Playing TI-99 Computer Games
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- Опубліковано 29 кві 2021
- A while back I took a look at a TI-99/4A computer that was donated to me. In this video I finally get around to trying out some games, graciously loaned to me by a viewer. Enjoy, and don't forget how to do the "Alligator Mix"!
- Наука та технологія
My wife comes into the room while alligator mix is playing. She just turns around and leaves.
At least you still have a wife.
I think you might need a new wife 🤔
We need a remix of alligator mix. This song is just to catchy.
Alligator Mix VIP dubstep 10 hour cut.
First we need this on spotify or soundcloud. Please Ben
it's secretly djent af
ohhhh...THAT Alligator Mix
ua-cam.com/video/MKWrvNj1ZL8/v-deo.html
My dad used to sell these. I could spend hours playing "Hunt the Wumpus" and try refueling in "Parsec".
Refueling was brutal...and the asteroids that looked like lettuce
That's pritty cool dude
Yeah he needs to re do parsec and use the keyboard not the controller. when it would talk to you and say "great shot captain" was awesome back then. Also I seem to remember playing standard attari cartridges as well.
8:33 That wasn't a subtle dig at Billy Mitchell or anything. Loved it!
Hunt the Wumpus was one of my favorites.
Watching this reminds me of a quote from a kid from today playing games on the original black and white Gameboy.
"I feel sad for kids in the past.".
wow
Whoever that was must've been a bit bias, because the Gameboy has some of the best games on it. Like "legend of zelda link's awakening" and my only complaint with the brick is that the screen was hard to see. Other than that, it was small (compared to the competition) had a fantastic battery life, and a headphone jack for true stereo! Also, tetris.
when i grow up i wanna be an alligator that eats math
the sounds of Alpiner, Hangman and Parsec take me back.
Love this guy. He's insane
That startup screen always reminded me of the cover on a pack of construction paper. It had the same bars of color and it always made me feel like the TI-99 was just raw material you could make anything on. Then you look at that cartridge slot that is 3 times bigger than any cartridge and I am just like, nope. LOL
That’s a really good way to put it… I totally agree. Well said.
8:40 Mullet and hot sauce, I cannot take it! Well done!
"AaaaAAAID!" Ben should appear on BotW. They live relatively close.
Man, was really hoping Miner 2049er was going to be in there. My favorite!
I was hoping for Hunt The Wumpus!
The TI-99 was my first computer. Taught me a lot about computers and programming when I was about 12 years old.
Loved the Billy reference
3:30 "Help me Spock!" - Ad lib, in the moment, hilarious, Ben is awesome!
Come for the technical knowledge, stay for the music. Keep rocking Ben.
Enjoyed seeing some of my games on your great video (e.g. Moon Mine). Those were good times programming games for TI back in the day. John Phillips.
"I think I need a mullet and to make mediocre hot sauce to play this game" 🤣
When I was a kid I learned to program on this sequential cassette tape...LOL. We had TI invaders, Donkey Kong, Parsec, Hunt the Wompus along with the speach module. I so loved this old CPU. Thanks for the video :)
Moon Mine, Alpiner, Parsec and some others supported the speech synthesizer. Moon Mine is a pretty much endless game. Once in a while you have to send your guy out to retrieve something and get back before a critter shows up. It will say "Zygonaut approaching" then that ball thing shows up and says either "You'll never get me!" or "Ha ha ha ha!", which I'm pretty certain was recorded and used for Dr. Goldfire in the DOS game "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold". He's popping in and out on the boss level, alternating between those two sayings.
TMS9918A had a resolution of 256x192. 15 colors plus transparent. 32 sprites with vector motion control independent of direct CPU control. Essentially "fire and forget", they keep moving until the program code does something to change the motion. Maximum of 4 sprites on the same line, IIRC if you want to have 8 sprites in a row you'd stagger 4 of them up or down one pixel. The 5th+ sprite wasn't visible, not just to the eyes but also to software. This bug was described as a difficulty enhancing feature in "Chisholm Trail". The VDP had several display modes but no true bitmap mode. The 8x8 pixel character blocks were divided into 8x1 pixel rows, each of which could have two colors. This made drawing programs pretty crappy. Sound chip was TI's own SN76489, originally designed for the 99/4. With three square wave tone generators and one noise generator that can do white or periodic noise it or clones or other TI made versions were used in the PCjr, various Tandy PC clones and Sega game consoles.
