Thanks again Kevin, it was a lot of fun and yes, the tutorial tape was quite good! I actually wanted to go through the whole thing but when I saw I was 20+ minutes in after just one part, I knew I was going to have to jump ahead. That tape deck is very reliable too, I'm sure it'll come in handy in the future as well.
@@8_Bit: Can I use any cassette player in order to read game tapes to a pc? If yes, How do I cannect a cassette player to a PC in order for it to read the data that is on it. What kind of cords would I need?
@@DanielBrosman08211986 Any cassette player should work but I find it works best with a mono player, rather than stereo. But if you only have stereo, you should be able to record in stereo and then in your recording software (like Audacity) just choose the left or right track, whatever looks like a stronger signal. For cables, the PC usually has a 3.5mm female jack so you need a cable with a 3.5 mm male jack on one end, and then whatever your cassette deck requires on the other end (usually another 3.5 mm jack, or RCA style plugs).
Dear Robin, do you have any idea on how to backup files on a computer using a traditional cassette deck and audacity? How can I encode the files (txt. doc.) to be recorded on a cassette? What software in addition to audacity can I use to get a reliable encoding and decoding of my files? My idea is to backup important files for posterity and also 80’s awesome nostalgia. Thank you in advance 😊📼
Through the magic of editing, nobody will know I actually plunged into a week-long depression at that moment, and only finally managed to complete recording the episode yesterday.
#SAVEONCESAVEOFTEN I remember as a kid I was typing one of those really long machine code listing's in compute magazine and the c64 crashed or something, didn't save..... that really hurt.
"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over today?" "No, Officer, I don't." "Well sir, you were 15 lines over the line number limit back there. Hand over your license, insurance, and retro computer, please."
At 2:48 it says "REMOVE BATTERIES WHEN STORING THIS UNIT OVER ONE MONTH" In the entire history of electronic devices, I believe that wiser words were never said. Kudos to GE. Anybody who has left batteries in a device knows exactly what this means :-) Anyway, Merry Christmas, Robin. 🎅🎄❤
Yeah, I see "nibble" fairly often. I'm definitely on team "nybble" as it's consistent with "byte". If there were more people using the spelling "bite" then I'd be more understanding of "nibble".
@@8_Bit Ironically, I've worked with computers since the late 1970's and I've NEVER seen nybble until very recently. Not that I really care. Nybble/nibble, Kernel/Kernal - as long as the idea is conveyed. Maybe a little bit annoyed that there are now new terms for what was kilobyte, megabyte, et al. So now it's kibibyte and mebibyte. "You know engineers, they just love to change things." - Bones Here's me wondering if the SI in SI units stands for "Special Idiot"
I've done a bit more looking into this with the help of archive dot org's text search. There is a lot of use of "nybble" from the late 1970s to the present day, particularly in Commodore literature and BYTE magazine, but I've found its use in everything from C++ books to Woz's earlier Apple books. It seems "nibble" got a huge boost from an Apple-related magazine choosing that spelling for its name (perhaps "nybble" was too silly, even if The Woz Himself preferred it?). A book titled "Introduction to VAX-11 architecture and assembly language" from 1987 claims the original spelling was "nybble" but "nibble" had "crept into the literature several years ago". There's likely days or weeks worth of research that could be done on this topic.
I just found my 1977 "Running Press Glossary of Computer Terms" that my grandfather got for me in the 1980s when the local library was selling it off cheap because it was obsolete. It only has an entry for "nybble", none for "nibble". Of course this is just one data point, but one I'm very nostalgic about :)
Extended BASIC got you sprites and stuff. Still no PEEK or POKE directly to hardware memory. Not-Polyoptics was a developer and publisher of TI-99/4A cassette and disk-based games, perhaps the best known one targeting the system that didn't have a license to publish carts. They published Winging It, a flight sim written in TI BASIC. Winging It had a realistic for the time and machine flight model, but no "out the window" display. A little map showed where you were and you had to reach target locations with your plane using that and your instruments. Back in the day the "standard" cassette recorder for TI-99/4A use was the Texas Instruments Program Recorder. It could've been a badge-engineered GE unit, I dunno. The official TI monitor was a badge-engineered, modified Zenith color TV. The GE you demonstrated looks kind of like a miniature version of the Program Recorder. The volume and tone dials are VERY similar.
Since I started out with a 1541 I’ve got no experience or memories of tapes and I find them fascinating! I’d love to see a recreation of a gaming or programming session with tapes in “real time” with no fast forward so I can get a sense of how patient you had to be!
I think lots of people are nostalgic about it, if they grew up with it. Commodore computers had a slightly more advanced cassette system that prevented the audio from being heard in normal use, but I had experience hearing the loading from the cassette player speaker directly with my Timex/Sinclair 1000. Having it piped through the TV speaker wasn't something any of the few computers I owned back in the '80s did, but it's an interesting feature.
@@8_Bit i am definitely nostalgic, i got my first micro in ~1990 when i was maybe 5. A family friend gave it to me, he thought it was trash…i wish i still had it now
Interesting read on Wikipedia - that the TI 99/4A could have been really great if they weren't hungry to lock out anyone 3rd party software/hardware making the user purchase module after module made exclusively by TI. It had some very decent graphics (ColecoVision/Adam-esque) I'm curious to get one but for fun (pause) but my first 8 bit mirco-computer was the famed Commodore 64. My mother didn't know and got the right one I never knew I was getting. I was never the same again Dec 1983 (doubleplusgood) : )
The worst part was the clock speed at .6MHz. It was such a dog with full memory BASIC programs. At least the C128 had 2MHz mode that I took full advantage of.
