Retrospect's Ramblings

[Retrospect]

I have no comments ...

 

 

100 CALL CLEAR::CALL SCREEN(5)::FOR A=5 TO 12::CALL COLOR(A,16,1)::NEXT A
110 N$="00030C0F30333C3FC0C300000000000000CCCFF0F3FCFF"::FOR A=65 TO 90
120 CALL CHARPAT(A,C$)::PRINT CHR$(A)&CHR$(A+32);::FOR C=0 TO 1:$=""
130 FOR R=0 TO 7:$=D$&SEG$(N$,(ASC(SEG$(C$,C+R*2+1,1))-48)*2+1,2)::NEXT R
140 CALL CHAR(A+C*32,D$)::NEXT C::NEXT A::PRINT::PRINT::N$="QUASIPARTICLES"
150 FOR A=1 TO LEN(N$)::PRINT SEG$(N$,A,1)&CHR$(ASC(SEG$(N$,A,1))+32);::NEXT A
160 FOR A=1 TO 28::CALL SPRITE(#A,46,16,1,124,8,RND*10-5)::NEXT A::GOTO 160

 

That is pretty cool! ..... do you type these programs in and get them to run first time error free, like, it just comes into your head and you just type it?

[sometimes99er]

That is pretty cool! ..... do you type these programs in and get them to run first time error free, like, it just comes into your head and you just type it?

 

Thanks. And a good question.

 

I recently stumbled into this video, again, an excellent video by Tursi.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt50U5kPnTY

 

Tursi shows a bit about copying and pasting with Classic99, and refers to “great tiny little demos that do impressive things in a few lines of code”. Thanks Tursi. Now I really had to keep them coming. - Apparently the back of my mind wondered if it’d be possible to make the high letters into wide letters. Also the few lines of code obviously have no comments, so a bit of fun. Actually it’s many lines of code, and that’s how I keep it until just minutes before posting. I did this sketch below. And then everything, ideas, conversion tactic, program lines etc. are kept in a texteditor. What I did was write a few lines, copy paste, test, change a few things, add more, copy paste etc.

 

[Tursi]

I read somewhere on the internet, regarding a TRS-80 Model-1 coder who disliked having to put comments in his code (he was programming a 4K level 1 machine), he said something like "If it was hard to code, it should be hard to read!"

 

An oldie but a goodie! And coding for a restricted memory machine certainly teaches brevity.

 

An slight tangent to that one that I always liked was "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are by definition not smart enough to debug it."

[Retrospect]

I would say that commenting your code is always important.

 

I'm about to give you an example of why, this is a program I made, and wrote it really crap, deliberately.

 

See if any of you can get your heads around this one.

 

The program is an animation, and if you watch it , you will see a deliberate mistake, the program has been senior-falcon-compiled, but i have provided the original (and horrible) source code ....

 

TERRIBLE.zip

 

terrible.txt

[sometimes99er]

That's actually a rather nice animation. Maybe we should have us a little 30 liner Wilhelm animation competition ?

 

I notice some lowercase in your source, and I've actually grown accustomed writing XB in lowercase. Might even more readable as such, at least to me, but then also certain things has to be uppercase. I use UltraEdit, and IIRC Notepad++ has XB highlighting available. I’m too much into UltraEdit, so I guess I should take the highlighting and convert it. Sh!t, I’ve started to ramble ...

 

My Shooting Stars game, like most other bits, have comments, like

 

! CLEAR SCREEN AND SET SCREEN COLOR
100 CALL CLEAR::CALL SCREEN(14)

! STAR COLUMN CONTROLS
101 DIM ST(31)

! SET DIGIT PATTERNS
110 CALL CHAR(48,"007CC6C6C6C67C000018381818187E00007CC6067CC0FE00007CC61C06C67C")
111 CALL CHAR(52,"003C6CCCFE0C0C0000FEC0FC06C67C00007CC0FCC6C67C0000FE060C18303")
112 CALL CHAR(56,"007CC67CC6C67C00007CC6C67E067C")

! SET LETTER PATTERNS (UPPERCASE ONLY)
113 CALL CHAR(64,"000000000000000000386CC6C6FEC60000FCC6FCC6C6FC00007CE6C0C0E67C")
114 CALL CHAR(68,"00F8CCC6C6CCF80000FEC0FCC0C0FE0000FEC0C0FCC0C000007EE0CEC6E67E")
...

 

Works for me.

[Retrospect]

That's actually a rather nice animation. Maybe we should have us a little 30 liner Wilhelm animation competition ?