The TI had a most odd RAM arrangement. The CPU could only directly address 256 bytes of RAM. The 16 kilobytes was all VDP RAM and what wasn't used for the video display was where program code got stored. With any of the TI and 3rd party BASICs, the powerful CPU was essentially serving as a data shuffler for the VDP. Assembly language was where the TI shined. Well written 9900 assembly programs could be super fast as more efficient methods of CPU access to the VDP RAM were available, and the 32K expansion was also a big help. With assembly the 256 bytes of CPU RAM could be used for things like rapidly switchable pointers. There's a maze game that can have from one to a pretty large number of levels and level switching is instant thanks to assembly language and using CPU RAM to best advantage.
Many of the cartridges from TI, especially the educational ones (especially the ones with 1970's copyright dates) are "canned" console BASIC programs. That's why they're so slow, and the 1970's ones are the worst because they were made for the 99/4 instead of the 99/4A.
The oddball design of these computers came about because TI was attempting to design a CPU specifically as a companion for their TMS9918 (no A) Video Display Processor. They developed a special language for the VDP called GPL (no, not GNU Public License) or Graphics Programming Language. When the GPL CPU project failed, TI had to Do Something so the SEC wouldn't get on their ass like they did all the while Mattel was failing to produce their home computer. So they did a hack to their 16 bit 9900 mini-computer CPU to shoehorn it into the 8 bit machine. But rather than Redo From Start a new programming language to take best advantage of the fancy CPU, they wrote a GPL to 9900 interpreter. So console BASIC is written in GPL. Programs get interpreted from BASIC to GPL then to 9900 code. TI Extended BASIC is not written in GPL, plus it uses tokenized commands to save RAM space.
The console OS is in some GROM (Graphics Read Only Memory) chips and cartridges may have either GROM, ROM or both. Plus it's possible to add RAM (4K plus more with bank switching) to a cartridge. TI's "Mini Memory" had a battery and allowed simple assembly language programs to be written, compiled, and stored in the cartridge's RAM, but only one program at a time.
But the most forward thinking aspect of the TI-99/4 and 4A is the peripheral expansion system. The console OS only knows about the hardware and interfaces contained in the console. For the expansion it has several "ports" in memory which get scanned when the computer is turned on. Peripherals have built in drivers, called Device Service Routines or DSRs. Without a floppy controller if you try to SAVE a BASIC program to DSK1 you get an error message because the OS knows nothing of such a device. But plug in a floppy controller and the OS is seamlessly extended with the code in the floppy DSR. TI had perfect Plug and Play. Unlike other microcomputers that tried to pack in all the peripheral support into the console firmware, the TI's expandability is unlimited, all one needs to do is write a DSR that can present the peripheral hardware to one of the ports and write software to use it. If you wanted to make a peripheral with some LEDs to blink and be able to operate them from BASIC the DSR could have devices called LED1, LED2 etc and commands to use them would be accessible to any BASIC, like CALL LED1 ON or CALL LED1 BLINK 2 or however you wanted to structure commands to turn on/off, blink etc. Could probably make a peripheral to control a bunch of neopixels.
Cool its well designed then to be so expandable thats impressive
Parsec and Munchman was my jam back in the day.
Munchman and a-maze-ing, for sure. games like this, and one in this video 'the attack' just had the TI-99 aesthetic/feel
My classmate Thomas got a fully kitted TI99 in 1985 with expansion box and floppys and all that jazz.. He returned it after a week and got a C64 like the rest of us. It was a system out in the margin already by 85. Fun video as always!
That's surprising because the TI was abandoned in 84. I loved mine but trading up to the C64 was obviously a good move
The sound chip in the TI99/4A was a TI part, of course; SN76489. The GI AY-3-8912 was an improved version of it.
You need to release a record, a cassette and a cd with this instant hit and after some time newspaper headlines: "Alligator mix
reached number one on the Billboard list and stayed for an incredible 421 weeks"
Some of the games like alpiner were much better with the speech synthesizer module. In fact this actually was the same computer I learn to program basic on
And man is this video hitting me in the feelers. Had one growing up and when I would get in trouble my parents would take away all the games but I could use basic. I thought I was finding a workaround when I would program games to only realize that they were just letting me learn how to code
The first computer I played games on. Burger Time and Buck Rogers.