TI's mainframe division was afraid of the competition from within the company. The TI-99/4A's powerful TMS9900 processor was actually a single-chip implementation of their TI-990 mainframe hardware. That's why the 99/4A got nerfed so bad -- to ensure another division didn't get pissy over consumers having access to such powerful hardware. And the CPU ran at 3 MHz, not .6 MHz. The BASIC was so dogshit slow because it ran in an interpreted bytecode called GPL which provided easier access to graphic memory, but which sucked as a general purpose programming object language. For an example of what the TMS9900 could do unfettered, look at Parsec: The TI-99/4A had no scrolling hardware. A machine language routine scrolled the background "by hand" by bit-shifting the patterns in memory as the game ran. Extended BASIC ameliorated some of the suck. It was faster and provided CALL PEEK, CALL LOAD, and CALL LINK -- roughly the equivalents of PEEK, POKE, and SYS in Commodore BASIC. But you needed a 32K RAM expansion to use those. You couldn't access hardware registers directly this way -- not without machine language routines called with CALL LINK -- but you could change some settings. There was a magic CALL LOAD that could change the number of active sprites, allowing you to reclaim some of the space in pattern memory that Extended BASIC ate up for sprite state.
If you noticed, the first number in the hex code was 7. The binary of 7 is 0111 and the second number was E. In binary 1110 is 14, and 14 in hexadecimal is E, so the first row of of pixels in the little character you just made is 01111110 which is 7E.
My first computer was a TI 99/4A (although I wanted a C64). I taught myself BASIC using the "Teach Yourself BASIC" tapes and manual when I was 10 years old. Had a lot of fun with that system, but then 1984 came and we got a good deal on a 512k Macintosh!
Bella(nice!) Robin! When a new video of yours pops up in the suggested video list it's always an epiphany, even if sometimes it talks of abstruse topics, not this case since basic is quite easy, and it's always interesting to see things about this less known and obscure micro computers. P.S.: it's nice that in the early days people sold commercially games written in plain basic, that is a thing that always faschinated me, and i like very much that you discover those things and show on the videos (like the Pet basic games too u showed sometimes ago, or this car-battle Ti99/4a game that seems to be written in basic). I suggest u to make an episode on Rox64, the first c64 game by famous game programmer Jeff Minter, it is totally written in basic2.0, and it would be nice to have one of your show and tells about it.
I know your channel is called 8-Bit Show And Tell, but I'm sure you know that the 99/4A was a 16-bit machine using the TMS9900 processor which was years ahead of its time. It's a shame that TI crippled the machine for cost reasons, but it was still capable of so much more than other machines of the time. As an example, the joystick port isn't just a joystick port. It's actually pins going into the TMS9901 Programmable Systems Interface. There have been assembly projects that turn the "joystick port" into an RS232 interface.
I have a Commodore 128 and yesterday I was finally able to run CP/M.. What a dream ! Never been able to use it back than !! Are you planning to do some videos about C128 , C16 or Plus/4 ? I'll love to see what you can extract from them !
In the UK, of course cassette games weren't that great, but I remember an excellent turn-based strategy game that didn't rely on speed. Cartridges were great, Alpiner was stunning!
funny. i came up with the reverse screwing in technique myself and was recently told by a professional: „wrong way. you don’t even know which way to turn?”
I bought mine in 1980/81 (?), and shortly thereafter bought the Expansion Box, and two floppy drives (clunk-clunk). I couldn't stand loading from cassette. I was living in Toronto at the time, and there was a pretty active TI994/a group, with meetings, and lots of disk trading. I still have the TI994/a, but sadly not the Expansion Box.
I wanted an expansion box but it was too expensive. Instead I saved up for a C128 in 1985. Too bad it was already obsolete when I bought it. I should have got the Amiga and learned C back then instead of learning it in 1998.
Great video, thanks Robin! Such an interesting way (and somewhat overcomplicated) of displaying the text in lesson 1. Carmageddon and Interstate '76 had to be my favourite car games, I always wanted a 'I brake for rainbows 🌈' bumper sticker!
I used to love to start loading in a program then stop the tape and fast forward or rewind and keep doing that until it stopped. Then list the program. All kinds of interesting random garbage. Sometimes it would overwrite graphic ram memory for cool effects. This could also be done by filling an edited line with the option command to make it longer than it should, thus overwriting into GRAM.
The color scheme of the Data Recorder is just the opposite of the one I owned. I had a 99/4a from the late beige/gray series, but my GE recorder was silver/black.
The C64 calculates line numbers by using multiples of 10 as their high bytes (for performance reasons, I think). So the highest possible line number is 25 * 256 * 10 - 1 = 63999, next theoretical line number would be 26 * 256 * 10 - 1 = 66559 which would obviously exceed the 16-bit limit. The calculation routine (at $a96b in ROM) also has an interesting bug that trips up the C64 if you try to enter a line number like e.g. 350720.
Don't stop me, don't stop me, ooh ooh ooh, I like it! Hey, do you really only continue because of patreon? That's a little depressing, don't feel Under Pressure! Thanks for another great video.
