TI99/4A -- what kind of cool stuff can I do with it?

[aclbandit]

After a "fun" garage quest the other day, I am now the proud owner of three (3) TI-99/4A home computer systems; one is an old white model, two are still in box, and one of the boxed ones looks almost entirely new. i've also got the expansion thing, with a 5.25" floppy drive and a 32K RAM updgrade. My grandpa used to be really into it way back when, and I just thought it would be kind of awesome to play around with it.

My question, of course, is "what sort of cool stuff can I do with it?" In reality, you should read this question as "What kind of games does it have?"

An eBay search returned that it may have a cartridge of the original Donkey Kong, which would be awesome.

But what OTHER games does it have? What sort of nifty stuff can I do with it?

EDIT: Oh, and also: I don't own an Atari, but for some unknown reason, I have an Atari joystick. This computer seems to have a slot that fits it-- could I play games with the joystick in that slot?

[Igorr]

I think you can use an atari but not 100% sure. |

Munchman is a great game for the computer. I also have a ti 99. I actually need a new joystick or two. Did you perhaps score more joys than you need?

I may actually also have a few extra games. I will check.

[Ro-J]

Munchman was my favorite on that system. I also like remember liking Hunt the Wumpus.

[Jorpho]

Sega released a bunch of games for that one - Buck Rogers and Frogger, for instance. There are a lot of nice ports, actually.

The local games shop has a couple of cartridges, including Parsec and Munchman, if you're interested.

[Flack]

EDIT: Oh, and also: I don't own an Atari, but for some unknown reason, I have an Atari joystick. This computer seems to have a slot that fits it-- could I play games with the joystick in that slot?

Not without an adapter. The pinouts are different. TI joysticks are wired kind of like Atari 2600 paddles (2 controllers, 1 connector).

You might send a PM to Gapporin or Icbrkr and see if they have any duplicate cartridges they are looking to sell.

[aclbandit]

I think you can use an atari but not 100% sure. |

Munchman is a great game for the computer. I also have a ti 99. I actually need a new joystick or two. Did you perhaps score more joys than you need?

I may actually also have a few extra games. I will check.

What do you mean "use an atari"? Use an atari joystick, or a cartridge?

And no, I didn't score more joys than I need-- I once found an old atari joystick in my room, and I don't have a CLUE where it came from, having never owned an atari (though it would be cool).

EDIT: Also, not really looking to buy anything right now, but perhaps in the future. I'm currently just gathering info about what's available.

[Igorr]

What do you mean "use an atari"? Use an atari joystick, or a cartridge?

And no, I didn't score more joys than I need-- I once found an old atari joystick in my room, and I don't have a CLUE where it came from, having never owned an atari (though it would be cool).

EDIT: Also, not really looking to buy anything right now, but perhaps in the future. I'm currently just gathering info about what's available.

Well if your interested I did find an extra munchman and Ti invaders. Let me know

[Brian Deuel]

I bought a motherload of TI-99/4A stuff from a barn sale a few years ago. 4 expansion units (all with many carts), 8 computers, tons of software, books, speech units, etc, all for $30. I sold it all off years ago and made mad profit off of it. The expansion units are pretty desirable i guess, if you want a floppy drive, more memory, and other expansion capabilities. But I think those units also command a pretty high price. I got $150-$200 each for the ones I had.

[aclbandit]

I bought a motherload of TI-99/4A stuff from a barn sale a few years ago. 4 expansion units (all with many carts), 8 computers, tons of software, books, speech units, etc, all for $30. I sold it all off years ago and made mad profit off of it. The expansion units are pretty desirable i guess, if you want a floppy drive, more memory, and other expansion capabilities. But I think those units also command a pretty high price. I got $150-$200 each for the ones I had.

Woah, I've got one of those. It's got the ram upgrade, what I *think* is a printer addon card, and the disk drive; the drive seems to work (I can hear the disks spinning), but I haven't the foggiest how to use the TI-Writer program, all I get is "Disk error 16" or something similar.

[aclbandit]

Not without an adapter. The pinouts are different. TI joysticks are wired kind of like Atari 2600 paddles (2 controllers, 1 connector).

You might send a PM to Gapporin or Icbrkr and see if they have any duplicate cartridges they are looking to sell.

Could you elaborate a bit more on that bit about the joystick? I mean, the female end of this joystick fits nicely onto the male-type connector to the left side of the TI-99/4A. Why wouldn't that work/how could I make it work? Where could I find one of the adapters?

[Steve W]

Like it was said before, TI's joystick port was designed to have two joysticks connect to that one port. So an Atari joystick won't work, because it's not wired the same way as TI's joysticks. Just because it's a 9-pin plug doesn't mean that it's compatible.

There's a lot more stuff on floppy disk than there is on cartridge. If you can somehow download software off an internet archive and put it onto floppies you can run on a real TI, you'd be surprised what kind of odd and fun stuff there is for it.

[Jorpho]

Apparently there's a program called "Gram Cracker" which was used to dump the cartridges to disk (and subsequentely re-load them).