Adventure is a text adventure game... the games were on cassettes...
It gets warm because the PS is right under that cartridge slide.
Parsec uses the speech synthesizer if you had one....
Extended basic has extra commands and a ram expansion
I have one of these in my collection but no games! Very nice to see some gaming capability footage from it. :)
Donkey Kong on TI-99/4A has all the levels from the arcade but they're ordered weirdly. The first loop of the game only has the 25m and 100m levels, then the next loop adds the 75m level, and lastly the third loop adds the 50m (pie factory) level.
Arcade had a similar repeating order adding one new stage each cycle.
@@NCISCherno The American version at least, yeah.
I cracked up at the space cowboy game, great stuff!!!
I remember that TI opening screen. We played this thing all the time. So cool to see it after all these years
For 1981 this was actually a really good computer. I wonder why it wasn't popular.
It was expensive and Apple, Atari, and Commodore all had better ecosystems.
Hi Ben, how are you? I am currently working on a pi4 handheld and was wondering if it’s possible to cut the pcb board in to bits to move the analogs and buttons and triggers to where I would like to place them, with out using the GPIO pins with lots of wires? Thank you
Enjoyed the video man. Indeed Alligator mix was by far the best game
If you had a voice synthesizer some games like alpiner would talk to you! Fun fact, the synth has a door in the plastic originally for vocab expanders and maby different languages, bu it was never implemented and now there is just a random door as they could not afford to throw all those cases away! Also the intro in alpiner can be skipped by pressing a button for example the fire button on the joystick. An interesting addon for the ti is a big box called the "PEB; peripheral expansion box" and you can slot in cards for more ram, floppy drives and there is even a serial card that can be used with a terminal emulator cartridge! the cable coming out looks like a fire hose and the voice module has a passthrough for connecting the peb. I got a ti99 recently from a friend who got it and a broken one along with an osborne1 from another friend. Now i have 2 different types of 994a with one of them being broken, along with a crap ton of books, binders full of info and even a commodore monitor! There is something called the finalgrom99 that can have an sd card put into it so you can run nearly every game and program on the cartridge port + some modern test programs and games. I would have a look at it, could make a cool video!
Knew if I went far enough in the comments someone would tell him about Alpiner. I think one of the reasons that they never added the expansion port to the voice synth addon was that they added an extra chip, piggy-backed to the rom, in the addon, that contained all the allophones necessary to make all the words in the English language. Word packs were kinda pointless after that.
@@fenikso really? how can you access that?
@@justin.campbell Had to go and look it up to make sure I was remembering right: The extra ROM is just additional words, to fully program the voice synth chip with all the allophones you need the Terminal Emulator II cartridge.
@@fenikso good thing I have that then!
Please do the Bud Remix, alligator mix! Haha, great video Mr Ben! ✌️
I had this computer and loved playing Donkey Kong on it. I also learned how to program in basic with it. I loved this computer.
My TI 99/4a is still up in my attic but I haven't looked at it in thirty five years. My favorite game was Parsec, but Alpiner, Frogger, Burger Time, Q*Bert, Miner 2049er, and Hunt the Wumpus were great fun too. The best thing about the TI 99/4a was its speech synthesizer which is still to this day better than any computer generated voice I have ever heard. I finally realized you don't have the speech synthesizer module plugged into the peripheral bus port. No wonder you didn't think Parsec was any good. My TI 99/4a was tricked out with everything but the tape drive which I didn't need since I had the Disc Drive and the Memory Extension modules. LOL I also had the analog modem for connections to archaic dial-up bulletin boards.
The cartridge landing is there to keep your hot coffee warm when you're managing your 1981 household budget.
Came for the vintage computer. Stayed for Ben trying to come up with the word ‘butterfly’ in hangman.
2:35 that´s why we respect you Ben , you has patience with the melody!! haha Regards
Alligator Mix is my new favorite song. Make a full version so I can add it to my playlist lol it needs to play along with Kitten Jail 😻
Guy knows how to write a hit. I've had both tunes stuck in my head for a week+. he's channeling his inner Jerry Lee Lewis on this one, so much energy
I loved my TI99/4A! Parsec was one of the best games on that system.
