ftp.whtech.com/ftp.whtech.com.tar/ftp.whtech.com/Geneve/9640news/CAT01/CHCGRPRT.ARK

Text File | 2006-10-19 | 11KB | 229 lines

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1992 CHICAGO TI FAIRE


by Gary W. Cox


The yearly Chicago TI Faire has once again come and gone leaving
attendees with a variety of new TI99/4a and Geneve products in their
hands.

One of the most interesting items at the faire which caught my eye was
PC99 (TI Emulator) by Mike Wright and Greg Hill and distributed through
CaDD Electronics.  PC99 is a program which allows the IBM compatible PC
user to operate his PC as if it were a TI99/4a running TI99/4a compatible
programs.  The project is far from completion but what does work looks at
least intriguing.  According to Mike Wright the TI GROMs and ROMs have
been copied into a program on the PC thus allowing actual TI emulation
and not fake screens that fool you into thinking your PC is running as a
TI99/4a.

The first display that you see on your PC is the TI color bar screen
followed by the familiar selections for TI basic and Extended BASIC then
followed by the usual prompt seen in Extended BASIC.  I actually got to
sit at the keyboard and play a little with PC99 and I wrote a simple 4
line program in XB which ran fine.  I was also able to see Parsec running
on the PC with the exception of sprites in operation as sprites have not
yet been implemented.

The program development is currently in what is called Stage 0 which is
the very first stage of development.  The system operates VERY slow even
on a 50mhz PC.  The speed of the system is expected to dramatically
increase as revisions to the operating system code is modifyed and
optimized.  It is impressive that someone has actually gotten this far on
a TI emulator on a PC but to me it is currently just a neat thing to see
rather than something that can get much use running TI programs due to
many incompatibilities that still exist as well as the slow operating
speed.  However, if the development of this continues this very well
could put new life into the TI00/4a world!

Many stages are expected in the development of PC99 and how far the
developent goes depends on how much interest is generated and each stage
adds additional abilities.

Don O'Neill, designer of the SCSI controller card was present displaying
his new SCSI controller card.  The card is available through Bud Mills
Services.

Michael Maksimik of Crystal Software was present selling a variety of
MIDI related products which include Midi Master 99 v2.3, Midi Album 99,
various song disks and a new enhanced cable design for his MIDI
interface.  Also new and functioning was software written by Mike which
will operate a tape backup device on the Geneve.  The software is
expected to be released soon from 9640 News.  One other interesting item
Mike had setup was a Geneve operating in a AT tower case which provided
for a very neat and clean setup!

New from Ken Gilland of Notung software was Midi volume 5, Disk of the
Ancient Ones containing seens from the ages and a Hieroglyph translator
among other things.  For those interested in Western related items was a
disk called Disk of the Old West containing music, graphics etc..
related to the old west.  Then for advanced BASIC owners was a new game
called ARMOR.

Bruce Harrison of Harrison Software was present displaying his various
programs including Smart Connect which is a program which allows the
transfer of files between a TI and a PC compatible computer.  New this
year was Stor Mor ($5) a simple program that loads strings into low and
high memory solving the problem of programmers running out of string
space.  Stor Mor might be thought of a sort of memory manager simular to
what you find on PC's.

Among the busiest tables at the faire was the 9640 News table where Berry
Miller of 9640 News could be found with a variety of software for the
Geneve including GenPROG, Picture Transfer, MyperCopy, PC Transfer, Pc
Transfer utilities, Identifile, 9640 News volume 1, 2 and 3, Global War,
Tetris for MDOS, Barricade, MODS version H and F, ABASIC, V9938 manuals,
MDOS source code, ABASIC source code and PSYSTEM source code and
libraries.  One new program was a backup program called Backup Miser which
will backup a hard disk to floppy using data compression techniques to
miminize the amount of disks needed.

Chris Bobbitt and David Bishop were representing Asgard Software and
Asgard had quite a variety of new products on hand.  Among Asgard's new
products was Link Terminal Emulator, Page Pro Composer, Invoice
Management, Mail Room, Music Maker Sampler and Font Sampler.  One of the
biggest new items from Asgard was First Draft, a new word processor
program with a built in spell checker!  As for the hardware aspect Asgard
had on hand a new memory card for the 4a.

Present from MS Software was Mickey Cendrowski (Schmitt) and Mike Sealy
demonstrating a new product called Page Pro Cataloger which will print a
catalog quicky and easily of Page Pro Pictures.

Larry Conner of L.L. Conner Enterprizes was present at the show with his
variety of TI cartridges, third party software and a variety of hard to
find TI chips and rare hardware such as a ham radio morse code
transmitter interface for a TI99/4a.

Ron Markus of Ramcharged Computers had his usual assortment of software
and joysticks plus two new game programs called Astro-Mania and War on
Sea both available for $9.95 each.

Del Wright and William Lucid of D. Wright Stuff was present with a
variety of disk drives, quite cooling fans, joysticks, power supplies,
modulators and drive enclosures among many other items for sale.

