Extended BASIC: The Cart That Completes the TI-99/4A

[@SynthMagic]

This is the best TI99/4a channel in the world. Deserves way more subs. Great vid.

[@oldguy9051]

The Extended Channel has better videos, more subs and also sprite commands.

[@SprocketGames]

Great video! These are really enjoyable. More videos, please. 😄👍

[@timwoodland3664]

Great Job! Thank you so much, it was very well done and informative. Very nice, clear examples and demonstrations. Keeps getting better all the time. I like that you showed both 32k expansion types. You are the TI speech master; I can't wait to see your upcoming XB programs!

[@8_Bit]

Thanks for making these great videos; they're very informative and I appreciate that you don't gloss over the negative aspects while still making a good presentation of all the positives. If the TI-99 had shipped with Extended BASIC, or even just the ability to PEEK, POKE, and run assembly programs, there would have been a much stronger software base available; it probably would have had a much longer life as a result. Thinking about the fact that assembly needs extra RAM, and that adding more RAM to the base unit probably was cost-prohibitive, do you know if there's a reason all 16K was VDP RAM? Could it have split 8K for video, and 8K expanded?

[@galier2]

They have separate buses. The 16K were connected to the VDP and the CPU had no direct access to it. It had to use I/O commands to the VDP to access it (a bit like the Commander X16 vpeek and vpoke). The 32K extension was indeed expensive.

[@PixelPedant]

If you're using bitmap mode and sprites, you really do need most of that 16K for graphics. The 9918A was designed for use with 16K of private RAM, and a ground-up redesign based around an 8K/8K split between (private) VDP and CPU RAM would have very significant costs. Ideally, the 99/4 would just have come with some expansion RAM in the first place, but TI evidently felt that memory prices in 78/79 made that impractical.

[@eternalcheesecake]

This was an eye opener for me. I wish I knew about XB in 1980. Regular BASIC was so slow and I couldn't understand why some things I was seeing in TI books wouldn't work.

[@andrewk.7498]

I never knew Cylon and Garfunkel were real

[@JohnPhillipsCIO]

Interesting factoid about the Mini Memory. Hopper, the game Mike Archuleta and I designed, was originally programmed to run only in the Mini Memory module so it didn't have a lot of bells and whistles due to memory constraints. When it was demonstrated to TI brass, they wanted to turn the game into a standalone cartridge so they requested we add more aesthetics and functionality to the game including a title screen, the 2-player option, etc. The Mini Memory version of the game never saw the light of day, but the cartridge version did.

[@PhilDPino]

What’s the difference between the TI XB carts (black cart/black label vs black cart/blue label vs beige cart/blue label)?

[@CardiacCat]

Extended Basic was one of the first things I had to have for my TI-99/4A. I bought the Editor Assembler cart with manual and started trying to learn Assembly language. I got far enough on my own just reading the manual to get graphics on the screen and moving them around with the joystick. It was just too far over my young teenage brain to grasp many of the advanced concepts. I still have all of those things out in the storage building and much better understanding after years of computing to what some of those things did. I'm thinking about dragging them all back out or trying to dig in on the emulator. I wrote one complete XB game called "Chicken" where you had to get your chicken across the road. It would be fun to find that cassette and see if it can still be loaded and run today. I really cannot even remember how it played. I seem to recall putting drops of corn on the road to try and grab to make it more difficult.

[@neohermitist]

Never had the extended basic, really wish I got it but never had the money and I don't recall it being readily available in the mid-80s

[@cbmeeks]

Great video as usual! I would love for you to cover some of the more modern compiled BASIC's available for the TI these days.

[@PixelPedant]

That's definitely on my list. Might start where XB game development libraries began, though, with The Missing Link.

[@PeBoVision]

Using the LOAD filename allowed me to create self booting menus of XB programs loaded with the RUN command...I can't imagine using disks back in the day without its addition. And with sprites, you could even use trickery get passed the 2 colours limitation per 8x8 tile, making those menus mighty darn sweet.

