I am looking for Parsec
Chuk Goodin
Does anybody have any idea where I could ftp parsec. I have an emulator
and hopefully I can find parsec and play again, like I did when I was
13.
Thanks,
Cor
Paul Urbanus
I found a really good site (the best, methinks) for TI99/4A stuff on the
web. It is called the TI-99/4A Shrine and the url is:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7374/ti.html
Under the SOFTWARE section are several good sites. There is one where I
found the Parsec code along with about 30 other games. the url is:
ftp://ftp.premierweb.com/pub/systems/ti99/uploads/
This is a zip file, so you must have pkunzip to uncompress it. I have
successfully used this file with the v9t9 emulator (I assume this is
what you are using).
Hope this works for you. As a co-author (along with Jim Dramis) of
Parsec, I'm glad to see that you enjoyed this game as a youngster. I was
25 years old when we wrote it, and I enjoyed then and still do.
Regards,
Paul Urbanus
u...@urbonix.com
WARNING - Urbite ships attacking!
eic...@delphi.com
Chuk Goodin <Chuk_...@mindlink.net> writes:
>Does anybody have any idea where I could ftp parsec. I have an emulator
>and hopefully I can find parsec and play again, like I did when I was
>13.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Cor
immediate remove it, else they would see them in court.
Dan
John McDonnell
Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
copied?
--
John McDonnell
jmcdo...@worldnet.att.net
Don't miss the TI-99/4A Shrine
<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7374/ti.html>
Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.
Brian Tristam Williams
>Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
>copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
>do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
>copied?
Well, judging by posts from new Extensa owners and old TI-99/4A
owners, it sure seems that TI could lose a few lawyers and gain a few
support personell.
Brian Tristam Williams
Johannesburg,
South Africa
Brian Tristam Williams
Brian Tristam Williams
Charles P. Hobbs
Paul Urbanus wrote:
> Under the SOFTWARE section are several good sites. There is one where I
> found the Parsec code along with about 30 other games. the url is:
>
> ftp://ftp.premierweb.com/pub/systems/ti99/uploads/
>
> This is a zip file, so you must have pkunzip to uncompress it. I have
> successfully used this file with the v9t9 emulator (I assume this is
> what you are using).
>
I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
> Hope this works for you. As a co-author (along with Jim Dramis) of
> Parsec, I'm glad to see that you enjoyed this game as a youngster. I was
> 25 years old when we wrote it, and I enjoyed then and still do.
>
I had my TI set up in my dorm room at college, and one of everyone's
favorite games was Parsec. In fact, I had to kick out one guy who would
have sat in my room and played it all day. Often, people would get into
near fights about whose turn it was to play ...
Another big favorite: the "Frogger" look-a-like game from one of those
Sams books. "Entertainment Games in Basic" I think it was called, I
still
have it. (This book of games was written by two young Vietnamese
brothers,
and since a lot of the people on my dorm were Vietnamese, that increased
the popularity tremendously . . .)
Charles P. Hobbs
John McDonnell wrote:
> Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
> copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
> do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
> copied?
You gotta remember, this was a company that was preparing to "lock out"
all third party cartridge manufacturers, by requiring GROM and other
proprietary material in all cartridges.
Not that they really catered to third party programming, at least not
to the extent that Apple, Radio Shack, Atari and Commodore seemed to.
The console basic was beastly slow, Extended was a bit of an
improvement,
but it wasn't until the introduction of the Mini Memory cartridge that
mere mortals (i.e. us poor high school kids who couldn't scrape up
a thousand dollars or so to purchase the disk drives, memory expansion,
and other paraphenalia needed) to write assembly language programs, and
to explore the internals of the machine. (i.e. Peek and Poke, like
every other machine's Basic had!)
TI might make great chips, but they just never understood the consumer
computer market, or so it seemed . . .
Eric Lafortune
Charles P. Hobbs <tra...@primenet.com> wrote:
> You gotta remember, this was a company that was preparing to "lock out"
> all third party cartridge manufacturers, by requiring GROM and other
> proprietary material in all cartridges.
> [...]
> The console basic was beastly slow, Extended was a bit of an improvement,
> but it wasn't until the introduction of the Mini Memory cartridge that
> mere mortals (i.e. us poor high school kids who couldn't scrape up
> a thousand dollars or so to purchase the disk drives, memory expansion,
> and other paraphenalia needed) to write assembly language programs, and
> to explore the internals of the machine. (i.e. Peek and Poke, like
> every other machine's Basic had!)
