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

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

#31

Post by Olivier26 »

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…

Well, Parsec is very far from this demo, if the window is small it's for speed. The demo is full screen, which is impressive. And Parsec is coherent with what the hardware had to offer for the 3D those years, like Elite.

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

#33

Post by apo »

Good times. I owned one of these.

The TI-99/4A was never very popular, but there was one store called "The Bach Company" on San Antonio Road in Palo Alto that specialized in selling hardware and software for it.

It's easy to forget just how hard it was to get software for a home computer in the early 1980s. If you had a modem, then you could use bulletin boards, but the first 300 baud models (plus required RS-232 interface) cost even more than the computer itself and so were out of reach for me at least.

One of the things the Bach Company sold was 99/4A software on audio cassette. It was packaged in a plastic bag along with a paper printout brochure. Even though I was just a kid, looking back I'm amazed that it never once occurred to me that I could sell software the same way.

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

#34

Post by ssambros »

apo wrote: post #33

Good times. I owned one of these. The TI-99/4A was never very popular, but there was one store called "The Bach Company" on San Antonio Road in Palo Alto that specialized in selling hardware and software for it. It's easy to forget just how hard it was to get software for a home computer in the early 1980s. If you had a modem, then you could use bulletin boards, but the first 300 baud models (plus required RS-232 int…

> there was one store called "The Bach Company" on San Antonio Road in Palo Alto

I think the store is still there. I bought an HP 50g calculator from them on eBay with pickup a couple of years ago.

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

#35

Post by DigitalJack »

Severian wrote: post #30

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 c…

Similar story here. Although I didn't get into programming until I got an Apple //e a few years later.

I remember typing in a program on the 99/4A (a game called downhill ski or something like that) from BYTE magazine, or some such magazine. I remember the pain of debugging typos... The hours it took typing it in.

I was expecting something like one of the cartridge games to pop out. I was quite disappointed with the fact that it was ascii, the character was a > or Years later when I got the Apple, my expectations had been tempered by the previous experience.

Of interest is that my sister did not get into electronics or programming. We both played games on both computers, but took different paths in life. I'm not sure if she would say now that the computers had much impact on her life direction. She's a medical doctor now, fwiw.

It's part of the reason I cringe whenever I hear someone on the internets pleading for information on how to teach their kid to program. I think being exposed to such environments is great, but it might just be that your kid is more suited to being a doctor, lawyer, teacher, fire fighter, what have you.

There is a world of difference between "teaching my kid to program" vs "showing/exposing them to the awesome world of programming."

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

#36

Post by Olivier26 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #26
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 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 T…

> TI with the Speech Synthesizer and the 32K RAM expansion is vanilla to me

Agree

> graphics chip with some significant new features on it, I'd agree that wouldn't count.

Agree too. If the graphics chip was so powerful, it's hard to understand why it was so underused, and not integrated in other microcomputers of this time. The video memory of the TI was 16KB, I had several computers with this size, and you couldn't render with this quality, even statically because at 256*192 it's less than 2,6 bits per pixel. And the number of sprites is more than impressive.

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

#37

Post by Olivier26 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #26
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 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 T…

Apparently the TMS9918 powered the MSX too, I will watch some demoes.

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

#38

Post by joakleaf »

Olivier26 wrote: post #31
joakleaf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, Parsec is very far from this demo, if the window is small it's for speed. The demo is full screen, which is impressive. And Parsec is coherent with what the hardware had to offer for the 3D those years, like Elite.

Parsec was 2D horizontal smooth scrolling. It wasn't full screen, but the scrolling screens in this demo generally contains repetitive graphics, which would allow them to use a number of possible tricks.

I actually downloaded and tried the demo on the Classic99 emulator, and it works exactly as advertised.

Would love to see actual hardware demo though.

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

#40

Post by ddrager »

Oh wow, the TI-99/4A, I learned BASIC on this computer! If you didn't have the tape storage unit, which could save data onto an audio cassette, you had to re-type your program into the computer if the power went out or unit was reset.

It also had an external voice processor as an addon which was really creepy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUPkCNcT1Yw

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