[@klf6992]

Please pardon me. Playing on a CoCo 3 while watching your TI video!

[@bitwize]

Holy crap, Black Tunnel! That's a game from _Entertainment Games in TI BASIC and Extended BASIC_ by Khoa and Quyen Ton, which had some of the best TI-99/4A games that didn't come on carts. There was a complete clone of _Frogger_ called _Home Bound_ in that book/cassette, that really showed off what XB could do. _Home Bound_ also introduced me to violence in video games, because when you got hit by a car, the animation of your frog bleeding out was rather gruesome. Well, at least for the confines of TI-99/4A graphics. Those Ton brothers had weird senses of humor, to put that into an otherwise cute and innocent game.

[@3DMegadoodoo]

I took a drink every time you said "TI-99" for no reason and now I need a liver transplant.

[@PixelPedant]

By speaking this practice into existence, you may have endangered other similarly reckless souls. But well done!

[@CarbonicHolyPally]

RXB 2001 on had CALL EXECUTE(cpu-address) so you can poke small 24 byte assembly programs into Scratch Pad with no 32K. RXB 2020 also still has this feature. I do not know of another XB that can pull this off as they all use CALL LINK which only works from 32K Lower 8K.

[@FD-ze1xg]

Hi! Do you know a cross-assembler for TI 994/a ? Thank you very much!

[@PixelPedant]

My preferred TI-99 cross-development toolset is XDT99: github.com/endlos99/xdt99

[@FD-ze1xg]

@@PixelPedant Thanks a lot!!

[@arcadeshopper]

There's also a disk based text to speech addon for extended basic with 32k.

[@Simcore999]

What was missing for me was integrated memory and floppy access...

[@PixelPedant]

Well, every form of BASIC on the TI-99 including the one in ROM has all the disk and file access routines built in. Naturally, you need a disk drive for those to actually be of any use. But on a software level, everything's already there to support it on every single TI-99 ever made. It's true that most users didn't have a drive, but that was mainly just a function of the TI-99 being very cheap and peripherals being relatively expensive, rather than being due to any limitation of the machine or its software.

[@AllGamingStarred]

Syntax error in 40 I misread the post as 0,9,0. not 110,9,0

[@worldtravel101]

Sprites were the best thing ever lol

[@rick420buzz]

Extended BASIC also let you use individual phonemes to make CALL SAY say anything. My favorite CALL SAY was to feed it random phonemes.

[@stevefrancis6898]

It's come so far but at a really odd time I mean we'll 2021?? But love it nonetheless

[@lanatrzczka]

Extended Basic was so shift 838

[@stefanhennig]

My TI 99 taught me most of all two things: It taught me some programming, especially with XB and, more important, it taught me in early years how to read advertisments: "It's a 16 bit machine!" - yea, kind of. "It has 16k of RAM" - weeelll,... "It can do high-res graphics and sprites" - now, listen, with standard basic, erm... "It's easily expandable!" - if you have the desk-space and the money, and more money... Boy, was I happy to get my C64. Really, I still have my C64 and a BBC Model B and the old TI 99 in working order, but I cannot for my life to think of a reason to switch it on.

[@KennethSorling]

This stuff should have been in the computer from the get-go. I'm sorry, cause it's evident that you love it, but the TI99 sounds like a lemon. Who the hell designs a computer with a 32 sprite graphics chip and a BASIC with zero way to access them? And with a frankly insultingly small amount of free RAM, to boot. Sorry, just needed to vent. At least it's way better than the ZX-81, which is what I started out on.

[@RickHansbury]

I do understand your point, but the thing did many things other consoles or desktops couldn’t. I like to think of mine giving me an education I built onto with an expensive IBM compatible, which ran DOS on a 286 chip with less graphics and all that. It’s like an early car without decades of improvement even though the first implementation was just awkward. Pioneers are often eclipsed by those following the trail they broke.