[Gerry-Cola]

sorry- double-post.

[Gerry-Cola]

The Ti99/4a offers some marvelous games. But also many lame games are around.

On one hand there are some fantastic ports of Arcade games or some good clones and also some fantastic original! Ti-games no other system offers - on the other hand (like an all systems) there are some really, really lame and bad games.

Here we go:

Fantastic Graphics and Gameplay offer:
1.) PARSEC (be sure to have the Ti Speech Synthesis Module: it doubles the fun). This space-related-sidescrolling-shooter-game is a blast. I played it when I was 17 - and still play it today (42 now... hahaha).

2.) Donkey Kong
Marvelous adaption with smooth gameplay which outknocks most other adaptations.

3.) Munch-Man
A Pacman or Pepper II clone which is by far better then both originals. One of the best games for the TI. Still fun to play today.

4.) TI-Invaders
This game unfortunately did not get the attention it deserved. It is by far superior to the original Arcade game but still offers great feel and fire control and does not go too far from the original concept. Some small extras in the game... I won´t comment here :-). There were endless Invader-Clones released on dozens of systems around the time the Ti was "alive". That´s maybe why many people seemed bored with Invader-Style games and did not give this game a fair chance. For its time Ti-Invaders really was brilliant and to me by far better then the 5200 Versione and nearly all others. And it is still fun to play today.

5.) Burgertime. Great Port - one of the best Burgertime ports of the eighties.

6.) Buck Rogers. Although unfortunately certain arcade elements are missing and the gameplay is very repetitive... it is still fun to paly. Who ever programmmed the code surely was a master of assembler. The fastest Ti game (on later levels) I have ever seen. Extremely fast!

7.) The International Adventure Command Module and all its cassetes or disks. I loved many of the text games. Nearly half of my english abilities (sorry for my mistakes - I still try to improve) came from Scott Adames "Adventure International Games". Thanks for that Scott. Maybe these games are a little bit dated today... so not everone may share my optinion on this one.

Extra-Tip: Not known to many people: if you have the expansion box and disk-System there are some prototypes of Ti games around. For example Super Demon Attack with speech (if you have the Speech Synthesizer and some other very, very rare (never official released Games and/or prototype game-versions). I do not know if it is worth the time to go for these obscure titles... but it may be quite interesting to see game-versions which never hit the market because they were withdrawn short before the release.

Now to some of the poor games you should avoid (there are many more around):

Super Demon Attack
To me was such a big disapointment. Poor gameplay, the sprite-detections sucks, bad graphics (by far worse to the Atari 2600 Version and a really bad joke in comparison with the great Intellivision graphics of Demon Attack). Worst of all: only 2 ! opponents are displayed at the same time. Attack "waves" of 2 enemies. A space-shooter with just 2 enemies" displayed at the same time... the joke of the century even way back in 1983.


The Attack. Horrible, primitive graphics and ridiculous poor gameplay with no variations. I had to pay 50 Dollars way back then then I thought this may be a cool space-shooter but I was totally wrong. I will never forget the shock when I looked at the screen at home. I played this game hours on that day - because I could not believe that this sucking screen is all. I thought for hours better things would come... other screens, improvements in gameplay and graphics. But I was wrong. This game was/is that bad. There is no improvement or variation. The title screen on the package is well drawn and is far away from everthing this poor game really offers. So the graphic-design department of Texas Instruments is to blame for stealing a young man 50 bucks. Shame on you! :-)

Car Wars (although some people like this adaptation) to me the gameplay was even dated in 1983 when I bought it.

I hope it helped a little bit. A good starting point is http://www.videogamehouse.net. The owner of this site is one of the nicest guys I ever met in the computer and videogames related virtual world. A great site also!

[Jorpho]

Perhaps I can direct some of new recently-arrived TI fans to this ancient and hopeless quest of mine (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=983) ?

[icbrkr]

Not without an adapter. The pinouts are different. TI joysticks are wired kind of like Atari 2600 paddles (2 controllers, 1 connector).

You might send a PM to Gapporin or Icbrkr and see if they have any duplicate cartridges they are looking to sell.

Nope, not any more. I pretty much loaded Gapporin up with what I had left when he was here!

[aclbandit]

Weird. The cartridge slot works fine, but I can't seem to boot any floppy backups of anything. Am I missing something? Do I need some other cartridge to boot from floppy?

Sorry for being a n00b on this thing, but it's quite a few years older than I am.

[digitalpress]

Our online guide can assist you in finding good games (at least in our opinion). I've played just about everything that was ever made on cartridge. If you want to specifically find good or rare games, back out to the main search panel, there's an option to filter that way.

http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/listing.cmf?system=2490

Enjoy your new (computer) game console! TI-99/4A has lots of very impressive titles.

[calthaer]

Well, aside from the games, I know that when I was a kid and went over to my friend's house, he used the speech synthesizer to make it say swear words. Then we played with G.I.Joes.

