Things that annoy me about the 99/4a

[Duewester]

I'm all the time telling my wife "you can't assign 21st century values to 18th century life"

To me at least, hindsight is 20-20 or in some cases 10-10, my life values at the time were different and I thought/think the Ti-99 4a is very pleasing and affordable to use. I'm more of a 'user' than a 'developer'

My frustration with Ti at this time, is the 4 ROMs. I suspect I have a bad one and replacing it or even taking it out to swap is , well, frustrating. If it is bad - what do I do. That however is for a different topic.

In the end I believe that if the Ti were "Perfect", we wouldn't be here (in this forum).

[+FarmerPotato]

12 hours ago, apersson850 said:

Data signal termination is an electrical thing. Has nothing to do with TI's implementation of the computer.

As long as you keep the cables connected and the termination at the end, it will work.

I know that now, but I was 13. I disconnected DSK2 cuz it was making a funny noise. Then DSK1 ate my disk. Just griping. I re-read the blue manual several times to comprehend what had happened. 
 

[+InsaneMultitasker]

18 hours ago, FarmerPotato said:

The exciting day you find the last bug you fat-fingered into the code from the game listing in 99er.  
 

So to preserve that happy feeling, you SAVE CS1, obediently rewind the cassette tape, and trash the only good backup you had

We didn't have any storage the first year we owned the /4A. BASIC program retention relied upon siblings and parental figure walking around the table so as to not pull out the taut power cord that was draped over the kitchen chair to the only available outlet.  The silver lining is that I learned how to type quickly, though I wouldn't have called it 'touch typing'.  My memory of trashing a cassette was trashing an all-day Tunnels of Doom dungeon event and not realizing it until our attempt to load the game the following day.

[+FarmerPotato]

6 hours ago, InsaneMultitasker said:

We didn't have any storage the first year we owned the /4A. BASIC program retention relied upon siblings and parental figure walking around the table so as to not pull out the taut power cord that was draped over the kitchen chair to the only available outlet.  The silver lining is that I learned how to type quickly, though I wouldn't have called it 'touch typing'.  My memory of trashing a cassette was trashing an all-day Tunnels of Doom dungeon event and not realizing it until our attempt to load the game the following day.

Memorable times!

We were a cassette-tape only household until late in 1982.

[apersson850]

When I bought my TI 99/4A, I first tried the cheapest cassette player I could find. Turned out the sound quality wasn't good enough.

Next I went for a "ghetto-blaster" style thing, long as a winter in northern Sweden, with cassette player with logic control (if you don't know what that was, I'll explain - just ask).

That thing still exists in my house, some 40 years later. But the rubber components in the cassette drive has deteriorated, so it's not operational any longer. 

[Retrospect]

I think the only thing that annoys the heck out of me on the 99 is Basic or Extended Basic's habit of not being specific about which FOR-NEXT loop you screwed up on.

 

It just says "FOR - NEXT ERROR" .... Okay .... Where?  You knew there was one , you spotted it before me, fancy telling me where? 

[Switch1995]

Taking the computer completely apart, putting it back together and then looking at your work table and seeing the 90 deg cartridge port extender sitting there….

[Tuxon86]

12 minutes ago, Switch1995 said:

Taking the computer completely apart, putting it back together and then looking at your work table and seeing the 90 deg cartridge port extender sitting there….

Easy fix with a Dremel 🙂 

[+save2600]

Having only one non-standard joystick port on the machine was a PITA, but part of the TI "charm" I guess. And even though I only had a single Atari adapter BITD, made do with what we had. Thankfully some of the 2-player games like Blasto! allowed one person to use the keyboard.

 

Being my first computer, not too many things really annoy(ed) me about it. It's a nice little system all things considered, and that goes for the keyboard too... when it's working well. My original machine did develop an issue though where you'd strike certain keys but get several presses worth of characters. Cleaned with contact cleaner, but the symptom would end up coming back before long. That annoyed of course!