Exactly! Which brings me to a question that has been bugging me for a long
time: does anyone know of any hacks to gain control over the console,
without requiring any modules? A plausible technique seems to create a
file with a deliberately corrupt TI Basic program, which overwrites some
buffers after having been loaded. All this in such a way that the computer
would jump to an address where you put some of your own code.
Once you would have control, you could execute any machine code program.
Of course, it would require writing code for the 256 bytes of scratch pad
memory, swapping in program segments from the VDP RAM. It doesn't sound
very practical, but it would have made a splash. TI wouldn't have liked it.
With the Mini Memory you can do a similar thing. In Easy Bug you can load
a piece of code anywhere in memory. By loading some data right where the
register stack is, you can make the computer return to your own code after
the tape loading procedure. I once used this to write a faster tape loader
that ran automatically.
Eric.
csch...@telis.org
Charles P. Hobbs wrote:
>
> Paul Urbanus wrote:
>
> > Under the SOFTWARE section are several good sites. There is one where I
> > found the Parsec code along with about 30 other games. the url is:
> >
> > ftp://ftp.premierweb.com/pub/systems/ti99/uploads/
> >
> > This is a zip file, so you must have pkunzip to uncompress it. I have
> > successfully used this file with the v9t9 emulator (I assume this is
> > what you are using).
> >
> I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
> to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
> down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
>
[ reminiscences (sp?) snipped]
Hi Charles,
I also have been playing around with v9t9 to bring back memories. One thing
you might want to look at as far as running Parsec on your Pentium is the
"Delay between instructions" setting in the .CNF file. This controls how
much of a delay is inserted between each 9900 machine instruction.
I have an idea that the other ships' actions and your fuel usage are
controlled by an interrupt timer in the program. With a 133 mHz CPU, the
timer would probably be able to count up faster in the background than the
program can process everything in the foreground. (This is alluded to in one
of the text files that came with the ZIP archive, the author mentions the
different settings he uses with his system.)
You might want to increase the delay setting by a bunch and see if the
program seems to run different from a low setting, and then tune it from
there.
....wishing I could afford a new 133 mHz computer....
Frank <csch...@telis.org>
Charles P. Hobbs
Eric Lafortune wrote:
> Exactly! Which brings me to a question that has been bugging me for a long
> time: does anyone know of any hacks to gain control over the console,
> without requiring any modules? A plausible technique seems to create a
> file with a deliberately corrupt TI Basic program, which overwrites some
> buffers after having been loaded. All this in such a way that the computer
> would jump to an address where you put some of your own code.
>
The problem is that BASIC programs load into VDP ram, not CPU memory.
9900 code can only run in CPU memory (In fact, without modules or
expansion ram, the only CPU ram in the machine is that 256-byte
scratchpad
area.)
Brian Tristam Williams
On 10 Dec 1996 01:09:02 -0700, "Charles P. Hobbs"
<tra...@primenet.com> wrote:
>I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
>to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
>down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
That's true - Parsec is the one module which just doesn't act the same
under emulation, no matter what I do. Perhaps it uses more complex
code than usual.
Kerry Lee High Jr
Charles P. Hobbs (tra...@primenet.com) wrote:
: I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
: to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
: down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
manually edit the v9t9.cnf file to get it perfect.) Also, PC99 emulates
it better.
jhw...@delphi.com
John McDonnell <jmcdo...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
>copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
>do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
>copied?
pursued. If TI were not to enforce copyrights on 99/4A software, it would
weaken their enforcement of later TI copyrights.
Most TI software is still available through commercial dealers at very
reasonable prices. If these dealers do not remain in business, any further
developments (which are rapidly diminishing in number) will cease.
Jeff White
eic...@delphi.com
John McDonnell <jmcdo...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
>copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
>do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
>copied?
let people produce clones (PC99) and the Geneve for almost nothing. They
kept marginal technical support available for 10 years (TI CARES), they
continued to replace or repair equipment for over 10 years.
After the left the market, they gave away updates to TI writer, GAVE away
the programming language Forth (at considerable expense of making copies
and mailing them to each users group). They have continued to periodically
put our mailing list of Users Groups.
I know of no equal in supporting orphaned computers in the computer
industry. Do you think any company in the PC industry would have done
all that?
I think rather than complaining about what to could have done, we should
all feel very thankful for that which they gave us, and it bears remembering
that TI didn't make a dime of the 99/4(a) they lost Millions of dollars.