My sense of responsibility to my patrons, and the fact that they believe in what I'm doing enough to invest their money definitely helps me push through my own laziness and other obstacles to get videos made. They're not the only factor, but they're a very important part.
@@rotordave81 I always have fun during part of the process of making videos or podcasts :) But no matter what, there's some grind and work to aspects of making these things (parts of preparation and parts of editing in particular) that I would never pretend are fun. But I'm not miserable while doing those aspects either. Making stuff has its rewards in many areas, and anything worth doing takes work. No complaints. Sorry about the GU80s hiatus, hopefully won't be too long :)
One of these days, I'm going to dig out my TI-99/4a and hook up a digital recorder to the cassette line........just to capture some MP3s of that funky new age music.
What's the pinout for the cassette cable? Also do you need to make the cable so it can write as well, is it just a matter of wiring it for CS2 because CS1 is read only?
In the minute 14:13 it asks you the mode and you use 2 but for me it is 3 since you can do for a = 0 to 10000: next and wait the necessary seconds, without the need for a line number, that is, in direct mode In the minute 20:30 is exclusive to this machine and an incongruity, since the ":" sign only separates commands
It must be a TI99/4A time of year :) One of the things I picked up with my 2nd TI was a cassette cable but it broke out so you could hook up 2 decks. I've been waiting till I come across some tapes to look at it! **Edit** Now your hatred of the + combination makes sense!
Yes, lots of TI-99 videos lately I'm noticing! Cool about the double-deck cable, that'll be really neat to see in action when you get to it. Yeah, it's way too easy to hit + especially when you're using function to cursor around, and type quotes and some other things. Sometimes you need to press function to do what's on the front of the keys, sometimes it's what's printed above the key... not one of the better keyboard layouts, even though at least it's pretty nice to type on.
I believe TI basic blue is superior to commodore and locomotive basic blues. This may or may not be due to the fact that I like light blue. I actually think I prefer the font too! What a cool machine it was!
I still have all my cassettes with programs. One day I want to record them to an mp3 file so I can try to get my TI emulator to load and run them. I made a program to teach my fool proof Munch Man pattern that lets you play the game forever if you have the patience.
1/8 inch is correct or 3.5 mm if you think you need metric. The smaller one i think was 3/32 inch connector or ear phone plug. i tried to find one online with no sucess same with the smaller than quarter inch plug the ones used on language labs. These odd sizes were used also on the speaker box on movie projecters. Now noone even uses projectors with power point. I used to be on the AV crew in highschool and ran some of these devices. 73
15:56 On Commodores, it's odd that line numbers over 32767 are allowed, since this defies regular integer handling. They wouldn't need a special parser if they'd just used regular integers. 30:27 Numerology - all low numbers coincide with something else. 40:31 And they let you drive a real car?! 46:35 This program could have benefited from sprites in BASIC programs!
Values over 32767 ARE regular integers - just unsigned integers. However. The C-64 computer uses something different for line numbers. If memory serves, the line numbers are not entirely relevant. Lines in basic are stored as a singly-linked list. This allows for multiple behaviors including access of memory locations NOT within the allocated BASIC space and even outside the 64K space using bank switching. The C-64 did have memory expansion units, but they were very expensive. Parsers are parsers. Each one is a bit different even today.
A cursory look at the CaDD's Cyc (archive) didn't reveal anything about this Maxxam software house. I'll dig a bit deeper later and comment back should i find anything.
Yeah, nothing on Maxxam anywhere on the Cyc - so it would highly likely be useful to archive it. You might want to get in touch with CaDD Electronics to let them know too. Cool find..!
TI Extended Basic sped up operation quite a bit. I'd suggest you give it a go, quite a bit nicer the TI Basic. Still has the dumb OLD command for loading but it's still a nice investment.
It looks like there's a disk version of the Beginner's BASIC Tutor on archive dot org if you want to try downloading it: archive.org/details/Texas_Instruments_TI-99_4a_TOSEC_2012_04_23
My guess is they used a loop to change the color of the characters from black (default) to blue (background color) in a loop, then printed them with scrolling, and then changed the colors back to black. If you notice they appear in a staggered fashion. Character colors on the TI are in groups of 8 characters called "color sets". This method is just one of the tricks used in TI BASIC since it did not allow you to print anywhere on the screen - only on the bottom row.
Back when I was programming BASIC on my TRS-80, I was pretty nearly convinced that the function of the RUN command was, in fact, to print error messages on the screen. :/
The "OLD" command does make sense in a weird sort of way... but it's still rather jarring when you've already conceptualised it as a BASIC toolkit command synonymous with "UNNEW"! 🙂 -- JC
That video cable will work with C64, Atari 8 bit (and I guess Sega Master and Genesis) so you can interchange. The TI 99/4A has 12V on pin 1 (Luma on C64/Atari, Audio on Sega), so don't be mindful not to use that RCA plug or let it touch anything when using a cable with that pin connected to a 99/4A.
Edit: in italy the ti994a was not very popular and at last for me it was an obscure system, but here there is an appearence of ti994a basic and other small things in italodisco video from '80s: th-cam.com/video/1TymTB14iqo/w-d-xo.html
I see you fell victim to the TI-99/4A's bad keyboard layout, though not for the usual reason. I usually got my program zapped while trying to type a double quote ("), slightly overreaching, and catching the QUIT key instead. Imagine how aggravating that was after spending close to an hour editing a program that you hadn't saved because saving to cassette was too time consuming.
