I am surprised that no one mentioned this, but a truly excellent game for TI 99-4A is TUNNELS OF DOOM. It is a dungeon crawler RPG and would make a really good video. If you dont want the game to last too long, just set the number of floors to 2 so that limits how difficult it is to find what you are looking for. The game was so popular that a guy named Howard Kistler made a remake of it in JAVA maybe 10 years ago, Tunnels of Doom Reboot. He also did a modern version of Hunt the Wumpus. As a kid in the early 80s, my friends and I spent many a rainy afternoon playing ToD (you can play up to 4 players).
You guys bought Parsec from us at our table at VCF East. I think I gave you guys a 6502 magnet also. As was mentioned the Alpha lock key when locked in the down position prevents the up from working on the joystick. There is information online if you ever want to open up the TI and pop a diode in there to prevent the issue. Or just remember to keep that Alpha lock key up! See you guys at VCF Midwest!
I was brought in by the 6502 Song, and then hooked forever by the zany. You people rock. More on topic, the TI 99/4a was my first computer when I was, oh, about 10 or so back in the 80's.
Your joint session with Veronica seemed such a lot of fun 😊 Although I think I may have watched the two videos in the opposite order 😊 Hope there’s some more Taylor & Amy soon - with or without the 'Special Guest Stars'
What a charming chaos 😂👏. Also, the "if only we read it" part was great 😂. That's what I think after discarding every manual ever and just jump right into something, which happens nearly every time I try something new 😂
This was our family's first computer, and the first computer I remember using as a young child - it was the late 80's so they were being phased out and my father likely got a good deal buying it from a co-worker. I distinctly remember playing Parsec, Super Demon Attack, Moon Mines (I believe that's what it was called), Hunt the Wumpus and several educational cartridges including one where you had to make alligators eat pumpkins by solving simple arithmetic equations.
TI99/4A was our first family computer back in the early 80's. Loved it to pieces. All the edutainment games were great. My favorite game ended up being Tunnels of Doom. Later on when my dad came home with one of the first IBM PCs I was thoroughly unimpressed! No speech or sound? 4 color graphics? Gimme a break! I'll stick to my TI99, thanks very much!
You can adjust the vertical speed of the ship with keys 1 2 and 3. If I remember correctly, 1 was the slowest and 3 the fastest. You need the slowest speed to enter the refuelling tunnel.
When is the followup "Speedrunning Multiplan" video coming out? I want to see those formulas entered and edited at light speed! lol. And the Ti speech synthesizer was the best at the time it came out... and my first experience with it was with a neighbor and their TI-99/4A with Parsec. I haven't played it in (mumble 40 years mumble), but I think some of the ships have to turn a red color before you can shoot them.
The Ti99/4A architecture is EXTREMELY short on CPU RAM - most of the RAM is video RAM. So, you kinda need a cartridge to store a decent amount of machine code. It's a bit weird if you're used to other home computers, but it made sense for what Texas Instruments was trying to do. They didn't want to deal with rampant piracy, and they drew incorrect conclusions from their (correct) market research showing that most home computer users didn't program their own stuff.
To now hear the design was 'hobbled' by a decision to proceed with the 9900 CPU the memory map had to be broken made the system less capable and more expensive to produce. I still remember the firesale when they were being blown-out for $50. Crazy..
I bought a TI994/A about 1981, then spent three times as much getting the PEB, memory expansion, and floppy drive. Most of the games were kind of lame, but I ended up doing a lot of Basic programming on it. All these years later, I bought a used PEB, to go with my original TI.
@@vcv6560 Yup. I think I spent about $1500 Cdn on the PEB, floppy drive, and memory board. Maybe that included some of the cartridges, too long ago to remember. I just couldn't stand loading/saving to a cassette drive.
Yay, 99/4A. That was the first computer I ever laid my hands on. Friend of my stepfather had one and once lent it to me for a weekend. This is how I got interested in computers.