 

And besides BASIC being super slow to work with, guess my only other real "complaint" had to do with a lack of quality software compared to other systems of the time. But again, and all things considered... glad to have gotten what we did. Just would have been nice to have seen more arcade ports* specifically, but todays homebrews really help to make up for the past that way.

 

*Hen Pecked in lieu of Joust wouldn't have been too big a deal had it played well. And can almost forgive Hopper, but the enemy movement/behavior is too goofy compared to Pengo. ha

[RXB]

5 hours ago, Retrospect said:

I think the only thing that annoys the heck out of me on the 99 is Basic or Extended Basic's habit of not being specific about which FOR-NEXT loop you screwed up on.

 

It just says "FOR - NEXT ERROR" .... Okay .... Where?  You knew there was one , you spotted it before me, fancy telling me where? 

Having worked on XB (RXB for 30 years) I can tell you that the program just sets up a stack of each FOR/NEXT look and pops them off stack when it gets to one.

The problem is where do you store the address and line number of the one that had no match that created the error.

It is a little like trying to find a missing sock as you are going to have to look for it, no magical quick solution, and same for FOR/NEXT.

 

P.S. The FOR could be 100 lines back and the NEXT could be in a bird's nest of other routines. Question? WHERE?

[Tuxon86]

2 minutes ago, RXB said:

Having worked on XB (RXB for 30 years) I can tell you that the program just sets up a stack of each FOR/NEXT look and pops them off stack when it gets to one.

The problem is where do you store the address and line number of the one that had no match that created the error.

It is a little like trying to find a missing sock as you are going to have to look for it, no magical quick solution, and same for FOR/NEXT.

Working out a way to correct this may end up tearing the fabric of time and space...

[RXB]

Just now, Tuxon86 said:

Working out a way to correct this may end up tearing the fabric of time and space...

Actually, the solution is easy, but you are going to have to give up a ton of more memory to keep track of where.

Is the error that important? 

And you have a easy tool to see the problem called TRACE.

[Tuxon86]

Just now, RXB said:

Actually, the solution is easy, but you are going to have to give up a ton of more memory to keep track of where.

Is the error that important? 

And you have a easy tool to see the problem called TRACE.

I was only joking, a little play on time betwwen the for and next statements 🙂 ... Every few bytes count in a 16 or 48k machine.

 

But to the residing 99/4a expert here: I just read that the max ram the 99/4a could have (without 3rd party or mods) is 52k. Does that mean that you can use both the 32k and the mini memory module at the same time (16k base +32k +4k)?

[RXB]

1 hour ago, Tuxon86 said:

I was only joking, a little play on time betwwen the for and next statements 🙂 ... Every few bytes count in a 16 or 48k machine.

 

But to the residing 99/4a expert here: I just read that the max ram the 99/4a could have (without 3rd party or mods) is 52k. Does that mean that you can use both the 32k and the mini memory module at the same time (16k base +32k +4k)?

Way back in 1990 you could buy a EA Super Cart that had 32K of RAM in the cart so:

12K VDP RAM (16K minus 4K for OS) + 32K RAM in Supercart + 32K Memory Expansion = 76K of Memory in total.

Or:

12K VDP RAM (16K minus 4K for OS) + 2K of Mini Memory (2K ROM+2K RAM) + 32K Memory Expansion = 46K of Memory in total.

 

Hmm you could only access 8K of Supercart at a time though.

[GDMike]

On 10/25/2022 at 6:29 PM, RXB said:

Writing an interpreted language in GPL.

  Even the VIC and Sinclair people got to kick sand in my face, because you did for i=1 to 100 in ten minutes.

 

Originally TI was supposed to make a CPU that would natively run GPL like a FORTH CPU but ran out of time and money for project.

It has been shown that a GPL or Forth CPU would be very fast.

 

Also I put EA Assembly support into TI Basic GROMs you can download and use including running CALL LOAD("DSK#.FILENAME")

I did this project several years ago and surprised more people do not use it.

So let's do it! Change some ROMs to FBforth or something and let's make an os..let's..uh...I mean... someone... could it work?