Oops, the ones you called "female" are actually _male,_ because even though you plug the device into the computer, the sex is determined by pins vs. pin sockets. So the computer end of it is male, just like the split ends of that Y adapter, while the device "plug" is really a jack instead, and it's female. This is like the mains plug on the outside wall of an RV, that you plug your female end of the extension cord onto.
Hi , love your content , but and please take this as constructive, get a better microphone and use some background music , really quiet is fine , your subs will go through the roof , your content is great , you have a really listenable voice , it’s just badly recorded and could do with some music
Can you be more specific about what's bad about the sound? I've had quite a few comments over the years from people who specifically say they like that I don't use background music and I'm not planning on starting unless a lot of people want it. My mic setup is specifically set up to catch the sounds of the keyboards, disk drives, cassettes, etc. of the vintage hardware I'm using, and I get a lot of positive comments about that aspect of the sound. The only thing I'm unhappy with is that the new overhead studio lights I got have fairly loud active cooling which I filter out in post, but I think that has the effect of making my voice a bit more harsh sounding. This particular episode has more noise in it while the TI-99/4A is turned on; its got noisy sound output and I didn't put a lot of time into chopping out all the humming silence between the beeps and loading sounds and sound effects.
@@8_Bit I don't think the sound is badly recorded. At least not from most of the recordings I've heard. Obviously there are moments when the process of making a video doesn't go as planned. I didn't really notice much in this video. If anything, the only problem with filtering outside noise (like lights) is that it can cause loss during filtering - not a lot you can do about that except experiment on what does and what doesn't work during editing. I hate extra music not relevant personally, and some YT algorithm will probably flag it.
Take no notice of Valley Robot. There's nothing worse than long videos that have needless continuous music in the background all the time, which is very jarring. Why have to have distractions all the time?
@@8_Bit the redording has very little middle or ottom end, it's sounds harsh and brittle, try putting an EQ on it or a compressor, a very tiny bit of reverb as well, this might help, background music is a personal preference, I don't mean booming diso music and jump cuts a, I mean tasteful quiet background music, it fills in any dead air, as I said it's only my opinion, I know nothing about making TH-cam videos with spoken word my videos are all music videos
About a decade ago I found a pair of TI 99 controllers new in box at habitat for humanity re-store, brand new never used they were absolute shit ... its just some foam and mylar keyboard membrane. I know there were a lot of absolute garbage input devices of the 80's but those things take the crown of "bad joysticks" imagine the feel of an atari 400 keyboard being pushed though a little over quarter inch of foam and not even the decency to give you a snap dome
@@8_Bit Through a mail order electronics closeout place my dad found a pair of joysticks that had a keypad on them. He rewired it to make it compatible with my TI. The actual stick was more responsive than the Atari style that was supposed to be used.
46:52 Would it slow down the computer too much if instructions were added to randomly move every target so it would be like you were actually chasing them ?
I'm so glad it worked! It was cool to finally see that basic tutorial tape, really quite good for the time I think.
Thanks again Kevin, it was a lot of fun and yes, the tutorial tape was quite good! I actually wanted to go through the whole thing but when I saw I was 20+ minutes in after just one part, I knew I was going to have to jump ahead. That tape deck is very reliable too, I'm sure it'll come in handy in the future as well.
@@8_Bit: Can I use any cassette player in order to read game tapes to a pc? If yes, How do I cannect a cassette player to a PC in order for it to read the data that is on it. What kind of cords would I need?
@@DanielBrosman08211986 Any cassette player should work but I find it works best with a mono player, rather than stereo. But if you only have stereo, you should be able to record in stereo and then in your recording software (like Audacity) just choose the left or right track, whatever looks like a stronger signal. For cables, the PC usually has a 3.5mm female jack so you need a cable with a 3.5 mm male jack on one end, and then whatever your cassette deck requires on the other end (usually another 3.5 mm jack, or RCA style plugs).
Dear Robin, do you have any idea on how to backup files on a computer using a traditional cassette deck and audacity? How can I encode the files (txt. doc.) to be recorded on a cassette? What software in addition to audacity can I use to get a reliable encoding and decoding of my files? My idea is to backup important files for posterity and also 80’s awesome nostalgia. Thank you in advance 😊📼
Every retrocomputing channel needs a '70s towel.
I died a little inside when you accidentally reset. Arg!
Through the magic of editing, nobody will know I actually plunged into a week-long depression at that moment, and only finally managed to complete recording the episode yesterday.
@@8_Bit I have definitely been there
#SAVEONCESAVEOFTEN
I remember as a kid I was typing one of those really long machine code listing's in compute magazine and the c64 crashed or something, didn't save..... that really hurt.
@@MichaelDoornbos If we're watching these videos - on ANY 8-bit computer - we've ALL been there. It's visceral to see it happen to someone.
@@hqqns I have had power flicker/outages do that to me several times.
Great video. I got a TI 99 for Christmas from my dad in 1983. I really loved it
"Sir, do you know why I pulled you over today?"
"No, Officer, I don't."
"Well sir, you were 15 lines over the line number limit back there. Hand over your license, insurance, and retro computer, please."
At 2:48 it says "REMOVE BATTERIES WHEN STORING THIS UNIT OVER ONE MONTH"
In the entire history of electronic devices, I believe that wiser words were never said. Kudos to GE. Anybody who has left batteries in a device knows exactly what this means :-)
Anyway, Merry Christmas, Robin.