Ben never runs out of funny things to say lol
Found a Ti-99 a couple years ago with all the cables and one game for $5 at a church yard sale. Now I feel like I need to dig up some games for it :)
very glad i watched until the end!
Ah fine memories of my childhood playing games on the TI99/4A. Munchman was a fun Pacman like game for the system. I still have the old TI computer and a bunch of carts(and a tape deck and speech synth) for it.
My first computer was this one. The games I had back then were Munchman, TI Invaders, and Donkey Kong which ran just fine in my opinion. I also learned how to program in the Basic Language cause of the book included in the box. By my freshman year, my programming skills were more advanced than my fellow peers. My programs had movement, color, and sounds which the Apple 2E's at school could not do. My TI, and later, my Commodore 64, could do more than the Apple's at school. It was good time my life that eventually increased my desire to go to college and major in computer science.
@Ben
Would you consider a repair on a Pioneer CLD A-100 with the Sega Pac?
“Hunt the Wumpus” is really the TI99’s killer app imo.
it's almost amazing how much better the Donkey Kong is than all the other games. It's the only one that really outdoes typical games on the very humble Speccy.
Loved the part with Household Budget Management, lol.
By the way, I have two power supplies for these things and neither one has a plug built into the brick like yours does. Instead it has a cord coming out of the other end just like a Commodore's, which "ends" in a plug that's just, like, _welded_ onto an extension cord that has an inline mini-box that I'm told contains a fuse. The two power supplies came with a later cheapo beige TI and an original silver-and-black one, respectively, so I have no idea what era yours must be from.
"Uhmmmmmmm English!" Adequate choice! 🤣
A friend of mine gave me a new one in box a few years ago. Never got to run it thought because I didn't have the AV cable.
Got the BASIC guide, software catalog with Bill Cosby, and the manual
If you still have it, the A/V cables can still be gotten relatively cheaply on eBay. The TI has pretty decent composite output.
@@fenikso It was a step above other home PCs, but the jack was also it's Achilles heel. The jack wasn't very robustly built and the wires inside the sleeve broke off too easily.
The "tape drive" for these things were just ordinary audio cassette recorders, preferably with a relay switch in the motor circuit so that the computer could use the relay to control the actual motor. You still had to set the "tape function" manually, but even Walmart's "shoebox" recorder seems to at least have the _jack_ (2.5 mm headphone, as opposed to normal 3.5) for the remote. If you can find the wiring (just needs the right DIN, two 3.5 mm, and one 2.5 mm), a relay (I've found them at auto part stores & "Tractor Supply" type places), + a diode for flyback protection on the coil, then you could probably make the entire thing in maybe 30 minutes.
The "remote" jack was a result cassette tapes originally being meant as dictation machines- if you don't have anything in the remote jack then it bridges the tip and sleeve connections, so you can either have nothing in it and have the machine work like we're all used to them working, or you can stick in a plug and connect the wires from the plug to an ordinary light switch or something. It was extremely simple, and you could basically make the remote control as cheap as you wanted.
"Is this early learning, or still-in-the-womb learning?" I nearly peed my pants laughing
Omg..you need the speech synthesizer! In my head I am hearing things like - alpiner 'onward and upward' an 'press redo or back'
My favorite unofficial uncle, what a set of pipes on this man
4:45 was Moon Mine an inspiration for Descent? Also 6:30 Blasto reminds me of the old Mac tank game 'Bolo' a little bit. Alpine also reminds me of a few climbing puzzles in various Sierra Online adventure games.
So Zelda Breath of the Wild is really just a remake of Alpiner.
Alpiner is like Uncharted, but with less climbing :)
What is the song at 14:14 it's driving me nuts trying to remember this tune.
that outro music was 🔥🔥🔥🐊🔥🔥🔥
Family had this with the voice box and the huge expansion box that you can install cards in. Alpiner was fun.
Thanks for that song at the end.
Memories!! We had Alpiner! loved that thing.....
The TI-99/4A was TI's *second* foray into the home computer market. The first machine they released was the TI-99/4 which features a chicklet keyboard and no bitmap graphics.