[GDMike]

My thoughts are like this. My first computer TI-99/4a and I was just fine with it for many years.

[Tuxon86]

1 minute ago, RXB said:

Way back in 1990 you could buy a EA Super Cart that had 32K of RAM in the cart so:

12K VDP RAM (minus OS) + 32K RAM in Supercart + 32K Memor Expansion = 76K of Memory in total.

Or:

12K VDP RAM (minus OS) + 2K of Mini Memory (2K ROM+2K RAM) + 32K Memor Expansion = 46K of Memory in total.

So they could've at one point, if the 99 didn't get cancelled, release a 64k machine to compete with atari and commodore. That 48k wasn't really a limitation set in stone.

[Tuxon86]

1 minute ago, GDMike said:

My thoughts are like this. My first computer TI-99/4a and I was just fine with it for many years.

It was priced out of reach for me until they discontinued it. 

[GDMike]

Just now, Tuxon86 said:

It was priced out of reach for me until they discontinued it. 

I remember always going to the swap meets on weekends and looking for consoles and finding one for cheap...lol...

[RXB]

4 minutes ago, Tuxon86 said:

So they could've at one point, if the 99 didn't get cancelled, release a 64k machine to compete with atari and commodore. That 48k wasn't really a limitation set in stone.

Yea the SAMS is the real kicker as it has 1Meg of RAM and 4K can be used anywhere in Memory Expansion with multiple pages. 

We have 32Meg in Classic99 of SAMS and RXB 2022 has access to all 32Meg if you want to use it.

Of course you cannot use it over programs in memory from XB, but all other space not being used is fair game.

IN THE DARK a game I wrote used 942K of SAMS from XB showing how it is possible including Assembly located at Upper 24K >D000 location address.

[Duewester]

25 minutes ago, Tuxon86 said:

It was priced out of reach for me until they discontinued it.

Yea, me too. Little story though.

I was in the Navy at the time. I really wanted a TI-99 4a but they were outta my paygrade. Then one day a newlywed me was wandering through the Navy exchange and spied a pallet of Ti-99 4as's - ON SALE! So get this, they were NORMALLY on sale for $99.00 with a $50 rebate. These were on sale for $49.99 and no statement that the rebate didn't apply. So, I bought one (no taxes at the navy exchange) and sent in the rebate (not really expecting i to work). About two-three weeks later my $50 check arrived. Except for the postage to mail the rebate, I GOT PAID $.01 to own a Ti-99 4a. After that it was a breeze to convince my new bride we needed the cassette deck and some cartridges like the Budget manager and a few others I don't remember.

I spent hours at a time with my Compute Magazine typing in new programs and games. Learned the value of "Save Often no matter how slow it may seem" when I was a few lines short of finishing the Star Trek program when -power outage.

Ahhh, the good ole days.

[Duewester]

OBTW, while there are so many people cruizing through here. Embarrassing newbie level question - Are the 6810P rams generic? Can I just get a new one a off ebay or something and plug it in. Or do I need to program it?

Thanks

[GDMike]

1 minute ago, Duewester said:

OBTW, while there are so many people cruizing through here. Embarrassing newbie level question - Are the 6810P rams generic? Can I just get a new one a off ebay or something and plug it in. Or do I need to program it?

Thanks

Definitely have to program it..I think the code is available, yeah and you of Course need a programmer, and I think you have odd/even data on the two chips. But that's just what I kinda remember..

[Stuart]

3 minutes ago, GDMike said:

Definitely have to program it..I think the code is available, yeah and you of Course need a programmer, and I think you have odd/even data on the two chips. But that's just what I kinda remember..

It's RAM! No need to program it!

[Duewester]

Thank you @GDMike and @Stuart for the quick response. I think Stuart is correct GDMike. You're thinking of the two ROMs (mounted 90 degrees to each other). But, you are correct about programming those and the stuff I'll need to do it. 

Time to order some 6810's and cross my fingers.

Thank you again.