Parsec was pretty great, especially with the speech synthesizer. I had the good fortune to own a set of TI's official joysti-sorry, I mean *wired remote controllers.* Look 'em up if you havent seem them before. They were just as awkward to use as they look.
A half billion years ago I had Multiplan on the C64, you never wanted to see the File Not Found error 😧. Only a disc, my guess is TI needed to split the product between the two 'formats' because the cartridge didn't have enough addressing to hold the entire program (typical games being 4-8K) not to be forgotten either the benefit of copy-protection. Its sad TI didn't do better in this area. My collection includes two (one with white keys) Everyone had TI scientific calculators unless you loved RPN. When you put in the label strip I thought of those with my TI58c (59s also) for the solid state software modules they supported.
TI started as a military electronics company. They brought out the first pocket transistor radio (licensing the ATT patent) in 1954 as The Regency TR-1. It was an especially fine engineering organization.
TI-99/4a was the first computer my mom taught me to program on in 1984, and Parsec (and TI Invaders) were some of her favorite games. (I loved BurgerTime, Microsurgeon, and Early Learning Fun.) This summer, I’ve been teachihg my 9 year old child to program in BASIC across the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and TI 99/4a to help practice for the upcoming coding and typing classes. She already learned about Logo from the Secret Coders comic book. Not sure when I’ll introduce 6502 ASM - any suggestions?
See, now, the Multiplan bit was such a tease. I thought maybe it was going to be used to calculate the maximum amount of surface area a TI could take up if it you hooked up every possible peripheral. Or at least how many time zones. We need more videos on the Myarc Geneve, which I only fainly remember because this cat I knew had one and he was all bragging about what his TI could do with one.
Yes...very much like Atari's "Defender" ...in fact, there was a "TI99 version" of Defender. But Parsec had much better graphics, but, Defender had DUAL "forward-motion". Ahhh...both - Great Games!!!
@@fractalMD I remember multiplan. I used to load it up side by side on TI99/4a and the Myarc Geneve 9640 to get people to upgrade, just for the numeric keypad and to replace the fire hose.
lol that disk drive is the size of my work computer (which I'm hoping doesn't have a CPU that will explode since it is an intel chip in the affected models that randomly explode). It's not as big as my home computer though. My computer at home is GIANT. It has dual 360mm radiators. lol I went super extreme for cooling. My last computer overheated 3 times in the 10 years I used it. That's 3 times too many. I was determined that this one would never overheat. lol
One of the BEST "TI99-4a" games...PARSEC!!! It had great graphics for the time, but, you have to remember to "UN-CAPITOL" the keyboard ---("CAPS-LOCK" UP position)!!! 🤨
Sorry "Alpha Lock" - Showing my "QWERTY 108-key keyboard" preference here. But...I actually learned to "type" on a Ti99 :-) And, those "strips" that you put on the console keboard "top" are really handy when using certain programs and carts... (Like Editor-Assembler, TI-Writer, and, of course, MS Multiplan) 🙂
the best game ever made is either KSP or life is strange (the original). Around the time I hit over 1000 hours of KSP in steam, I discovered that the game is better if you move it out of steam and play it stand alone (because updates don't break your mods). So I have no idea how many hours I spent. It's probably something like 3-4k by now. Maybe even 5k. And now that KSP2 failed big time, I'm back to playing KSP1 again.
@@fractalMD I'll get home from work and serious watch 2 episodes of something or 1 movie. Then I put on anime and play KSP. Before I know it "I meant to go to bed an hour ago". LMAO
The TI disks are really squirrelly, not following most industry "standards" of the time. They also tended to be on crappy media. Let me guess - Multiplan's disk crashed. It requires the disk images and new hardware to really run effectively. That's an issue since the PEB can't use the drives then, and few other things are relevant - except the UCSD Pascal card (which formats disks differently and creates it's own disk operating system to run. It's the only real thing making the PEB necessary.
