proper header info for many of them, and featured header repair and editing options(as far as I know, the current GoodNES can read headers, but not fix them, and that's only been a recent addition).

It hasn't been touched since 2000, though, and I seem to recall the database having some rather notable holes in it.

 

NSRT has become the preferred SNES tool. It's like NESToy VS GoodNES, only with a more comprehensive database and an even wider feature gap.

I think it's rather telling that Cowering was throwing a public hissyfit over Nach "stealing his database" back when NSRT was new.

[Shannon]

Yeah the good sets certainly do make it harder to find some stuff. I'm surprised you didn't go into a big long description of how incorrect the good2600 stuff is. I've been going thru them and there are errors all over the place as well as the aforementioned flaws.

 

Of course, tosec sets are far worse..... Don't get my going on the atari 8-bit sets.

[JB]

I haven't even looked at Good2600, honestly.

Not surprised it's more wrong than everything else, though. General lack of title screens increases the margin for error.

 

 

 

Fact that I used to be very big on SNES emulation makes that more prominent.

NES headers was something I stumbled upon by accident. Rather surprised me once I realized how many "unemulated" games worked perfectly after you fixed the headers.

 

 

 

And the Nintendo Power thing is a long-running peeve of mine more than anything else, honestly.