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MULTICAR.TXT
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER APRIL 1992
SOUPED UP SUPERCARTS
By: Andy Frueh, Lima UG
It all started with the original TI Cartridges. The cartridge ("cart")
port of the TI is one of its advantages in both ease-of-use and young
education. This port (called the GROM port) allows users to insert cartridges
into its slot. This offers instant access to the programs contained in it. I
meantioned that this port is an advantage. It is also now unique to the TI.
Most other computers do not offer such a port and those that do not offer a
whole lot of software. Older computers usually have such a port. The main
reason for this is that home computers appeared shortly after the home video
games (Atari, VCS, ect.) came out. Computer manufacturers feared that many
people would be afraid of disks or cassettes, so they enabled their machines to
use software in cart format, just like the popular home video game machines. A
good marketing move. In addition, children could use them with considerable
ease.
The quality of TI made cartridges grew from awful to excellent. The chief
reason for this is the 99/4 was not as capable as the 99/4A. If you look at
some later carts (1983), you will see that the manual may say, "for the 99/4A
Home Computer only." This means they will NOT work on the 99/4. Most of these
are games, such as Parsec and Star Trek. I am not sure if it was the graphics
or the speech that would cause problems on the 99/4. Could somebody please
submit a letter or an article describing the internal differences between these
sister computers? Compare an early module or cart such as the 1980 Hunt the
Wumpus to the 1983 graphic adventure Return to Pirate's Isle. The features and
graphics of "Return" is significantly greater.
But what does all of this have to do with Supercarts? Well, just as TI
tried to improve the quality of their cartridges, many users were "playing"
with the cartridge and the GROM port it plugs into.
When most people think of Supercarts, they are thinking of cartridge-like
hardware that plugs into the GROM port and have battery backed memory. Most
Supercarts can save Assembly programs or even other cartridges and store them
in this memory. However, when I use the term Supercart, I intend to discuss
almost EVERY device available that can be plugged into this port.
Let's start from the beginning. One of the first Supercarts ever made was
marketed by DataBioTics. This was the Superspace cartridge. This included an
Editor/Assembler, it could save Assembly programs in its 8K memory and could
save any cartridge that didn't use TI's GROM (such as Atariasoft and Funware).
What is a GROM? Well it stands for Graphics Read Only Memory. It is
completely seperate from RAM and ROM, which I assume most users are at least
slightly familiar with. These are unique to TI. Three inside the console
control the Operating System and BASIC language. Up to five addition GROMs
(each with 6,144 bytes of ROM, I believe) can be added via the GROM port,
adding 30K to the computer's ROM memory.
DataBioTics later marketed an upgrade to their Superspace. Superspace II
had all the features of Superspace as well as letting users use 8K of memory as
extra RAM for Assembly or TI BASIC programs. It also had 32K of battery backed
memory, instead of only 8K. One thing I should note. Both Superspaces
contained an Editor/Assembler. They did NOT include the manuals or support
file disks. This may have been due to copyright restrictions. I am not sure
if the operation of this Ed/Assm is identical to TI's or not.
The next device I would like to talk about was the GRAMKracker. And no, I
won't discuss other GRAM devices, such as the P-GRAM or GRAMulator. Not to
take anything away from these two. All three devices perform similar
functions. However, since the focus of the article is on devices that actually
plug INTO the GROM port, I will only discuss the GRAMKracker.
I believe this came out sometime in 1986. At least that's the earliest ad
I've seen for it. It was marketed by MG (originally Miller's Graphics). The
main thing it could do was have another cartridge plugged into, then save the
contents of that to a disk, RAMdisk or cassette file. You could also MODIFY
your cartridges. A manual describing typical customizing jobs was included.
It also allows you to modify the TI operating system. For example, you could
load in a new character set with true lowercase letters. Such changes would
always be in effect, as long as the GRAMKracker was installed. It had 56K of
memory, and could handle up to 80K. Obviously, this module was advanced over
the Superspace.
What about prices? These are ORIGINAL prices, and I'm sure these devices
could be found at significantly lower rates. But here's how they used to
compare.
Superspace........$39.95 (This was a sale price. I can't find it's original)
Superspace II.....$89.95 ($69.95 on sale)
GRAMKracker.......$174.95
The price of the Superspace dropped sharply after Superspace II was
introduced. All three prices were around the same time, 1986-1987.
Those prices seem a little, well, pricey. And a lot of other users felt
the same way. For that reason, pre-programmed and a few user-programmable
"multi-carts" appeared. These were cartridges that contained many modules in
one. I assume the idea for this started with the "Widget" or Navarone's module
expander, which could hold three cartridges. The disadvantage was the size.
This expander is fairly large.
One of the first multi-carts was the MultiMod by the late John Guion. His
product was a plug-in modification to people who owned the Super Extended BASIC
cartrdige. This module was manufactured by Triton, which recently became TM
Direct Marketing. I am not sure if TM offers this product. MG developed this
cartridge for Triton. Super XB adds 33 new commands and 6 altered ones. Most
of these are in the forms of CALLs. The Fall '89 catalog for Triton listed
this module with a price of $49.95, including a graphics utility, Draw N' Plot.
The MultiMod gave users Super XB, the Editor/Assembler, Disk Manager III, and
TI-Writer in one module. The Multi-Mod was offered in kit form for $22.95
including manual and all support files for E/A and TI-Writer. I am not sure
how well this sold, but I assume reasonably well. It gave users essentially
the same thing as Funnelweb, without Funnelweb's enhancements and user
expandability. The Multi-Mod's one major advantage was cartridge speed. Of
course, the support files still had to be loaded from disk.
There is another similar product on the market, only this one is
user-alterable. WAS Controllers offers a device which allows users to install
5 other modules in addition to Extended BASIC. For example, you could have XB,
E/A, TI-Writer, Multiplan, Personal Record Keeping, and Tunnels of Doom in one
cartridge. This is also sold as a kit, for $25. This includes the module,
which has a modified case so all the other module's chips will fit. The flyer
I have states that "only modules with 16 pin GROMs can be used with the
Extended BASIC Expander." The GROMs are a normal looking computer chip. What
that means is that you have to count the pins comming from the GROM chip. Only
modules having 16 pins will work.
As mentioned in the December 1991 issue of B, B & P, OPA is selling a $95
cartridge device with amazing features. It is called the Pop-Cart and looks
about like any other TI cartridge. This device contains 256K chunks of RAM and
GRAM. You tell OPA what modules or Assembly programs you want on the Pop-Cart,
and they burn it into the module. This uses no batteries, but it does mean
that users can NOT program it themselves. Supposedly, if you put XB and the
TE2 cartridge, the text-to-speech features of TE2 carry over into XB. This
could have significant advantages, since many modules (especially some of TI's
older ones) "add" commands to TI BASIC. You may specify up to 2 Megs of
memory in 256K chunks for additional money, all in the same module. For an
extra $25, OPA will also put their SOB (Son Of a Board) Operating System into
the module.
What about weaknesses? Well this is the one aspect of TI cartridges that
is rather disappointing. The connection between the cart and the GROM port can
get very weak. This can cause some modules, especially Extended BASIC, to
"lock up" The computer refuses to respond, and you usually have to turn it
off.
There you have it. I believe that this is basically the principal
"Supercarts" available. These devices prove the power and versatility of TI's
GROM port. Many modern machines lack such a port. The users of these big
machines claim that such a port is "infantile" and has no usefull purpose.
Bull! I feel this article PROVES how useful this port can be!
.PL 1