Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#21

Post by Narishma » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #18

arundelo wrote: post #15

(Not relevant to this demo in particular, just a piece of trivia I only learned in the past few years:) It makes sense to think of the TI-99 as part of the 8-bit microcomputer boom of the 1980s (Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80), but it actually had a 16-bit processor! (Which communicated with most of the rest of the computer through an 8-bit bus.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A#Fir...

Yeah, 16-bit data bus but only 16-bit address bus. So still has the limitation of 64k memory which was really the chief defect of machines of that era.

I wouldn't call it a defect. It's just a limitation, which could and did get worked around to a certain extent with various bank switching schemes.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#22

Post by nsxwolf » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:13 PM UTC

I've waited a long time to see a "real demo" on the TI-99/4A so this is just super cool to see.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#23

Post by jcl » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:19 PM UTC

happy-go-lucky wrote: post #6

HerrMonnezza wrote: post #4

Does the demo run at this speed on a real TI-99/4A? The notes say the video has been recorded on a MAME emulator...

You may want to check this out: http://hackaday.com/2017/01/30/dont-mess-with-texas-the-ti-9...

Lovely summary, thanks! I kind of wish the video description linked either to that page or directly to the creator's linked Pouet comment, as they do a pretty good job explaining why the demo is significant.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=68783#c782205

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#24

Post by nsxwolf » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

joakleaf wrote: post #19

Olivier26 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK for the 2017 demo, but the TMS9900 was slower than the Z80/6502 of the same time, because it was a 16-bit microprocessor with a 8-bit bus, and registers were mapped to the RAM. This demo required power, and is very far from all other TI99/4A games, and most of them were written in assembly (the basic was too slow). So I still think it's a fake, or it is running on a deeply modified emulator, or with hardware exten…

I hear you regarding the speed... I had a TI and I learned to program on it, so I know how amazingly slow it was! They do mention that they used extra RAM from the floppy drive controller which would help! I don't see anything that makes me think it is completely impossible. Lots of the more complicated full screen effects could probably be made by altering character bitmaps (which was pretty fast). Parsec managed sm…

A mistake on that article... the 32K RAM expansion is a separate card, not part of the floppy controller. They were almost always sold together, however.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#25

Post by dbg31415 » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

grhmc wrote: post #17

Fairly unrelated, but fun: "Don't mess with Texas" is a long-standing anti-littering campaign.

* Don't Mess with Texas - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Mess_with_Texas

"The campaign is credited with reducing litter on Texas highways roughly 72% between 1986 and 1990."

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#26

Post by nsxwolf » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

Olivier26 wrote: post #13

joakleaf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demo was credited as 2017, so I don't think you can really use the bouncing ball or Wolf3D as reasons. You could actually buy a speech synthesizer for the TI. Yes, the demo is impressive compared to what else was available on the machine, but it actually had a (underutilized) 3 Mhz CPU and pretty advanced graphics system. The TIs biggest problem was that it came with very little RAM, so you generally had to store…

OK for the 2017 demo, but the TMS9900 was slower than the Z80/6502 of the same time, because it was a 16-bit microprocessor with a 8-bit bus, and registers were mapped to the RAM. This demo required power, and is very far from all other TI99/4A games, and most of them were written in assembly (the basic was too slow). So I still think it's a fake, or it is running on a deeply modified emulator, or with hardware exten…

I don't have any problem believing this can run on real hardware. One of the programmers, Tursi, has done some amazing things that do indeed run on the real thing.

I'm not sure what you're counting as "vanilla", but a TI with the Speech Synthesizer and the 32K RAM expansion is vanilla to me. Those are utterly ubiquitous and period-correct OEM upgrades.

If it required the F18A, which is an FPGA implementation of the TMS9918 graphics chip with some significant new features on it, I'd agree that wouldn't count. That chip makes it a totally different graphics machine.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#27

Post by arundelo » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

Narishma wrote: post #20

arundelo wrote: post #15

(Not relevant to this demo in particular, just a piece of trivia I only learned in the past few years:) It makes sense to think of the TI-99 as part of the 8-bit microcomputer boom of the 1980s (Commodore 64, Apple II, TRS-80), but it actually had a 16-bit processor! (Which communicated with most of the rest of the computer through an 8-bit bus.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A#Fir...

The contemporary of the Apple II and TRS-80 was the Commodore PET. The C64 came much later.

I'm talking about 8-bit microcomputers in general, from the late seventies to the mid-to-late eighties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer#Notable_home_com...

EDIT: I owned a Commodore 64 and a TRS-80 in the eighties, and used an Apple IIe at school. These were all programmable in Basic, and although the C64 was clearly the most powerful, they were all similar in power compared to, say, an Amiga.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#28

Post by Olivier26 » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

Flow wrote: post #14

Olivier26 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK for the 2017 demo, but the TMS9900 was slower than the Z80/6502 of the same time, because it was a 16-bit microprocessor with a 8-bit bus, and registers were mapped to the RAM. This demo required power, and is very far from all other TI99/4A games, and most of them were written in assembly (the basic was too slow). So I still think it's a fake, or it is running on a deeply modified emulator, or with hardware exten…

Download it and see for yourself. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=68783

That's an interesting proposition. I've installed MAME but I need to hunt for the BIOS.

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#29

Post by awfgylbcxhrey » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

Olivier26 wrote: post #5

This is an Amiga demo, the TI-99/4A wasn't so fast.

This would be appallingly bad for an Amiga demo. The demo scene is alive and well, teaching old hardware new tricks decades after it was released.

8088 MPH demoed 1,000 colors on CGA a couple of years ago:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y

Re: Don't Mess with Texas – TI-99/4A Megademo [video]

#30

Post by Severian » Mon, Jan 30, 2017, 4:49 PM UTC

I spent many, many hours with my family's TI-99/4A. I think my parents got it from Radioshack, as we had a Realistic tape deck to store programs with it. It was the base model with the speech synthesizer.

It was the first computer I had ever used, and learned to program in BASIC at around 6 or 7 years old. I don't think I would be interested in programming and electronic circuits (and by extension, electronic music composition) if it wasn't for that early exposure.

This is a great demo to see. You almost never hear of the 99/4A anymore.