PC99 project shows improvement
By GARY W. COX
The 1993 Chicago TI Faire has come and gone leaving faire-goers with a variety of products both new and old.
One of the first items catching my eye was the progress of PC99 by Mike Wright and Mark Van Coppenolle of CaDD Electronics. PC99 is a project whereby an IBM compatible PC can emulate a T199/4A. Stage 2 additions include the ability to emulate all sprite features, operate with joy- sticks, limited TI sounds, disk I/O, and RS232 and PlO emulation abilities.
The new release has somewhat faster system operations and adds several utilities. In the demonstration of PC99 I witnessed the operation of several TI modules, although execution speed remained slow and operations limited.
Wright has also released “The Cyc,” described as “an encyclopedia of knowledge relating to the Texas Instruments T199/4A home computer” intended to provide a starting point for an information search. The files are in Word Perfect format accessible only on a IBM compatible PC and contain reference material drawn from MlCROpendium, 99’er Magazine, user group publications, Computer Shopper and many other sources. If, for example, you wish to look up an article in Computer Shopper you have the reference material on disk to locate the right issue. The Cyc costs $20.
Richard Gilbertson of CaDD Electronics demonstrated V.5.57 of Super.charged XB (RICHXB), an impressive enhancement of Extended BASIC (GRAM device required)!
Beery Miller of 9640 News had copies of the final version of MDOS (new); 9640 News vol.umes 1, 2 and 3;
and a variety of Geneve 9640 software products.
Ron and Ada Markus of Ramcharged computers had quite a variety of products, including a new game called “Mexican
UFOs” programmed using “the Missing Link” and described as a text and graphics type adventure game containing both animated graphics and TI-Artist quality still graphics. The game was described as simple enough for young children yet complex enough for adults. It sells for $12.95.
Bud Mills of Bud Mills Services/Horizion computer had products including Digi Port, RAMdisks, P-Gram cards, Miller Graphics EPROMS and the SCSI con.troller card. Although the SCSI DSR is still not complete, Mike Maksimik got the SCSI card functioning on a primitive level with a CD-ROM drive and Bud had the card performing limited functions with a SCSI hard drive.
Larry Conner of L.L.Conner had a variety of programs and hard to find hardware and parts including chips, connectors and so on all specific to the T199/4A.
Ted Kieper of Competition Computer had TI products including cartridges, PEBs, consoles and hard to find MBX systems.
Mickey Cendrowski and Mike Sealy of MS Express Software’s products included a few new ones such as Adventure Database (database of TI Adventure games), Rattlesnake Bend (adventure game for the adventure module), Genealogy Plus (genealogy tracking assistant compatible with TI-BASE, TI-Writer and Personal Record Keeping formats).
Tim Tesch of S&T Software and Don Walden of Cecure Electronics distributed a list of U.S. and Canadian TI BBSes as well as several programs, including VCLR 2.0, described as an MDOS color ANSI file viewer, and MDOS Polyport 2.0, which allows Geneve 9640 users to include digitized files (VOC and FX format files) in batch files. Tim also had available his TI BBS program.
Bruce Harrison of Harrison Software held a sort of going out of business sale, with any software item in stock for $5, as after Dec. 31 he will no longer accept orders. However, Bruce said he will continue to write public domain software.
Someone new this year was Meredith Adkins of Brukin Software who carried interesting software products ranging from utilities to games, many of which I haven’t seen before!
Ken Gilleland of Notung Software again presented his varied products including many graphic oriented programs. Ken also had information on some of his paintings, many of which are on display at the Orlando Gallery in Sher.man Oaks, California!
Berry Harmsen of the Dutch TI users group distributed his group’s newsletters and was selling a special Dutch demo disk of programs by TIers in his group! I saw many tables full of generic computer products from Linda of Disk N Dat. Tom Freeman of T and J Software was present with a variety of software products. Many user groups from the U.S. had tables as well.
James Schroeder, author of REDISKIT, received this year’s John Birdwell award
for outstanding achievement in the TI community.
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