 

I notice some lowercase in your source, and I've actually grown accustomed writing XB in lowercase. Might even more readable as such, at least to me, but then also certain things has to be uppercase. I use UltraEdit, and IIRC Notepad++ has XB highlighting available. I’m too much into UltraEdit, so I guess I should take the highlighting and convert it. Sh!t, I’ve started to ramble ...

 

My Shooting Stars game, like most other bits, have comments, like

 

! CLEAR SCREEN AND SET SCREEN COLOR
100 CALL CLEAR::CALL SCREEN(14)

! STAR COLUMN CONTROLS
101 DIM ST(31)

! SET DIGIT PATTERNS
110 CALL CHAR(48,"007CC6C6C6C67C000018381818187E00007CC6067CC0FE00007CC61C06C67C")
111 CALL CHAR(52,"003C6CCCFE0C0C0000FEC0FC06C67C00007CC0FCC6C67C0000FE060C18303")
112 CALL CHAR(56,"007CC67CC6C67C00007CC6C67E067C")

! SET LETTER PATTERNS (UPPERCASE ONLY)
113 CALL CHAR(64,"000000000000000000386CC6C6FEC60000FCC6FCC6C6FC00007CE6C0C0E67C")
114 CALL CHAR(68,"00F8CCC6C6CCF80000FEC0FCC0C0FE0000FEC0C0FCC0C000007EE0CEC6E67E")
...

 

Works for me.

 

Rambling's what this thread's all about , Sometimes

 

The lower case mixed with the upper case is not intentional, it was me going in and out of the text-file adding bits here and there, when we go from a text-editor into Classic99 it can often switch the case of the writing .....

 

A 30 line willhelm animation ? ..... that sounds like fun to me

[sometimes99er]

This is all but a quick illusion. Some animation prank from an old mobile phone.

 

 

Guess it would quickly turn out to be more than 30 lines.

[+OLD CS1]

This is all but a quick illusion. Some animation prank from an old mobile phone.

 

It never occurred to me until now that the cyan background on the TI matches the old "Indiglo"-type back-lighting for old cell phones which did not use green LEDs, like my old T60 and T62. Your animation looks just like one!

[Retrospect]

here's something ;

 

[sometimes99er]

Looks a bit like the Tomy Tutor.

 

[Retrospect]

ha yeah, that's where i got the idea from

 

The Tomy Tutor was the Ti99's scruffy brother .... it had all the trimmings .... the TMS9995 at 10.7MHz, the SN whatever it is soundchip, but it was even MORE locked out from it's features than a TI was. Still a charming computer though.

[+OLD CS1]

ha yeah, that's where i got the idea from

 

The Tomy Tutor was the Ti99's scruffy brother .... it had all the trimmings .... the TMS9995 at 10.7MHz, the SN whatever it is soundchip, but it was even MORE locked out from it's features than a TI was. Still a charming computer though.

 

And it advertised its 16-bitness, which TI did not do for the 4 and 4A. Sure, 16-bit CPU with 8-bit data bus (except for CPU RAM,) but why not? Atari and Amiga both advertised their 68000-based machines as 32-bit.

[RobertLM78]

And it advertised its 16-bitness, which TI did not do for the 4 and 4A. Sure, 16-bit CPU with 8-bit data bus (except for CPU RAM,) but why not? Atari and Amiga both advertised their 68000-based machines as 32-bit.

Actually, they did advertise the 4A as a 16-bit machine .

(see https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/95921622/Untitled.png - sorry about the chunkiness of the filesize, I didn't want to skimp on resolution )

[Retrospect]

Actually, they did advertise the 4A as a 16-bit machine .

(see https://dl.dropboxus...22/Untitled.png - sorry about the chunkiness of the filesize, I didn't want to skimp on resolution )

 

They were always a bit misleading on the memory side of things too, they would advertise a computer with all it's memory, including ROM memory which could never be touched anyway .... One TI advert stated the computer had 72K total memory .... suppose you were to go to the local retailer thinking 72K and you came home with 16K .... Trouble was, outright honesty was out of the window due to them being in a price war with Commodore.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Retrospect

[RobertLM78]

They were always a bit misleading on the memory side of things too, they would advertise a computer with all it's memory, including ROM memory which could never be touched anyway .... One TI advert stated the computer had 72K total memory .... suppose you were to go to the local retailer thinking 72K and you came home with 16K .... Trouble was, outright honesty was out of the window due to them being in a price war with Commodore.

