5 ms·

I totally did not expect this on HN. Turns out the TI 99/4A has a thriving community and homebrew scene, with two members in particular being exceptionally pro

by endlos 5y ago

I totally did not expect this on HN. Turns out the TI 99/4A has a thriving community and homebrew scene, with two members in particular being exceptionally productive. Those homebrow games created are even of at least an order of magnitude higher quality than what was available in the 80s.

tyingq 5y ago
It's also amongst the most affordable old 8-bit choices on eBay. I'm not sure why.
- buescher 5y ago
  TI built a ton of them and closed them out at fire-sale prices, and they mostly went into people's closets. It was hard to do much with a base model but play its not-so-great cartridge games so it has few fans. The fanatics though - there's really cool stuff people do. I think you could cheaply upgrade the memory to 16-bit wide, for example.
  - compsciphd 5y ago
    I spent a lot of time playing parsec and munch-man (yes a pac-man clone, but unique in its own way)
    - bink 5y ago
      Tunnels of Doom was probably my first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons. I woulda played that every day if it didn't require loading from audio tape via a cassette player (a process that was very prone to errors).
- eesmith 5y ago
  The TI is a 16-bit computer. Indeed, that was the deciding factor to get my Dad to buy a TI for the family.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Ah, yes, right. Though with a 16 bit memory bus, like the 8-bit machines it competed with, and only 16kb memory.
Narishma 5y ago
> Turns out the TI 99/4A has a thriving community and homebrew scene I think that's the case of pretty much all 8 and 16-bit machines.
- endlos 5y ago
  What I meant to express is that even though the TI 99/4A is relatively obscure, especially outside the US, it does have a large and active international community. Its distant and even more obscure relative, the Pyuuta, also has a community, but I wouldn't really call it thriving.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    They sold 2.8 million of them. More than the total sales for the VIC-20. For comparison, the C64 was ~15M, original Apple II ~6M, Atari 400/800 ~4M.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > They sold 2.8 million of them Internationally? I don't recall having seen any of them in Germany in the 1980s. Plenty of Sinclairs and Commodores, even an Armstrad, but nothing from TI.
      - tyingq 5y ago
        I can't find any solid stats, but it does seem like most of the sales were US and Canada. And probably a fair amount of those sales after they priced it below cost during their death throes. I believe it was under $50 at the end, which was crazy cheap at the time.
        pm215 5y ago
        It was our family's first computer in the UK -- pretty sure my Dad picked it up very cheap when the local department store were getting rid of the last of their stock after TI killed the machine. The lack of commercial games for it compared to the Spectrum etc meant I spent more time typing in BASIC listings, which was my first introduction to computer programming...
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Here is a list of 99/4a emulators https://www.99er.net/emul.shtml https://www.99er.net/emul.shtml One of these emulators is on github https://github.com/tursilion/classic99 https://github.com/tursilion/classic99 - in active development. I had the luck of owning a TI99/4A as a kid; it had a very rich Basic, with the 16k extension cartridge you even had sprites and a synthesizer. I have made some 2d game stuff with pygame recently, and for me it felt as if I got back to this old machine... (here is this stuff, for the record: https://github.com/MoserMichael/pygamewrap https://github.com/MoserMichael/pygamewrap )
- chasil 5y ago
  TI Basic lacked peek and poke, so no access to assembler was available with the base unit, unlike every other competitor. I would much rather have had something with a 6502.
  - wsc981 5y ago
    TI Extended Basic had CALL PEEK and CALL LOAD that could be used for similar purposes, from what I’ve read: https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Programming#Useful_CALL_LOADs https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Programming#Useful_CALL_LOAD... But you are correct, the base unit didn’t have access to these functions. You did need to get the TI Extended Basic cartridge.
    - dnotq 5y ago
      The TI-BASIC SandBox was broken: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/218904-playground/ https://atariage.com/forums/topic/218904-playground/ It was possible BITD too, but no one thought hard enough about how to do it. There has been a lot of "pushing the hardware" over the last decade. Lots of things that were thought of as "not possible" have been done now. The 99/4A community is very active, and there is a lot more going on than just new games (although that is also a big part of the activity).
arcadeshopper 5y ago
There are many new developers making games, utilities, new versions of languages, a GCC compiler patch to output 9900 code, a bunch of really cool modern hardware solutions including the TIPI that provides a modern hard disk and internet connectivity via a raspberry pi. and the F18A VDP replacement is on this and many other systems to get VGA out. more info: https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/ti-99-4a-faq/ https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/ti-99-4a-faq/

by endlos 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago

It's also amongst the most affordable old 8-bit choices on eBay. I'm not sure why.