Ted Kieper of Competition Computer was present with various parts,
drives, cartridges, consoles and a good variety of expansion boxes,
monitors and cables.

Mark Wacholtz of Media Ware Software was present with a new game called
Super Space Acer which is a neat game written my Mike Ward in C language.
Among other items at his table was a variety of hardware and other
software.

Don Walden of Secure Electronics was present providing a variety of
upgrades and parts for Geneve's.  Furthermore, Don indicated that they
are now a authorized repair center for Myarc products including Geneve's.

For those interested in BBS software Tim Tesch was demonstrating his BBS
software, written in Extended BASIC and Assembly, which will run on
either a TI99/4a or Geneve 9640.  The software is only $30 and it looked
like a very nice BBS program.  Tim mentioned that he will possibly be
working on an Echo mail system for his BBS software sometime soon.

Bud Mills of Bud Mills Services (Horizon Computer) was present with his
variety of ramdisks including the Horizon 4000 Ramdisk as well as other
products including the new SCSI card from Don O'Neill.

Mark Van Coppenolle of C.A.D.D. Electronics was present with their
assortment of hardware and software for the TI and Geneve including the
Gramulator and other products.  A company called MUDD & Co. had a variety
of used equipment both TI and non TI related.  Then last but not least
John Kolon of MICROpendium was present at his booth selling a variety of
their published programs on disk as well as handing out copies of
MICROpendium.

Many user groups were also represented such as Charles Good of the Lima
group, Greg Larson of the Hoosier's users group, the Will County Users
Group, Milwaukee TI users group among many others including me from my
group (Mid-South 99 Users Group)...

People from not only all over the U.S.A. was present but some TI'ers from
Germany, Holland and I had a nice talk with Berry Harmsen of the Dutch TI
Users Group where their European TI group has 260 members.  Mr. Harmsen
has some interesting items to show as well including a card which allows
the user to put his speech synthesizer board onto a board for the PEB and
using this special board the user can access TE2 speech capabilities
without having the TE2 module!  Another item was a special archiver
program which will compress assembly programs up to 60% of their original
size making the programs much smaller and once archived it will still run
without having to unarchive it.  This would come in really handy for
those with limited disk or ramdisk space.

While this report was a quick and dirty overview of what went on at the
faire a surprizing amount of new products were introduced and more
details on the various new products I am sure will be appearing in
Micropendium.

Below is a list of the vendors present at the 1992 Chicago TI Faire:

Asgard Software, P.O. Box 1306, Rockville, MD 20849 [phone]

Bud Mills Services/WHT 166 Dartmouth Drive, Toledo, OH 43614 (419) 385-
5946

C.A.D.D. Electronics, 81 Prescott Road, Raymond NH 03077 [phone]

Chicago TI 99/4a Users Group, P.O. Box 578341, Chicago, IL  (708) 862-
0182

Competition Computer Solutions, 2219 S. Muskego Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53215
[phone]

Crystal Software, 635 Mackinaw, Calumet Cityu, IL 60409-4014 (708) 891-
2315

D. Wright Stuff, 2201 185 North Post Road, Indianapolis, IN 46219 (317)
895-1765

Fox Valley Users Group, 1536 Amarillo, Carpentersville, IL 60110 (708)
426-6301

Harrison Software, 5705 40th Place, Hyattsville, MD 20781-1727

Hoosier Users Group, P.O. Box 2222, Indianapolis, IN 46206

L.L. Conner Enterprises, 1521 Ferry St. Lafayette, In 47901 (317) 742-
8146

Media Ware Software, 2141 NW 64th Ave, Suite 15, Sunrise, FL 33313-3950 (305)
749-4690.

Micropendium Magazine, P.O. Box 1343, Round Rock, TX 78680

Milwaukee Users Group, 7759 South Scepter Dr. #7, Franklin, WI 53132

MS Express Software, P.O Box 498, Richmond, OH 43944-0498 [phone]

Mudd & Co [phone].

9640 News, P.O. Box 752465, Memphis, TN 38175-2465 [phone]

Notung Software, 7647 McGroarty Street, Tujunga, CA 91042 [phone]

Ramcharged Computers, 6467 E. Vancey Dr., Brookpark, OH 44142 1-800-669-
1214 or [phone]

Secure Electronics Inc. South 81 West 18878 Apollo Dr. P.O. Box 132,
Muskego, WI 53150 [phone] or [phone].

S&T BBS Software, Tim Teach, 3804 North 75th St. Milwaukee, WI 53216 (414)
464-4946 (voice) or [phone] (BBS)

Will County Users Group, 36 Montrose, Romeoville, IL 60441 [phone]

Western Horixon Technologies, Don O'Neil, 10225 Jean Ellen Drive, Gilroy Ca.,
95020 [phone]

Vereniging TI-Gebruikersgroep (Dutch TI Users Group) 1e Osterparkstr.
141e 1091 Gz Asterdam, The Netherlands.



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