What new software would you use for your TI-99/4A Computer?

[+9640News]

I would like somethink for sounds, music and Speech and an X-Copy version

 

about speech for example something like a Terminal Emulator II but easier to use for Speech Synth programming.

 

about music and sounds i would like an 80col tracker to create music for TI99, a similar game to the protracker on the amiga for example, better if supported by the mouse also.

Lot of us also have the SID Master card and would be very cool to have possibility to have a program to play the original .sid files.

 

about games I would like to see a good Billard game

 

...also a graphic copier like the Amiga X-Copy could be funny to see...

 

 

Not sure what you are looking for with respect to sound and speech, but the code for Barry Boone's SoundFX was published. You could easily record the specific sound bytes you wanted on a TI, then play them back, possibly from stored memory (SAMS, etc) if you were going to add them to a game, etc. I know I disassembled Barry's SoundFX code and converted it to a MDOS program. I added a few extra features. Playing the Gilligan's Island theme song in reverse sounded about like monks chanting.

 

Food for thought.

Beery

[+9640News]

Windows 3.1 has a program called "Cardfile". If it ran on the TI, I would use it everyday.

 

What does Cardfile do? It is not a program I recall having ever used.

[RickyDean]

 

What does Cardfile do? It is not a program I recall having ever used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardfile

[+9640News]

OK, basically a program with multiple notecards. Not much more than a simple database application.

 

I'm just trying to define some of your basic needs/wants at the moment.

 

Is it necessary this program have a GUI interface?

 

Screen resolution, 40 or 80 columns?

 

How many notecards?

 

Estimated information on each notecard (characters/bytes)?

 

Assembly language necessary, or would a version of Extended Basic suffice?

 

Are you looking at adding anything more than text into each card?

 

Need printer i/o?

 

Export card to D/V 80 file?

 

TIPI use or hard drive access needed or required?

 

Anyways, just trying to get a handle. If it needs to be really fancy with a GUI, then obvious more work. With a nice text interface at 40 columns using extended basic, it is probably within the capabilities of many people.

 

Now, I do not have your answers, but I am going to propose a program example below and see if that is something you would use.

 

1. Program uses a 40 column text interface.

2. Program has a maximum of about 120 cards.

3. Capacity of each card is to about 2K, maybe a bit larger if needed of text. Thought here is to be able to store all "cards" on a single 90K floppy.

4. With respect to #3 above, cards could also be stored on a TIPI path or Hard drive path

5. Sidebar, scrollable, that lists the "name" of each card and is selectable.

A. Sidebar scrollable listing derives from a separate index file with the path/filename loaded at runtime.

B. Selection of a specific cardfile from sidebar, loads the file for display.

C. Switch/Toggle for sidebar highlight/view cardfile.

a. Issue here is if sidebar view of cardfile is enable, cardfile is then loaded and viewed.

b. Sidebar viewing on just highlight takes time if cardfile is pulled from floppy. Less time from other faster speed devices.

c. Going "into" a cardfile will trigger a save with prompt when cardfile is exited unless a switch/toggle is active for autosave.

6. Is there a specific language requirement (Assembly/Forth/Extended Basic, c99, etc) you would prefer?

 

Anyways, trying to define what your needs are. I'M NOT SAYING I AM GOING TO WRITE SUCH A PROGRAM. However, by defining what you want and if it is simple enough, someone may be able to whip up what you want.

 

Beery

[FDOS]

I definitely used Cardfile for personal (family & friends), business (associates & customer/clients), and for registered Forth+ users, on my DOS/Win 3.11 TI laptop (I still have two; both working, although batteries are dead). Therefore, I still have those data files, also. The TI docking station has a mechanical problem that I hope to fix someday.

 

This may be an app that I will do once I finish X4th99; although I could probably do a simple version in TIB+ (this may be dependent on GK to FG99 conversion tool), now that I have my SNUG TI-99/4P operational, but I still have other SNUG hardware to checkout in the PEB first. I do have one grandson that will be helping me out with soldering chores occasionally, we just made the agreement this morning at breakfast.

 

Bill

[+OLD CS1]

I suspect the TIPI could implement this quite easily, but I would be attracted to an SSH client. In dev there is a thread about socket programming into which I have yet to delve, but I thought about a TCP: device like what I use in ARexx that can be used to open a TCP connection on a given port to a given IP. Even a TCPS: device which does the same over SSL.

 

That would be fun.

[Omega-TI]

New stuff for the TI? Here is one that would be really cool and useful!

 

I recently upgraded PC's and needed a weather gadget to replace the one I had with Windows 7. Well, the way it handles the data does not seem all that difficult. I imagine it would be a fairly simple hack for one of the assembly language gurus here to cobble together a E/A5 program that essentially does this in a text only version. It would be up to the user to supply their local "weather code".

 

Time, Date, Weather and current temperature. It could continue running (looping) until the space bar is pressed at which point the program would quit. There are reporting stations everywhere these days, in fact my local one is less than 1000 feet away... (lucky me).

[willbilly]

I've considered doing a software interface for my Fanuc 0m-B equipped VMC. They're roughly contemporary....