OK so you made me feel like I was watching my sister with her friends 40 years ago. Those manuals that are no longer around not only disappeared but killed the printing industry as all the printed material was replaced by..... come on girls.....thats right, the dasterdly PDF. I bought a portable jump starter small little thing you can toss in the glove compartment of your car, no longer do you have to park cars side by side or front to front and use jumper cables, well the manual that came with that was about 3/8 inch thick the english portion was 4 pages. I didn't know there were that many languages, but that would make a Commodore 64 manual about 18 inches thick, at least. Because folks all around the world are not smart enough to put the right manual in the box when they ship it to any specific country, thats right they have to print in every language known to mankind and throw that in every box. That sounded snidley sorry. They were smart enough in 1982 however.
Girls just have more fun. A room full of my fav dude computer nerds in contrast would spend the entire time one-upping each other with facts for superiority. I am SUPPER jelly 😉
I am surprised that no one mentioned this, but a truly excellent game for TI 99-4A is TUNNELS OF DOOM. It is a dungeon crawler RPG and would make a really good video. If you dont want the game to last too long, just set the number of floors to 2 so that limits how difficult it is to find what you are looking for. The game was so popular that a guy named Howard Kistler made a remake of it in JAVA maybe 10 years ago, Tunnels of Doom Reboot. He also did a modern version of Hunt the Wumpus. As a kid in the early 80s, my friends and I spent many a rainy afternoon playing ToD (you can play up to 4 players).
Even better than accounting software??!?
@fractalMD prolly not but TI Writer is the 🎉🥳
The rapport you guys had with each other here was awesome.
We had SO MUCH FUN!
...and that's why the manual spent so much time discussing the spacebar...
Two of my favorite channels trading off guest spots is great. I appreciate the fun and positivity, and also the TI99/4a, always a blast to play with!
Veronica is awesome!
I wonder if we can make a setlist in Multiplan?
I'LL BET WE CAN!!!!!
You guys bought Parsec from us at our table at VCF East. I think I gave you guys a 6502 magnet also. As was mentioned the Alpha lock key when locked in the down position prevents the up from working on the joystick. There is information online if you ever want to open up the TI and pop a diode in there to prevent the issue. Or just remember to keep that Alpha lock key up!
See you guys at VCF Midwest!
WE WILL BE THERE!!
Damn! You urgently need two more subscribers!
And the TI99/4A actually was my very first contact with computers. I really love your stuff! 🙃
Thx!
Three of my favorite UA-cam retro computer stars!!!🤩🤩🤩
Hooray!!!!
This was fun, girls! You have a multi plan for MS Multiplan. 😂
I was brought in by the 6502 Song, and then hooked forever by the zany. You people rock. More on topic, the TI 99/4a was my first computer when I was, oh, about 10 or so back in the 80's.
It's always a great day when Veronica cameos with you amazing ladies!!!
We agree!!!
@@fractalMD One of these days I am gonna be lucky enough to meet you badass ladies!
Your joint session with Veronica seemed such a lot of fun 😊 Although I think I may have watched the two videos in the opposite order 😊 Hope there’s some more Taylor & Amy soon - with or without the 'Special Guest Stars'
What a charming chaos 😂👏. Also, the "if only we read it" part was great 😂. That's what I think after discarding every manual ever and just jump right into something, which happens nearly every time I try something new 😂
What do you think are alightment would be? Chaotic good?
definitely a bong rip experience spanning the menual and the multiplan strip all the way to the parsec rapid fire bursts. very enjoyable show ladies.
Actually, Multiplan was very good on PCs. I think I have it around here somewhere for the TI 99/4A...
I love how Jack Tramiel decimated TI's home computer division while at Commodore, before decimating Atari while at Atari. 😂
This was our family's first computer, and the first computer I remember using as a young child - it was the late 80's so they were being phased out and my father likely got a good deal buying it from a co-worker. I distinctly remember playing Parsec, Super Demon Attack, Moon Mines (I believe that's what it was called), Hunt the Wumpus and several educational cartridges including one where you had to make alligators eat pumpkins by solving simple arithmetic equations.