Well, at least they were honest with the memory size on this particular advert . I imagine all the manufacturers stretched the truth where they could back in the day - it was a volatile market.

[+OLD CS1]

Actually, they did advertise the 4A as a 16-bit machine .

(see https://dl.dropboxus...22/Untitled.png - sorry about the chunkiness of the filesize, I didn't want to skimp on resolution )

 

Then I stand corrected. This is an advert I do not recall seeing. I am fairly certain that Cosby never mentioned 16 bits, but I will have to pull those up again sometime.

[Bill Loguidice]

Then I stand corrected. This is an advert I do not recall seeing. I am fairly certain that Cosby never mentioned 16 bits, but I will have to pull those up again sometime.

 

It wouldn't have been something worth mentioning in advertising targeted to the average consumer, like the Cosby spots were intended. Back then, "bits" would have been lost on an audience that was wondering why they needed a computer, period, let alone a computer with more "bits" than another.

[+OLD CS1]

It wouldn't have been something worth mentioning in advertising targeted to the average consumer, like the Cosby spots were intended. Back then, "bits" would have been lost on an audience that was wondering why they needed a computer, period, let alone a computer with more "bits" than another.

 

I dig it. We had a shop in the mall opposite K-Mart. He was selling some kind of computers, like Tandy, I think, with DOS on them while K-Mart was blowing out TI stuff. He sneered at me when I told him we bought a TI for Christmas. Later he started selling Amiga. I remember posters all over the place for various computers and systems. The big display at K-Mart which had a 99/4A with a PEB box and a bunch of carts on steel cables. Then around the other side was a Commodore 64 and 1541 running the Commodore music demo. I think they had an Atari something-XL there, which was always showing "BOOT ERROR," though that might have been at Sears in the big Atari display which had a couple of Sears Tele-Games (2600 clones.)

 

I guess it is a lot like today. Go into some shops and you will see posters all around for X-Box, Wii, Play Station, and some of the games. I feel a disconnect because I cannot play any of the console games as they trigger severe migraines, and I simply lack the time to add Yet Another Hobby to my life and that keeps me from bothering with PC gaming. Not to say that I do not get excited about some games -- the advertisements and demos for some look pretty awesome.

[Retrospect]

It wouldn't have been something worth mentioning in advertising targeted to the average consumer, like the Cosby spots were intended. Back then, "bits" would have been lost on an audience that was wondering why they needed a computer, period, let alone a computer with more "bits" than another.

 

That's something Clive Sinclair had to deal with, when he was releasing his ZX80 and ZX81 computers, I've read articles online that say he did have concerns about selling something if people thought they did not need it ...... that's one of his reasons for selling them so cheap, so people might take that step and buy a computer for #75 uk pounds (don't know what it was dollar-wise)

 

Also ... TI actually wanted the TI99 to be 8-bit right from the get-go, but that went belly-up right at the last minute, so they slapped in a CPU that was used in mini-computers, dated from 1976 ... The TMS9900 is meant to be emulating the chip that failed ... it's an odd set up , and I think that they should have held back a little, and released it as a proper 16-bit with a 16-bit data bus instead of bottle-necking it down to 8-bits for the main memory, with a 16-bit scratchpad of 256bits .... they would have actually taken the market by storm with better marketing too. If handled properly, the main competition would not have been the Vic-20 of all computers.

[Retrospect]

I've just found two TI-99 related videos on Youtube .... both can be described as "fails" ......

 

Apologies if the guys in the videos are any of you, but ;

 

(click to 6:53 to see the guy tell us they didn't have a floppy disc drive)

 

 

(This one tries to show us a game he's playing, but we can't actually SEE it )

 

[Omega-TI]

I've just found two TI-99 related videos on Youtube .... both can be described as "fails" ......

Oh dude, that was painful to watch!

[Willsy]

Why do they make these utterly useless videos? Who do they think their audience is?

[Tursi]

YouTube is like any blog - it's more for self-gratification than audience figures.

 

[Retrospect]

Yeah, that's right it is ! Although some of that self-gratification would be justifiable with a little more accuracy on the subject they think they are qualified to inform the viewing public with ..... that said, I couldn't help but laugh when the guy said "These didn't have a disk drive." ..... When you look at a TI99 , you notice It's not a f*cking Mattel Aquarius immediately ... it slaps you in the face, it's made out of silver metal and has massive vents .... it's gonna have an expansion socket at the very least .... lol !