 

Then again, I don't want any of my TI-99s getting mucked up by being in the shop

[RickyDean]

I've considered doing a software interface for my Fanuc 0m-B equipped VMC. They're roughly contemporary....

 

Then again, I don't want any of my TI-99s getting mucked up by being in the shop

I used my Geneve some at my Dads shop in the 90's, tried to get him to go to using CNC machine' even found used equipment needing controllers and so forth, thought I might do some interfacing. But he resisted, though he did finally let me build him a PC to use for invoicing and viewing Auto-Cad drawings from customers- found he could not get prints from them, and design work. would have to clean it frequently.

[Asmusr]

I would like to see new games and demos doing things with graphics and sound that we haven't seen before on the TI-99/4A.

[willbilly]

I used my Geneve some at my Dads shop in the 90's, tried to get him to go to using CNC machine' even found used equipment needing controllers and so forth, thought I might do some interfacing. But he resisted, though he did finally let me build him a PC to use for invoicing and viewing Auto-Cad drawings from customers- found he could not get prints from them, and design work. would have to clean it frequently.

 

Hmm...maybe I'll get one of those mucked up TI-99s off of shopgoodwill and make an industrial case for it.

[Casey]

New stuff for the TI? Here is one that would be really cool and useful!

 

I recently upgraded PC's and needed a weather gadget to replace the one I had with Windows 7. Well, the way it handles the data does not seem all that difficult. I imagine it would be a fairly simple hack for one of the assembly language gurus here to cobble together a E/A5 program that essentially does this in a text only version. It would be up to the user to supply their local "weather code".

 

Time, Date, Weather and current temperature. It could continue running (looping) until the space bar is pressed at which point the program would quit. There are reporting stations everywhere these days, in fact my local one is less than 1000 feet away... (lucky me).

 

I actually think this one could be quite easy, and could be done in Extended BASIC.

 

Doing a little research tonight, I wrote this little program that will retrieve and display the latest observation from a specific reporting station (I must credit Greg, because I borrowed heavily from his program over here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/283322-using-tipi-socket-interface-in-assembler-was-copying-ea-3-problem/?p=4125812

100 CALL CLEAR
110 URL$="http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observations/metar/decoded/KDEN.TXT"
115 REM REPLACE KDEN WITH THE REPORTING STATION YOU CARE ABOUT
120 DIM A$(255)
130 OPEN #1:"PI."&URL$,INPUT,VARIABLE 254
140 ON ERROR 180
150 D=D+1
160 LINPUT #1:A$(D)
170 GOTO 150
180 CLOSE #1
190 FOR I=1 TO D
200 PRINT A$(I)
210 NEXT I

This program will retrieve and display the latest text based hourly observation for the reporting station you are interested in. After that, it's just a matter of parsing the input (the formatting is a little rough, but doable with string functions) and making a display out of it. This might be something I might spend some time on this weekend. I started out in TI BASIC, but you really need the ON ERROR of Extended BASIC because you don't know when you will hit EOF on the input file, hence the single statement lines.)

[Omega-TI]

Looks like it's formatted for a wider screen, cool that it's in plain text.

 

Kelso, Kelso-Longview Airport, WA, United States (KKLS) 46-07N 122-54W
Oct 18, 2018 - 10:56 PM EDT / 2018.10.19 0256 UTC
Wind: Calm:0
Visibility: 10 mile(s):0
Sky conditions: clear
Temperature: 54.0 F (12.2 C)
Dew Point: 50.0 F (10.0 C)
Relative Humidity: 86%
Pressure (altimeter): 30.21 in. Hg (1023 hPa)
Pressure tendency: 0.03 inches (0.9 hPa) higher than three hours ago
ob: KKLS 190256Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 12/10 A3021 RMK AO2 SLP234 T01220100 53009
cycle: 3

 

Here is another url, that might be more usable if you can strip out the HTML.

 

http://wxdata.weather.com/wxdata/weather/local/USWA0496?cc=*&dayf=0

 

** EDIT **

For most purposes, while loading, extracting and displaying the results for <dnam>, <lsup>, <tm>, <sunr>, <suns>, <tmp> and <t> would be adequate.

 

The link listed is updated every minute, so including a timer to poll every 30 seconds would work. In Extended BASIC, DISPLAY AT would work the best, but I I'm not sure that would compile into an E/A5.

Edited October 19, 2018 by --- Ω ---

[Omega-TI]

One thing I'd like to add about the above URL that works with the XB source... besides being constantly updated, there are quite literally HUNDREDS of reporting sites, one probably near you as well.

[Casey]

Thank for this. The XML formatting is much easier to parse than the NWS text format. I will give this a try when I am back at my TI. I can invision some graphics for this along with the character display and perhaps a way to gather data for several reporting sites a person might be interested in seeing and either using PROCD/BACK to navigate, or perhaps a list of sites activated by the BEGIN key, and storing the preferences on a file in the TIPI. Seems like a fun project to me! I know nothing about assembly, but I can definitely do something with this in BASIC.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Casey

[+arcadeshopper]

Checking the weather at PRGE

 

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