This is fun, love watching you ladies (Taylor and Amy & Veronica).
We love hanging out!
If Alpha Lock on the keyboard is on, then up will not work on the joysticks. TI fixed this in the later revision by adding a diode that was missing.
Curses!
I'm jumping ahead for this, still working my way through your back catalog 🖖
Live long and prosper!
TI99/4A was our first family computer back in the early 80's. Loved it to pieces. All the edutainment games were great. My favorite game ended up being Tunnels of Doom. Later on when my dad came home with one of the first IBM PCs I was thoroughly unimpressed! No speech or sound? 4 color graphics? Gimme a break! I'll stick to my TI99, thanks very much!
"fastest multiplan speed run this decade". 🤣
Easily
Better for the PEB to be on the floor for sound reasons also, just don't kick it or you'll break your toes.
Thats A big Drive LOL
BOOM!
You can adjust the vertical speed of the ship with keys 1 2 and 3. If I remember correctly, 1 was the slowest and 3 the fastest. You need the slowest speed to enter the refuelling tunnel.
As a manual, I am happy see you guys having fun
🤣
When is the followup "Speedrunning Multiplan" video coming out? I want to see those formulas entered and edited at light speed! lol. And the Ti speech synthesizer was the best at the time it came out... and my first experience with it was with a neighbor and their TI-99/4A with Parsec. I haven't played it in (mumble 40 years mumble), but I think some of the ships have to turn a red color before you can shoot them.
Love the energy!
Pure fun!
Best Multiplan gameplay ever!
HANDS DOWN!
The Ti99/4A architecture is EXTREMELY short on CPU RAM - most of the RAM is video RAM. So, you kinda need a cartridge to store a decent amount of machine code.
It's a bit weird if you're used to other home computers, but it made sense for what Texas Instruments was trying to do. They didn't want to deal with rampant piracy, and they drew incorrect conclusions from their (correct) market research showing that most home computer users didn't program their own stuff.
To now hear the design was 'hobbled' by a decision to proceed with the 9900 CPU the memory map had to be broken made the system less capable and more expensive to produce. I still remember the firesale when they were being blown-out for $50. Crazy..
You all are having as much fun as a whole VCF by yourselves.
Definitely a mini VCF was had.
I have never seen people have more fun with a spreadsheet.
Outside of an accountants convention, at least
Just when I thought you couldn't fit more people within the frame... you brought out that disk drive!
It was a close thing!
The good old days. I never could afford the PEB but i really wanted one.
It's a BEAST
I bought a TI994/A about 1981, then spent three times as much getting the PEB, memory expansion, and floppy drive. Most of the games were kind of lame, but I ended up doing a lot of Basic programming on it. All these years later, I bought a used PEB, to go with my original TI.
A fully loaded PEB was the price of a good used car. Crazy, I knew only one guy that had one.
@@vcv6560 Yup. I think I spent about $1500 Cdn on the PEB, floppy drive, and memory board. Maybe that included some of the cartridges, too long ago to remember. I just couldn't stand loading/saving to a cassette drive.
Yay, 99/4A. That was the first computer I ever laid my hands on. Friend of my stepfather had one and once lent it to me for a weekend. This is how I got interested in computers.
Very cool!
The boringest software I have for the C64 is Microsoft Multiplan, fer sure.
Aside: the videos are so much fun; y'all made my holiday weekend.
Love this!
Parsec was pretty great, especially with the speech synthesizer. I had the good fortune to own a set of TI's official joysti-sorry, I mean *wired remote controllers.* Look 'em up if you havent seem them before. They were just as awkward to use as they look.
Some hot MultiPlan action FTW! *
* Parsec is a much better game than MultiPlan IMHO.
Thank you for sending us Multiplan!
This video is hilarious. Subscribe! My first ever computer was the TI99/4A over here in the UK. I was 9! I still have it.