🎅🎄❤
Nibble isn't always written with a y. It is commonly spelled either way.
Yeah, I see "nibble" fairly often. I'm definitely on team "nybble" as it's consistent with "byte". If there were more people using the spelling "bite" then I'd be more understanding of "nibble".
@@8_Bit Ironically, I've worked with computers since the late 1970's and I've NEVER seen nybble until very recently. Not that I really care. Nybble/nibble, Kernel/Kernal - as long as the idea is conveyed. Maybe a little bit annoyed that there are now new terms for what was kilobyte, megabyte, et al. So now it's kibibyte and mebibyte. "You know engineers, they just love to change things." - Bones Here's me wondering if the SI in SI units stands for "Special Idiot"
I've done a bit more looking into this with the help of archive dot org's text search. There is a lot of use of "nybble" from the late 1970s to the present day, particularly in Commodore literature and BYTE magazine, but I've found its use in everything from C++ books to Woz's earlier Apple books. It seems "nibble" got a huge boost from an Apple-related magazine choosing that spelling for its name (perhaps "nybble" was too silly, even if The Woz Himself preferred it?). A book titled "Introduction to VAX-11 architecture and assembly language" from 1987 claims the original spelling was "nybble" but "nibble" had "crept into the literature several years ago". There's likely days or weeks worth of research that could be done on this topic.
I just found my 1977 "Running Press Glossary of Computer Terms" that my grandfather got for me in the 1980s when the local library was selling it off cheap because it was obsolete. It only has an entry for "nybble", none for "nibble". Of course this is just one data point, but one I'm very nostalgic about :)
@@8_Bit I prefer the "nibble" spelling because "nybble" looks like it should be pronounced nye-bble, like Bill Nye the Science Guy.
A 51-minute _8-Bit_ _Show_ _And_ _Tell_ video? Christmas has come early this year.
Extended BASIC got you sprites and stuff. Still no PEEK or POKE directly to hardware memory. Not-Polyoptics was a developer and publisher of TI-99/4A cassette and disk-based games, perhaps the best known one targeting the system that didn't have a license to publish carts. They published Winging It, a flight sim written in TI BASIC. Winging It had a realistic for the time and machine flight model, but no "out the window" display. A little map showed where you were and you had to reach target locations with your plane using that and your instruments.
Back in the day the "standard" cassette recorder for TI-99/4A use was the Texas Instruments Program Recorder. It could've been a badge-engineered GE unit, I dunno. The official TI monitor was a badge-engineered, modified Zenith color TV. The GE you demonstrated looks kind of like a miniature version of the Program Recorder. The volume and tone dials are VERY similar.
29:07 The dawn of TI-Man. I think it has what it takes to be an enduring character!
OMG - I remember creating those 'sprites' and moving them around the screen! (4th grade - and learning about hex)
Since I started out with a 1541 I’ve got no experience or memories of tapes and I find them fascinating! I’d love to see a recreation of a gaming or programming session with tapes in “real time” with no fast forward so I can get a sense of how patient you had to be!
08:45 I love hearing the old micros loading. I loved the CPC464...dunno I'm weird I guess
I think lots of people are nostalgic about it, if they grew up with it. Commodore computers had a slightly more advanced cassette system that prevented the audio from being heard in normal use, but I had experience hearing the loading from the cassette player speaker directly with my Timex/Sinclair 1000. Having it piped through the TV speaker wasn't something any of the few computers I owned back in the '80s did, but it's an interesting feature.
@@8_Bit i am definitely nostalgic, i got my first micro in ~1990 when i was maybe 5. A family friend gave it to me, he thought it was trash…i wish i still had it now
The catalog showroom that my parents bought my TI from back in 1982 recommended a Panasonic tape recorder. I still have it.
Interesting read on Wikipedia - that the TI 99/4A could have been really great if they weren't hungry to lock out anyone 3rd party software/hardware making the user purchase module after module made exclusively by TI. It had some very decent graphics (ColecoVision/Adam-esque) I'm curious to get one but for fun (pause) but my first 8 bit mirco-computer was the famed Commodore 64. My mother didn't know and got the right one I never knew I was getting. I was never the same again Dec 1983 (doubleplusgood) : )
The Colecovision and the TI 99/4A use the same video chip.
TI also effed up by not allowing peek and poke like the TRS-80.
The worst part was the clock speed at .6MHz. It was such a dog with full memory BASIC programs. At least the C128 had 2MHz mode that I took full advantage of.
TI's mainframe division was afraid of the competition from within the company. The TI-99/4A's powerful TMS9900 processor was actually a single-chip implementation of their TI-990 mainframe hardware. That's why the 99/4A got nerfed so bad -- to ensure another division didn't get pissy over consumers having access to such powerful hardware.
And the CPU ran at 3 MHz, not .6 MHz. The BASIC was so dogshit slow because it ran in an interpreted bytecode called GPL which provided easier access to graphic memory, but which sucked as a general purpose programming object language. For an example of what the TMS9900 could do unfettered, look at Parsec: The TI-99/4A had no scrolling hardware. A machine language routine scrolled the background "by hand" by bit-shifting the patterns in memory as the game ran.