[aclbandit]

Our online guide can assist you in finding good games (at least in our opinion). I've played just about everything that was ever made on cartridge. If you want to specifically find good or rare games, back out to the main search panel, there's an option to filter that way.

http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/listing.cmf?system=2490

Enjoy your new (computer) game console! TI-99/4A has lots of very impressive titles.

Nifty! Thanks a lot.

[aclbandit]

Well, aside from the games, I know that when I was a kid and went over to my friend's house, he used the speech synthesizer to make it say swear words. Then we played with G.I.Joes.

Yeah, the speech synthesizer verges on hilarious if you make it say things like that.:bad-words:

[k8track]

Ah, the TI-99 4/A, my first computer. I have a great deal of affection for this one. Actually, it was my dad's first computer, and we played it when we visited him in Arkansas during the summers when my brother and I were kids. On a black and white monitor (I didn't know what color anything was until years later)! I sat down and went through the manual and taught myself TI's version of BASIC (Call clear! Call sound! Call mom!), and started to write (very) simple programs; some even had graphics! That was where I started to compose music using a computer, and I just recently transferred all of my old TI-99 songs (along with my C64 ones) into MP3 format, so now I can jam to those bitchin' old tunes in my car. Fresh!

My dad also had all the old issues of 99er magazine, which became Home Computer Magazine, and he typed all of the game programs from them and saved them onto cassette. Occasionally, he would make me type some! Anyone else remember doing that? If you made one typo, you had to go back through and try to find it one line at a time (kind of like badly-wired Christmas lights). I enjoyed some of those games just as much, if not a little more, than the official cartridge games. But my best memories were making my own music.

There is one thing I have been desperately looking for my system, and I hope I'm not inappropriately intruding in this thread, but it seemed like an opportune moment. All I'm looking for is a power cord for the TI cassette drive. Anyone have an extra one to sell or trade or give? When I bought a cassette drive from 4jays about 3 or 4 years ago, they didn't include one. I've never been able to get them to give me one since. It's a long shot, but I had to try.

Enjoy your golden find, aclbandit!

[diskoboy]

http://www.pinkdome.com/Wargames.gif

[Jorpho]

Anyone else remember doing that? If you made one typo, you had to go back through and try to find it one line at a time (kind of like badly-wired Christmas lights).

It was a painful introduction to an activity that would plague me for the rest of my life. Now there's something you'd think angry parents would be crusading against! (It didn't help that the books I was using often did not distinguish sufficiently between I and 1 or O and 0.)


All I'm looking for is a power cord for the TI cassette drive. Anyone have an extra one to sell or trade or give?

Is it really completely nonstandard? If it's just a standard bipolar cable without any transformer in it, surely some other appliance cord might work?


http://www.pinkdome.com/Wargames.gif

For a second there I thought that was a real disk listing, until I saw the filename.

[aclbandit]

All I'm looking for is a power cord for the TI cassette drive. Anyone have an extra one to sell or trade or give? When I bought a cassette drive from 4jays about 3 or 4 years ago, they didn't include one. I've never been able to get them to give me one since. It's a long shot, but I had to try.

Enjoy your golden find, aclbandit!

Could you perhaps find me a picture of what one looks like somewhere? I have a huge LOAD of cables that I found for the thing, and, to be honest, I don't have a clue what most of them do. Find me a picture, I'll see if I have a spare ^_^

[Steve W]

My dad also had all the old issues of 99er magazine, which became Home Computer Magazine, and he typed all of the game programs from them and saved them onto cassette. Occasionally, he would make me type some! Anyone else remember doing that? If you made one typo, you had to go back through and try to find it one line at a time (kind of like badly-wired Christmas lights). I enjoyed some of those games just as much, if not a little more, than the official cartridge games.

The TI was my first computer, too. And I had loads of fun typing magazine game programs. I think one single program ran right away without crashing the first time I started it. Shocked the hell out of me. All the others had typos in them, so I'd have to comb through the BASIC listings to find them. And doing that helped me to understand how programs worked, and how to modify them. Good times. I miss that every once in a while. Although those Extended BASIC 64-character lines for sprite graphics got to be annoying to type in accurately. And I only had a few copies of the 99'er, but I was with Home Computer Magazine from the first issue to the last. Even had a bunch of the data cassettes.

I've got the Oscar bar code reader, which was allegedly going to be the wave of the future. All type-ins would have the bar codes in the books too so you could just swipe the reader across the pages instead of all that typing. Too bad it never took off.

I've also acquired a Milton Bradley Expansion System (MBX for short). It comes with an external keyboard/base unit, an analog joystick (like Atari's Space Age Joystick, but with a spinning joystick and three fire buttons), and a head mounted microphone for voice recognition.

One TI related item I've always wanted but haven't ever seen in the wild is X-10 Home Automation's TI Home Computer Module for controlling all my household appliances with my good ol' TI-99/4A. I remember seeing them in Triton catalogs and such, but didn't have any desire to get them. Now I would like them just for the sake of curiosity. And I've wondered throughout the years if the X-10 could be used with the MBX's voice recognition. That would be seriously cool.