Very cool!
Hello!
As we say - (sorry for my english, i am from czech rep.): "If there fails everything (attempts), then try a manual!". 😊
"I don't see an any key..." LOL
Always an appropriate joke!
How many people know Excel was originally going to be named Mr. Spreadsheet. Not kidding.
No!
I lived in Lubbock, Texas. Home of TI. Everyone in town had one, it seems. My first start of programming!
And calculators flowed in the streets!
Poor Taylor, lifting the PEB twice including the first video, she's going to hurt her back!
I need to get her a weight belt or something
@4:21 I did LOL when the TI trolled you ladies.
Trolled us hard.
A half billion years ago I had Multiplan on the C64, you never wanted to see the File Not Found error 😧. Only a disc, my guess is TI needed to split the product between the two 'formats' because the cartridge didn't have enough addressing to hold the entire program (typical games being 4-8K) not to be forgotten either the benefit of copy-protection.
Its sad TI didn't do better in this area. My collection includes two (one with white keys) Everyone had TI scientific calculators unless you loved RPN. When you put in the label strip I thought of those with my TI58c (59s also) for the solid state software modules they supported.
my beloved texas instruments....great company!!!
Woo!!
@@fractalMD LOL
Fabulous 😂
Woo!
a speedrun on Multiplan *laughing*
Best in the world!
Somewhere in Washington State, Bill Gates is having a good chuckle because of this video...
I mean, 100% chance he subscribes to us, so gotta be!
My 10 year old self from 1986 can attest to the weight of that PEB. It's built like a Sherman tank.
It's crazy!
TI started as a military electronics company. They brought out the first pocket transistor radio (licensing the ATT patent) in 1954 as The Regency TR-1. It was an especially fine engineering organization.
Only on The Taylor and Amy Show do they have the cajones, to speed run Multiplan. Bravo! 👍
We are very brave.
TI-99/4a was the first computer my mom taught me to program on in 1984, and Parsec (and TI Invaders) were some of her favorite games. (I loved BurgerTime, Microsurgeon, and Early Learning Fun.)
This summer, I’ve been teachihg my 9 year old child to program in BASIC across the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and TI 99/4a to help practice for the upcoming coding and typing classes. She already learned about Logo from the Secret Coders comic book. Not sure when I’ll introduce 6502 ASM - any suggestions?
There may be a new song in the future that could really help with that 6502 assembly....
See, now, the Multiplan bit was such a tease. I thought maybe it was going to be used to calculate the maximum amount of surface area a TI could take up if it you hooked up every possible peripheral. Or at least how many time zones.
We need more videos on the Myarc Geneve, which I only fainly remember because this cat I knew had one and he was all bragging about what his TI could do with one.
Multiplan was serious SW, competing with $300 Visicalc. I still have my C64 copy.
LMAO a few videos ago it was "I forgot to install the chips". This one is I forgot the power.
It's always something with us..... We get so excited.
Gotta be honest. I was hoping for an explanation. Otherwise, superior parsec content, as usual.
Just serving up chaos!
Oh geez, is multiplan time
ALWAYS
3 times the fun & mayhem.
You know it!
8:10 Your refection in the monitor. Get 'em, Taylor!
Looks like a pre-Defender Defender :)
Yes...very much like Atari's "Defender" ...in fact, there was a "TI99 version" of Defender. But Parsec had much better graphics, but, Defender had DUAL "forward-motion". Ahhh...both - Great Games!!!
@@jankoji8 Yes! Thank you :)
Is this the Microsoft Multiplan episode? Or just the Parsec episode.
Yes
@@fractalMD I remember multiplan. I used to load it up side by side on TI99/4a and the Myarc Geneve 9640 to get people to upgrade, just for the numeric keypad and to replace the fire hose.
Press redo or back..
... Obligatory "Get in losers! We're going accounting!" joke here.
You know it!