Extended BASIC ameliorated some of the suck. It was faster and provided CALL PEEK, CALL LOAD, and CALL LINK -- roughly the equivalents of PEEK, POKE, and SYS in Commodore BASIC. But you needed a 32K RAM expansion to use those. You couldn't access hardware registers directly this way -- not without machine language routines called with CALL LINK -- but you could change some settings. There was a magic CALL LOAD that could change the number of active sprites, allowing you to reclaim some of the space in pattern memory that Extended BASIC ate up for sprite state.
They also had a cable that allowed you to connect two cassette program recorders to the TI994A.
Fun to see what my formative programming experiences might have looked like had my parents given me different hardware to learn on.
42:07 Chopin's Marche funèbre from Piano Sonata No. 2
39:28: I think you've just discovered Darrell Brooks' favourite childhood video game.
Awesome video. I could watch these all day.
If you noticed, the first number in the hex code was 7. The binary of 7 is 0111 and the second number was E. In binary 1110 is 14, and 14 in hexadecimal is E, so the first row of of pixels in the little character you just made is 01111110 which is 7E.
These GE tape recorder didnt came with different adaptors to hook to differen micros ?. Neat unit.
I've recently just started using my TI-99/4a and that "FCTN QUIT" broke my heart too. Having a burner tape seems like a good idea...
My first computer was a TI 99/4A (although I wanted a C64). I taught myself BASIC using the "Teach Yourself BASIC" tapes and manual when I was 10 years old. Had a lot of fun with that system, but then 1984 came and we got a good deal on a 512k Macintosh!
Bella(nice!) Robin! When a new video of yours pops up in the suggested video list it's always an epiphany, even if sometimes it talks of abstruse topics, not this case since basic is quite easy, and it's always interesting to see things about this less known and obscure micro computers.
P.S.: it's nice that in the early days people sold commercially games written in plain basic, that is a thing that always faschinated me, and i like very much that you discover those things and show on the videos (like the Pet basic games too u showed sometimes ago, or this car-battle Ti99/4a game that seems to be written in basic). I suggest u to make an episode on Rox64, the first c64 game by famous game programmer Jeff Minter, it is totally written in basic2.0, and it would be nice to have one of your show and tells about it.
Hey, I've got one of those cables. I didn't know what it was for. Guess I should have included it when I sold my TI-99/4a a couple years ago.
I've just called the GE number, and it's still operational! I feel like I've just stepped out of a time machine.
Ha, did you ask them for help with a Computer Program Data Recorder?
@@8_Bit They said call back during regular business hours, lol
I know your channel is called 8-Bit Show And Tell, but I'm sure you know that the 99/4A was a 16-bit machine using the TMS9900 processor which was years ahead of its time. It's a shame that TI crippled the machine for cost reasons, but it was still capable of so much more than other machines of the time. As an example, the joystick port isn't just a joystick port. It's actually pins going into the TMS9901 Programmable Systems Interface. There have been assembly projects that turn the "joystick port" into an RS232 interface.
I've ended up with 3 complete TI-994As, All have every add on and boxes of software, I can't wait to get back into messing around with them.
I have a Commodore 128 and yesterday I was finally able to run CP/M.. What a dream ! Never been able to use it back than !! Are you planning to do some videos about C128 , C16 or Plus/4 ? I'll love to see what you can extract from them !
My CP/M floppy still has the original seal in tact. I never used it.
In the UK, of course cassette games weren't that great, but I remember an excellent turn-based strategy game that didn't rely on speed. Cartridges were great, Alpiner was stunning!
funny. i came up with the reverse screwing in technique myself and was recently told by a professional: „wrong way. you don’t even know which way to turn?”
I bought mine in 1980/81 (?), and shortly thereafter bought the Expansion Box, and two floppy drives (clunk-clunk). I couldn't stand loading from cassette. I was living in Toronto at the time, and there was a pretty active TI994/a group, with meetings, and lots of disk trading. I still have the TI994/a, but sadly not the Expansion Box.
I wanted an expansion box but it was too expensive. Instead I saved up for a C128 in 1985. Too bad it was already obsolete when I bought it. I should have got the Amiga and learned C back then instead of learning it in 1998.
Great video, thanks Robin! Such an interesting way (and somewhat overcomplicated) of displaying the text in lesson 1. Carmageddon and Interstate '76 had to be my favourite car games, I always wanted a 'I brake for rainbows 🌈' bumper sticker!
When you Oh No!'ed , I really thought for a moment they had found you and wanted their plutonium back! 😉
Function+quit, God knows how many times I made that mistake too! Got into the habit of saving frequently while typing in lengthy programs.
I used to love to start loading in a program then stop the tape and fast forward or rewind and keep doing that until it stopped. Then list the program. All kinds of interesting random garbage. Sometimes it would overwrite graphic ram memory for cool effects. This could also be done by filling an edited line with the option command to make it longer than it should, thus overwriting into GRAM.
The color scheme of the Data Recorder is just the opposite of the one I owned.
I had a 99/4a from the late beige/gray series, but my GE recorder was silver/black.
The C64 calculates line numbers by using multiples of 10 as their high bytes (for performance reasons, I think). So the highest possible line number is 25 * 256 * 10 - 1 = 63999, next theoretical line number would be 26 * 256 * 10 - 1 = 66559 which would obviously exceed the 16-bit limit.
The calculation routine (at $a96b in ROM) also has an interesting bug that trips up the C64 if you try to enter a line number like e.g. 350720.
Don't stop me, don't stop me, ooh ooh ooh, I like it!
Hey, do you really only continue because of patreon? That's a little depressing, don't feel Under Pressure! Thanks for another great video.