buescher 5y ago
TI built a ton of them and closed them out at fire-sale prices, and they mostly went into people's closets. It was hard to do much with a base model but play its not-so-great cartridge games so it has few fans. The fanatics though - there's really cool stuff people do. I think you could cheaply upgrade the memory to 16-bit wide, for example.
- compsciphd 5y ago
  I spent a lot of time playing parsec and munch-man (yes a pac-man clone, but unique in its own way)
  - bink 5y ago
    Tunnels of Doom was probably my first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons. I woulda played that every day if it didn't require loading from audio tape via a cassette player (a process that was very prone to errors).
eesmith 5y ago
The TI is a 16-bit computer. Indeed, that was the deciding factor to get my Dad to buy a TI for the family.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Ah, yes, right. Though with a 16 bit memory bus, like the 8-bit machines it competed with, and only 16kb memory.

Narishma 5y ago

> Turns out the TI 99/4A has a thriving community and homebrew scene I think that's the case of pretty much all 8 and 16-bit machines.

endlos 5y ago
What I meant to express is that even though the TI 99/4A is relatively obscure, especially outside the US, it does have a large and active international community. Its distant and even more obscure relative, the Pyuuta, also has a community, but I wouldn't really call it thriving.
- tyingq 5y ago
  They sold 2.8 million of them. More than the total sales for the VIC-20. For comparison, the C64 was ~15M, original Apple II ~6M, Atari 400/800 ~4M.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > They sold 2.8 million of them Internationally? I don't recall having seen any of them in Germany in the 1980s. Plenty of Sinclairs and Commodores, even an Armstrad, but nothing from TI.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      I can't find any solid stats, but it does seem like most of the sales were US and Canada. And probably a fair amount of those sales after they priced it below cost during their death throes. I believe it was under $50 at the end, which was crazy cheap at the time.
      - pm215 5y ago
        It was our family's first computer in the UK -- pretty sure my Dad picked it up very cheap when the local department store were getting rid of the last of their stock after TI killed the machine. The lack of commercial games for it compared to the Spectrum etc meant I spent more time typing in BASIC listings, which was my first introduction to computer programming...

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Here is a list of 99/4a emulators https://www.99er.net/emul.shtml https://www.99er.net/emul.shtml One of these emulators is on github https://github.com/tursilion/classic99 https://github.com/tursilion/classic99 - in active development. I had the luck of owning a TI99/4A as a kid; it had a very rich Basic, with the 16k extension cartridge you even had sprites and a synthesizer. I have made some 2d game stuff with pygame recently, and for me it felt as if I got back to this old machine... (here is this stuff, for the record: https://github.com/MoserMichael/pygamewrap https://github.com/MoserMichael/pygamewrap )

chasil 5y ago
TI Basic lacked peek and poke, so no access to assembler was available with the base unit, unlike every other competitor. I would much rather have had something with a 6502.
- wsc981 5y ago
  TI Extended Basic had CALL PEEK and CALL LOAD that could be used for similar purposes, from what I’ve read: https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Programming#Useful_CALL_LOADs https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Programming#Useful_CALL_LOAD... But you are correct, the base unit didn’t have access to these functions. You did need to get the TI Extended Basic cartridge.
  - dnotq 5y ago
    The TI-BASIC SandBox was broken: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/218904-playground/ https://atariage.com/forums/topic/218904-playground/ It was possible BITD too, but no one thought hard enough about how to do it. There has been a lot of "pushing the hardware" over the last decade. Lots of things that were thought of as "not possible" have been done now. The 99/4A community is very active, and there is a lot more going on than just new games (although that is also a big part of the activity).

arcadeshopper 5y ago

There are many new developers making games, utilities, new versions of languages, a GCC compiler patch to output 9900 code, a bunch of really cool modern hardware solutions including the TIPI that provides a modern hard disk and internet connectivity via a raspberry pi. and the F18A VDP replacement is on this and many other systems to get VGA out. more info: https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/ti-99-4a-faq/ https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/ti-99-4a-faq/