Thanks for the comedy!
idk...i think I'm more of a fan of bud then you LUUUL
Gotta love how so many old games just used classical music for their soundtracks. I have one called _Jawbreaker II_ that uses Mozart's _Turkish March_ for the menu. I also had a Commodore 64 game called _Bristles_ that sampled a bunch of different pieces from the Nutcracker Suite.
to have had space invaders on a home computer in early 80s would have been amazing!!! I used to play on table consoles at arcades along with kong and of course pinballs. my first job in 1983 we didn't have pc's just terminals hooked to a mainframe, giant printers that were placed their own cone of silence. That TI99/4A was advanced for its time is my geuss
Nice to know ben is a big south park fan with the stan darsh and aids references
Some people from Hershey want to talk to you about your co-opting the KitKat jingle. 🤣
I like it. Good job
The big "landing pad" for the cartridge was designed to support a Multi-Tap device. It was a deck that could hold 6 cartridges vertically, with a switch on the side allowing you to jump from game to game. At least that's what little I remember about my TI-99/4A.
My favorite game was Parsec! I still pull out the TI 99/4A from time to time
Real TI hackers had cassettes and disk drives and knew the extra-long cartridge slot was for rewarming your coffee.
The space in front of the cartridge slot is to keep your coffee warm ... in your model, two linear regulators (7905 and 7812) live under there ;)
i used to have one of those . i loved that thing.
Does anyone know the game where it's like a snowy battleground, and you have to airlift injured people out of the line of fire? I have vague memories of playing that on one of these, but I can't for the life of me find anything that confirms its existence.
To be fair, sound aside, that's a pretty damn good version of Donkey Kong.
There was a speech synthesiser module for the ti99, parsec was one of the few games it worked on
I'll be honest. I guessed the first hangman just as you said "bli" for the first time.
There was a separate floppy drive bay for that system that allows you to play basic games etc off the floppy. So for an atari-like computer, it was really only limited by the willingness of the software developers to make software for it. Nice to know that it was most similar to a Colecovision or similar. My dad had a Star Trek game for floppy/Basic on it that was decent. You had to blow up Klingons with photon torpedoes.
i have been wanting to get a retro pc for a while but cant decide between a TI99, an atari 800xl, or something like an apple II Gs. I know the 800XL pretty well and now that I am old it would be a lot easier to adapt to then a IIGs ...but i love the look of the TI99..i just hate how chonky all the peripherals are for it.
That's the first computer I ever used. Even had it on loan for a weekend and entered my first Commands in BASIC in it.
I just got an Acute Angle PC from Ali-Express and I am really impressed. I got the 8bitdo NES mouse too. I am loving my new Pi 400 and Pi Pi 4B 8GB in the Vilros keyboard/touchpad hub as well. Keyboard PC'S are back. I see Ali-Express has a K600-N6 keyboard computer as well but the Acute Angle PC is way more powerful.
Blasto was the first game I ever played. The music made a big impression on me. My grandma told me it was a version of, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and explained what the Civil War was. I was about 5 or so.
I think game music is so important to me because the TI-99 tended to excel in that area.
Man, I had one of these back in the very early 90s. My dad found it on the side of the road with a bunch of accessories. Sadly, he threw out most of the accessories, but kept the computer, the monitor, and the cartridges. I was too broke to afford any modern games, like NES, so this thing held me down and it was alright. The games were EXTREMELY basic, though. I had cat and mouse, soccer, and I cant remember what else.
Best ending ever. Can't wait for the followup - chomp and spin. Where do I preorder the vinyl?
Is the ti99 worth any money, I still have one?
Hi Ben, I know it's a big ask, but when you mentioned the MSX Computer, I thought it would be great too see you do a build of the Omega MSX2 kit. How about it? :-)
My dad and his brothers had these, with the huge expansion unit, and voice expansion, pretty sure Alpiner had a really digitized “Look out!” when rocks fall
My god, Parsec, I played that game so much as a kid
the mix tape is growing, first we have 8 bit dance party, now we get alligator mix...
don't forget the long lost '90s indie rock anthem ''Kitten Jail''
Aligator mix, Aligator mix!! LMAO!!! Time for a remix of your hit song..
"Help me Spock", lol. Such a specific reference.
Break me off a piece of that Alligator Mix