Dan
eic...@delphi.com
PC99 does 100% emulation...
V9T9 does (mostly) emulation. Like in PC99 all math is ran through the
RADIX100 algorithms in the TI roms. In PC99 the numbers are grabed and
passed to the floating point processor or floating point routines on
the PC.
This means that while V9T9 will produce an answer much more quickly it
will mostly likely not be the same answer the a 4(a) will produce.
You can verify this by setting up a console and doing some floating point
and or trig routines and comparing the results of a real ti, PC99 and V9t9.
Dan
Charles P. Hobbs
eic...@delphi.com wrote:
>
> Kerry Lee High Jr <khi...@rocket.cc.umr.edu> writes:
>
> >Charles P. Hobbs (tra...@primenet.com) wrote:
> >: I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
> >: to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
> >: down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
> >Parsec seems *REALLY* speed dependant. Adjust the speed. (You may have to
> >manually edit the v9t9.cnf file to get it perfect.) Also, PC99 emulates
> >it better.
>
I twiddled with the speed today, and got it to work more like normal
(in fact, set it too slow, and the ships swoop INTO the ground, without
crashing, though). Slowing down the emulator can make the keyboard
feel unresponsive, though.
>
English Mellow Fellow
Hello There,
My father in the early eighties wrote some software for the Ti99/4a. The
software was released via Virgin and others over here in England.
He has produced some web-pages about them, and you can also download them
for use in V9T9.
The address is :
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/addatex/
Take a look, it may be of interest to some of you !
Cheers,
Ryan.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
( )
( Ryan Adams (Second Year Psychology And Comp. Sci. Student) )
( )
( Email : ssu9...@reading.ac.uk (Prefered) )
( 10076...@compuserve.com )
( )
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Brian Tristam Williams
>Its a shame Texas Instruments is so litigious and petty as to pursue
>copyright violations on a system they abandoned in 1983. What the hell
>do they lose if Parsec or any other program created for the 99/4A is
>copied?
Well, judging by posts from new Extensa owners and old TI-99/4A
owners, it sure seems that TI could lose a few lawyers and gain a few
support personell.
Dave LaDuke
Are you white? I would be scared to death to live there, you might be
hacked to death by angry locals. I would go back to England.
We in the USA do hear from time to time about all the attacks over there.
Dave
Brian Tristam Williams <PO...@global.co.za> wrote in article
<33287294....@news.saix.net>...
: On Mon, 09 Dec 1996 15:49:09 +0000, John McDonnell
:
:
Brian Tristam Williams
On 15 Mar 1997 17:36:19 GMT, "Dave LaDuke" <sa...@gte.net> wrote:
>Are you white? I would be scared to death to live there, you might be
>hacked to death by angry locals. I would go back to England.
>
>We in the USA do hear from time to time about all the attacks over there.
>
>Dave
Yes, I am white, but sorry, Dave, but we see the world a little
differently. What 'attacks'? You mean another violent crime here
just like you have in the USA being sensationalised by a tabloid TV
show to look like a vicious tribal thing? You should rather watch CNN
- their reports are accurate and unbiased, most of the time - just be
careful when they get their reports from ITN, though.
Secondly, I've never been to Europe, let alone England, so I don't see
why I'd want to go 'back'.
Thirdly, I AM a local. I was born here, as were my parents, my
grandparents and my great grandparents. Beware, newcomers, as we
LOCALS might attack you! ;)
But seriously, Dave, you need to lighten up about South Africa - visit
a few web sites if you will - it's not a jungle out here.
Jason Whorton
What the heck does all that have to do with the game Parsec? Thanks.
Brian Tristam Williams
> On 10 Dec 1996 01:09:02 -0700, "Charles P. Hobbs"
> >I'm using V9t9 on a 133 mHz Pentium PC . . . most of the games seem
> >to run ok, but Parsec runs "funny" (i.e. ships don't swoop all the way
> >down like the do on a real TI, you use fuel way too fast ,etc.)
> under emulation, no matter what I do. Perhaps it uses more complex
> code than usual.
> Johannesburg,
> South Africa
Dumas Walker
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * I'm a nocturnal model
Gaston Blanco
> and hopefully I can find parsec and play again, like I did when I was
> 13.
> Thanks,
> Cor
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gasposoft.parsec
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/es/app/retro-parsec/id1059891563
Best,
Gastón
Gregory McGill
You can run many original and new homebrew games and software
Greg