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Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

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Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#31

Post by wsc981 »

incanus77 wrote: post #26
wsc981 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father owned a TI-99/4A and used it to teach me some programming. Afterwards I mostly just copied listings from the TI-jdingen magazine (published by the Dutch TI users group TIGG [0]). Together with my dad I also made a small game. Nothing to impressive. Basically just a ship that automatically moved from the left to the right side of the screen. The player could press a button to shoot a projectile on randomly g…

What sorts of modernizations would you like to see? Things removed (GOTO) or things added?

Mostly stuff you see in other modern BASIC variants. Like line numbers removed. Labels for GOSUB. Multiline scope for things like IF THEN ELSE, etc... GOTO should be removed as well. And I'd like to see a BASIC specifically developed for making games and also working for iOS, Android, ... Perhaps such a BASIC language already exists by the way, I haven't done a whole lot of research on this.

Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#32

Post by S_A_P »

incanus77 wrote: post #3

Not to denigrate the post, but the TI-99/4A did color out of the box; this post is talking about a modern adapter board to work with a modern display instead of TI's proprietary monitor or a TV. I know because I first programmed on a TI-99/4A and we didn't have the space nor free connection to hook it to the living room TV, so I used a 13" B&W TV in my room for years before ever seeing the color that it was capable o…

I think his headline was possibly poorly phrased- I parsed his post as “getting a TI-99/4a to output to a modern monitor without using an RF modulator.” I also had this as my first computer. I also remember getting infuriated by the game “the attack”. I was made fun of because it had TI munch man and not the “real” pac man.

I think my brother ended up with ours and I kinda want to see if I could find one again...

Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#33

Post by JdeBP »

13of40 wrote: post #16
bitwize wrote: post #5

Props to you. The TI-99/4A was my second -- and longest childhood -- computer. Getting one working again so perfectly warms my heart. Fun fact about the TI-99/4A: It was actually fast , sporting a 16-bit CPU in an 8-bit era. The BASIC interpreter was slow because it, like many TI-99/4A programs, was written in a sort of interpreted bytecode that could live in video RAM/ROM. The CPU itself had access to only 256 bytes…

You sound like you know a bit about TI-99s, so let me ask you this: Do you have any idea why they made the lower case character set be small upper case letters instead of real lowercase like the Apple II or C64? A couple of years ago I did a Sunday morning project of inserting the Apple II font into the TI-99 ROM to run on an emulator, and other than having to shift the j's and g's up a pixel or two it worked beautif…

I'd be interested to see whether you got an answer to that on Retrocomputing Stack Exchange.

* https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ti...

Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#34

Post by JdeBP »

codezero wrote: post #4
incanus77 wrote: post #3

Not to denigrate the post, but the TI-99/4A did color out of the box; this post is talking about a modern adapter board to work with a modern display instead of TI's proprietary monitor or a TV. I know because I first programmed on a TI-99/4A and we didn't have the space nor free connection to hook it to the living room TV, so I used a 13" B&W TV in my room for years before ever seeing the color that it was capable o…

I went there with the assumption this was a modern tweak, but nonetheless enjoyed learning a bit about the hardware and the video output situation.

It seems to be a perennial retrocomputing thing.

For example: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/15915/wha...

Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#35

Post by incanus77 »

wsc981 wrote: post #31
incanus77 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sorts of modernizations would you like to see? Things removed (GOTO) or things added?

Mostly stuff you see in other modern BASIC variants. Like line numbers removed. Labels for GOSUB. Multiline scope for things like IF THEN ELSE, etc... GOTO should be removed as well. And I'd like to see a BASIC specifically developed for making games and also working for iOS, Android, ... Perhaps such a BASIC language already exists by the way, I haven't done a whole lot of research on this.

I'm curious, then: why not use the modern variants? What is it about the TI BASIC experience that you'd rather have?

Reason I'm asking is I'm working actively on a TBA project around retro-ish BASIC hardware/software as a learning / confidence-building tool. I'm genuinely curious.

Related: have you seen the PICO-8 system? It's Lua, but it's specifically designed for games, has some nice constraints that encourage a certain retro look & feel, and is pretty approachable.

Re: Getting Color Output out of a TI-99/4A

#36

Post by wsc981 »

incanus77 wrote: post #35
wsc981 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly stuff you see in other modern BASIC variants. Like line numbers removed. Labels for GOSUB. Multiline scope for things like IF THEN ELSE, etc... GOTO should be removed as well. And I'd like to see a BASIC specifically developed for making games and also working for iOS, Android, ... Perhaps such a BASIC language already exists by the way, I haven't done a whole lot of research on this.

I'm curious, then: why not use the modern variants? What is it about the TI BASIC experience that you'd rather have? Reason I'm asking is I'm working actively on a TBA project around retro-ish BASIC hardware/software as a learning / confidence-building tool. I'm genuinely curious. Related: have you seen the PICO-8 system? It's Lua, but it's specifically designed for games, has some nice constraints that encourage a c…

I kinda like to see the same kind of environment I guess. But somewhat improved for the modern age.

Recently I was discussing with my brother that I got kinda annoyed that software got so complex these days. The simplicity of the TI-99/4A stuff was kinda nice. It was pretty easy to get some nice results quickly. The language was quite limited which made it easy to learn. For games I guess it's kinda nicer to work with PNGs these days then to figure out what HEX codes to use to draw a sprite, but with tooling that could be eased a bit. The resolution of the TI-99/4A made this stuff more manageable as well I guess.

Yes, I find the PICO-8 charming, perhaps that's kinda what I'm looking for. But PICO-8 might maybe be too limited. If I'm not mistaken the screen resolution seems lower than what the TI had, causing the graphics to become quite ugly (imo).

Actually I've been contemplating on creating my own TI-BASIC interpreter as well. And after finishing the interpreter, my goal would be to modernise the language for my purposes. But I haven't really started on that yet (and not yet sure I will, since there's other stuff I work on as well). Another area that I would improve upon would be sound generation, since the sounds of these machines aren't too easy on the ears.

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