My sense of responsibility to my patrons, and the fact that they believe in what I'm doing enough to invest their money definitely helps me push through my own laziness and other obstacles to get videos made. They're not the only factor, but they're a very important part.
@@8_Bit hope you're always having fun making videos, that's all. I'm a patron of GU80s and I feel ripped off ;)
@@rotordave81 I always have fun during part of the process of making videos or podcasts :) But no matter what, there's some grind and work to aspects of making these things (parts of preparation and parts of editing in particular) that I would never pretend are fun. But I'm not miserable while doing those aspects either. Making stuff has its rewards in many areas, and anything worth doing takes work. No complaints. Sorry about the GU80s hiatus, hopefully won't be too long :)
One of these days, I'm going to dig out my TI-99/4a and hook up a digital recorder to the cassette line........just to capture some MP3s of that funky new age music.
What's the pinout for the cassette cable? Also do you need to make the cable so it can write as well, is it just a matter of wiring it for CS2 because CS1 is read only?
Oh man does this bring back memories
My first home computer that I got back in 1982. Limited by today's standards but lots of fun back in the day.
In the minute 14:13 it asks you the mode and you use 2 but for me it is 3 since you can do for a = 0 to 10000: next and wait the necessary seconds, without the need for a line number, that is, in direct mode
In the minute 20:30 is exclusive to this machine and an incongruity, since the ":" sign only separates commands
It must be a TI99/4A time of year :) One of the things I picked up with my 2nd TI was a cassette cable but it broke out so you could hook up 2 decks. I've been waiting till I come across some tapes to look at it! **Edit** Now your hatred of the + combination makes sense!
Yes, lots of TI-99 videos lately I'm noticing! Cool about the double-deck cable, that'll be really neat to see in action when you get to it. Yeah, it's way too easy to hit + especially when you're using function to cursor around, and type quotes and some other things. Sometimes you need to press function to do what's on the front of the keys, sometimes it's what's printed above the key... not one of the better keyboard layouts, even though at least it's pretty nice to type on.
I believe TI basic blue is superior to commodore and locomotive basic blues. This may or may not be due to the fact that I like light blue. I actually think I prefer the font too! What a cool machine it was!
I still have all my cassettes with programs. One day I want to record them to an mp3 file so I can try to get my TI emulator to load and run them. I made a program to teach my fool proof Munch Man pattern that lets you play the game forever if you have the patience.
Not watched it all yet, but does the cassette player fit in the cartridge bay ?
That'd be cool, but it's a little too big for that unfortunately.
Don't recall my ti having that type of power port, or the rear 9 pin, just the one on the side.
Interesting, was it a TI-99/4A or different model? If you had a cassette drive for it, how did it connect to the console?
1/8 inch is correct or 3.5 mm if you think you need metric. The smaller one i think was 3/32 inch connector or ear phone plug. i tried to find one online with no sucess same with the smaller than quarter inch plug the ones used on language labs. These odd sizes were used also on the speaker box on movie projecters. Now noone even uses projectors with power point. I used to be on the AV crew in highschool and ran some of these devices. 73
Seems to me like the snow option made the turning slower to take effect, as if you were driving on snow/ice. Must be their idea of hard mode.
15:56 On Commodores, it's odd that line numbers over 32767 are allowed, since this defies regular integer handling. They wouldn't need a special parser if they'd just used regular integers.
30:27 Numerology - all low numbers coincide with something else.
40:31 And they let you drive a real car?!
46:35 This program could have benefited from sprites in BASIC programs!
Values over 32767 ARE regular integers - just unsigned integers. However. The C-64 computer uses something different for line numbers. If memory serves, the line numbers are not entirely relevant. Lines in basic are stored as a singly-linked list. This allows for multiple behaviors including access of memory locations NOT within the allocated BASIC space and even outside the 64K space using bank switching. The C-64 did have memory expansion units, but they were very expensive.
Parsers are parsers. Each one is a bit different even today.
A cursory look at the CaDD's Cyc (archive) didn't reveal anything about this Maxxam software house. I'll dig a bit deeper later and comment back should i find anything.
Yeah, nothing on Maxxam anywhere on the Cyc - so it would highly likely be useful to archive it. You might want to get in touch with CaDD Electronics to let them know too. Cool find..!
Oh man when I was a kid I found a TI-99 in the trash but no power supply. So I ripped it apart and kept the CPU all these years.
TI Extended Basic sped up operation quite a bit. I'd suggest you give it a go, quite a bit nicer the TI Basic. Still has the dumb OLD command for loading but it's still a nice investment.
I have the GE 3-5158A, the MUCH chunkier older brother of that cute little cassette recorder!
The law of computers games. Never choose snow if you have the option.
Frankensteins??? Oh no! So the city got invaded by scientists who like to create monsters using lightning and body parts!?! :p
Ouch that mistake must have caused a lot of lost work down the years
Make the last statement in your program "new". Does that work? heh.
Can you share the code listing? i wonder how they manage to show the text so quickly...!!???
It looks like there's a disk version of the Beginner's BASIC Tutor on archive dot org if you want to try downloading it: archive.org/details/Texas_Instruments_TI-99_4a_TOSEC_2012_04_23
My guess is they used a loop to change the color of the characters from black (default) to blue (background color) in a loop, then printed them with scrolling, and then changed the colors back to black. If you notice they appear in a staggered fashion. Character colors on the TI are in groups of 8 characters called "color sets". This method is just one of the tricks used in TI BASIC since it did not allow you to print anywhere on the screen - only on the bottom row.