Amazingly this package was 150$ back in "the day" (1984)
Truly a bargain! (I think like around $450, today?)
VCF music rumors "The Stop Bits?"
THE STOP BITS
Guilty!
Its #SepTandy. Any plans for CoCo or other TRS like content?
"Or NOT saving it..."
So when are the 3 of you coming to Toronto?
Girl. That would be all the fun.
lol that disk drive is the size of my work computer (which I'm hoping doesn't have a CPU that will explode since it is an intel chip in the affected models that randomly explode). It's not as big as my home computer though. My computer at home is GIANT. It has dual 360mm radiators. lol I went super extreme for cooling. My last computer overheated 3 times in the 10 years I used it. That's 3 times too many. I was determined that this one would never overheat. lol
Here is to minimal explosions while computing.
One of the BEST "TI99-4a" games...PARSEC!!! It had great graphics for the time, but, you have to remember to "UN-CAPITOL" the keyboard ---("CAPS-LOCK" UP position)!!!
🤨
Sorry "Alpha Lock" - Showing my "QWERTY 108-key keyboard" preference here. But...I actually learned to "type" on a Ti99 :-) And, those "strips" that you put on the console keboard "top" are really handy when using certain programs and carts... (Like Editor-Assembler, TI-Writer, and, of course, MS Multiplan) 🙂
Hello I am from Veronica Explains channel 🙂
Welcome!!
3:30 lol poor amy 😂
Ha!
Taylor sabotages.. noted! 😉
You have to keep an eye on her!
the best game ever made is either KSP or life is strange (the original). Around the time I hit over 1000 hours of KSP in steam, I discovered that the game is better if you move it out of steam and play it stand alone (because updates don't break your mods). So I have no idea how many hours I spent. It's probably something like 3-4k by now. Maybe even 5k. And now that KSP2 failed big time, I'm back to playing KSP1 again.
Wow! That's a lot of hours. Makes me want to play.
@@fractalMD I'll get home from work and serious watch 2 episodes of something or 1 movie. Then I put on anime and play KSP. Before I know it "I meant to go to bed an hour ago". LMAO
Hunt the wumpus is the greatest TI game of all time.
I mean, with a name like that....
My favorite 6502 Ladies! What flavor of 6502 is this?
I wish competitive Excel was a joke.
I have never looked into it. I'm like, how in the world????
The TI disks are really squirrelly, not following most industry "standards" of the time. They also tended to be on crappy media. Let me guess - Multiplan's disk crashed. It requires the disk images and new hardware to really run effectively. That's an issue since the PEB can't use the drives then, and few other things are relevant - except the UCSD Pascal card (which formats disks differently and creates it's own disk operating system to run. It's the only real thing making the PEB necessary.
If you assume the cart and the disk are the same, I'd pick cart every time just for speed.
Trooth
Love us some hijinx 😅
We got that!
OK so you made me feel like I was watching my sister with her friends 40 years ago. Those manuals that are no longer around not only disappeared but killed the printing industry as all the printed material was replaced by..... come on girls.....thats right, the dasterdly PDF. I bought a portable jump starter small little thing you can toss in the glove compartment of your car, no longer do you have to park cars side by side or front to front and use jumper cables, well the manual that came with that was about 3/8 inch thick the english portion was 4 pages. I didn't know there were that many languages, but that would make a Commodore 64 manual about 18 inches thick, at least. Because folks all around the world are not smart enough to put the right manual in the box when they ship it to any specific country, thats right they have to print in every language known to mankind and throw that in every box. That sounded snidley sorry. They were smart enough in 1982 however.
Girls just have more fun. A room full of my fav dude computer nerds in contrast would spend the entire time one-upping each other with facts for superiority. I am SUPPER jelly 😉
We had SO. MUCH. FUN!
😎👍👉❤🔥
you lay it down flat behind the ti
A comedy of errors, with three actresses. :)
The word chaos comes to mind!
..girlies converted from maleWare?? 😬😬