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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]

#61

Post by morganvachon »

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…

I feel like you're my Doppelgänger, everything you just wrote mirrors my experience. I got mine at six years old in 1983.

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

#62

Post by LocalH »

YZF wrote: post #45
arundelo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Amiga used the 68K so it was more powerful than the previous microcomputers that were mostly 6502 (some Z80).

Although to be fair, when referring solely to BASIC performance, MS's AmigaBasic was complete trash.

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

#63

Post by kens »

The TI-99/4A uses the TMS9900 16-bit processor. I looked it up on Wikipedia and was surprised to see that this chip requires a four-phase clock. Anyone know why it uses a four-phase clock?

The reason I'm curious is that four-phase circuitry was a big thing in the late 1960s, used in mostly-forgotten early MOS computers such as the Autonetics D-200 and the Four-Phase Systems AL1 chip. But I'd be surprised to find TI using four-phase logic in 1976.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-phase_logic

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

#64

Post by ams6110 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #52
13of40 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was my family's first computer and the one I wrote my first programs on. Three things that stuck in my craw about it were: 1. BASIC supported PEEK but there was no POKE. 2. You could save files to a disk but you had to remember the file names because there was no way to list them. 3. Lower case letters were just small versions of uppercase. For the last one, a year or so ago I actually found a dump of the Apple II…

If you plugged in the Mini Memory cartridge, it added a POKE command to TI BASIC. There was a common cartridge, "Disk Manager 2", which gave you common DOS-like disk management utilities. The lowercase font really was absurd. A few programs redefined them with much more pleasant fonts. The "Adventure" module for running the Scott Adams text adventures comes to mind.

The Editor/Assembler program gave you a better font as well as 40 colummns instead of the normal 32.

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

#65

Post by ams6110 »

ddrager wrote: post #40

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

First "real" program I ever wrote -- at age 12 or 13 was on TI-99/4A. I've never been into video games so I wrote a program to manage my paper route. Back then there were these paper publications called newspapers and kids could get jobs that entailed walking around the neighborhood without adult supervision and delivering the papers to houses. Also collecting money once a month.

I had a customer file (on cassette tape of course) and it tracked how much each customer owed, etc.

It was a spaghetti mess I'm sure as I knew nothing about programming but I got it to work.

Of course a paper ledger would have been just as good (and probably faster to use) but where's the fun in that?

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

#66

Post by svachalek »

joakleaf wrote: post #7

I grew up and learned basic on a TI-99/4a. It was a wonderful and simple time... but TI Basic was so incredibly slow. At least Extended Basic allowed you to use sprites and overall felt a bit faster. In TI Basic, you accessed the more interesting parts of the machine "Call" functions (e.g. "Call Color", "Call Char", "Call hchar", etc.), and I always found Commodores peek/poke mess very primitive and a bit more inacce…

Yeah this brought back fun memories. I learned to program on the TI-99/4a and I can still visualize hex numbers as bitmaps because that's how you had to program graphics on the thing.

I actually got a TI program published by Enter magazine but Enter went defunct before it got to print, and later appeared in 3-2-1 Contact magazine instead. "Rainbow Rectangles", can't remember the publication date. Not quite (cough) as cool as this demo.

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

#67

Post by kdahlhaus »

to3m wrote: post #58
kaspm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have my first BASIC program for the TI-99 stored on a cassette in storage. My grandpa, who was an engineer at Parsons in Pasadena, bought it for me when I was 5 years old. My then 9-year old cousin then taught me how to program (Hi David, if you're reading this). We're both engineers now. The program, incidentally, counts to 1,000,000 and outputs each number on the screen, it took 3 days to run.

Well, the cassette is certainly probably still where you put it...

My brother dropped off a box he saved for me a few years ago that contained my old TI tapes. A person on the TI-99/4A user group offered to read some in and provide emulator disk images. It actually worked and I was able to play the game I wrote back in 1982 again. Here's a screen shot http://i.imgur.com/4d74DqX.jpg

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

#68

Post by bitwize »

nsxwolf wrote: post #54
happy-go-lucky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TI-99/4A was an enhanced version of TI-99/4. http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

I have a TI-99/4. The keyboard is so terrible the computer is nearly unusable. It's much worse than the keyboards that usually make the "bad keyboards" list - I'd happily spend all day typing on an Atari 400 or an IBM PCjr. It makes the Timex Sinclair feel like some expensive Cherry MX board.

The 4A's keyboard is much better.

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

#69

Post by nsxwolf »

bitwize wrote: post #68
nsxwolf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a TI-99/4. The keyboard is so terrible the computer is nearly unusable. It's much worse than the keyboards that usually make the "bad keyboards" list - I'd happily spend all day typing on an Atari 400 or an IBM PCjr. It makes the Timex Sinclair feel like some expensive Cherry MX board.

The 4A's keyboard is much better.

It really is! Especially the black ones. They used a few different manufacturers, but all the ones I have feel pretty good.

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

#70

Post by nsxwolf »

ams6110 wrote: post #64
nsxwolf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you plugged in the Mini Memory cartridge, it added a POKE command to TI BASIC. There was a common cartridge, "Disk Manager 2", which gave you common DOS-like disk management utilities. The lowercase font really was absurd. A few programs redefined them with much more pleasant fonts. The "Adventure" module for running the Scott Adams text adventures comes to mind.

The Editor/Assembler program gave you a better font as well as 40 colummns instead of the normal 32.

That text mode is a lot nicer, but you give up sprite support to use it.
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