@@CRCO1975 thanks a lot. I owned a TI when i was a child and i rememeber to be obsesed with this kind of tricks.
Had something similar for a Timex Sinclair 1000
Back when I was programming BASIC on my TRS-80, I was pretty nearly convinced that the function of the RUN command was, in fact, to print error messages on the screen. :/
I'd guess that date code is the 35th week of 1983.
The "OLD" command does make sense in a weird sort of way... but it's still rather jarring when you've already conceptualised it as a BASIC toolkit command synonymous with "UNNEW"! 🙂 -- JC
11:07 To me it looks like studio lights
Ah, yeah, like spot lights! Could be.
I scored the actual TI/99-4A data recorder in a Dollar Tree for $3.50 in near mint cond.
Wow, how long ago was that? Was it new old stock they were dumping?
This has to be a troll comment. Everything at $Tree is one dollar with a few items 2/$1 (greeting cards) and $.79 (canned vegetables).
That video cable will work with C64, Atari 8 bit (and I guess Sega Master and Genesis) so you can interchange. The TI 99/4A has 12V on pin 1 (Luma on C64/Atari, Audio on Sega), so don't be mindful not to use that RCA plug or let it touch anything when using a cable with that pin connected to a 99/4A.
lol. uncrunching the basic commands takes significantly longer than printing other data on list lol.
Edit: in italy the ti994a was not very popular and at last for me it was an obscure system, but here there is an appearence of ti994a basic and other small things in italodisco video from '80s:
th-cam.com/video/1TymTB14iqo/w-d-xo.html
Already subbed to Pixel Pedant, cool channel
So much fun thx :-)
I see you fell victim to the TI-99/4A's bad keyboard layout, though not for the usual reason. I usually got my program zapped while trying to type a double quote ("), slightly overreaching, and catching the QUIT key instead. Imagine how aggravating that was after spending close to an hour editing a program that you hadn't saved because saving to cassette was too time consuming.
14:38 misspelling of "precede". It's not spelled the same way as proceed.
Oops, the ones you called "female" are actually _male,_ because even though you plug the device into the computer, the sex is determined by pins vs. pin sockets. So the computer end of it is male, just like the split ends of that Y adapter, while the device "plug" is really a jack instead, and it's female. This is like the mains plug on the outside wall of an RV, that you plug your female end of the extension cord onto.
Tidy little game
Extended basic accepts multi statements commands. TI basic no multi statements.73
I love pixel pedant. Sub to him for great TI related content ❤️
Hi , love your content , but and please take this as constructive, get a better microphone and use some background music , really quiet is fine , your subs will go through the roof , your content is great , you have a really listenable voice , it’s just badly recorded and could do with some music
Can you be more specific about what's bad about the sound? I've had quite a few comments over the years from people who specifically say they like that I don't use background music and I'm not planning on starting unless a lot of people want it. My mic setup is specifically set up to catch the sounds of the keyboards, disk drives, cassettes, etc. of the vintage hardware I'm using, and I get a lot of positive comments about that aspect of the sound. The only thing I'm unhappy with is that the new overhead studio lights I got have fairly loud active cooling which I filter out in post, but I think that has the effect of making my voice a bit more harsh sounding. This particular episode has more noise in it while the TI-99/4A is turned on; its got noisy sound output and I didn't put a lot of time into chopping out all the humming silence between the beeps and loading sounds and sound effects.
Background music isn't needed. It just causes problems. And the audio recording is just fine.
@@8_Bit I don't think the sound is badly recorded. At least not from most of the recordings I've heard. Obviously there are moments when the process of making a video doesn't go as planned. I didn't really notice much in this video. If anything, the only problem with filtering outside noise (like lights) is that it can cause loss during filtering - not a lot you can do about that except experiment on what does and what doesn't work during editing. I hate extra music not relevant personally, and some YT algorithm will probably flag it.
Take no notice of Valley Robot. There's nothing worse than long videos that have needless continuous music in the background all the time, which is very jarring. Why have to have distractions all the time?
@@8_Bit the redording has very little middle or ottom end, it's sounds harsh and brittle, try putting an EQ on it or a compressor, a very tiny bit of reverb as well, this might help, background music is a personal preference, I don't mean booming diso music and jump cuts a, I mean tasteful quiet background music, it fills in any dead air, as I said it's only my opinion, I know nothing about making TH-cam videos with spoken word my videos are all music videos
About a decade ago I found a pair of TI 99 controllers new in box at habitat for humanity re-store, brand new never used they were absolute shit ... its just some foam and mylar keyboard membrane. I know there were a lot of absolute garbage input devices of the 80's but those things take the crown of "bad joysticks" imagine the feel of an atari 400 keyboard being pushed though a little over quarter inch of foam and not even the decency to give you a snap dome
Yeah, even when they were new they were terrible. Pretty amazing. I think I even like Commodore's "triangle" sticks better, and those are really bad.
@@8_Bit Through a mail order electronics closeout place my dad found a pair of joysticks that had a keypad on them. He rewired it to make it compatible with my TI. The actual stick was more responsive than the Atari style that was supposed to be used.
There is a better model from GE THAN THAT one.
46:52
Would it slow down the computer too much if instructions were added to randomly move every target so it would be like you were actually chasing them ?