Talk:TI BASIC (TI 99/4A)

Additional undocumented functionality provided by plug-in modules?

Is it worth adding information on the additional commands that became available to plain TI-BASIC when certain modules (cartridges) were plugged in, such the PRK (Personal Record Keeping) module, which provided additional (undocumented) CALLs A, D, L, P, and S (and there may be others - I'd have to research it since my memory is faulty)? Just a thought. AncientBrit (talk) 16:50, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The "Terminal Emulator" cartridge provided additional commands for synthesized speech (and, I assume, for telecommunications, though I never got to use those). I think that the "Mini Memory" cartridge added a few machine language and memory access Peek/Poke commands.WHPratt (talk) 14:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

True, but they were documented additions. In fact, the TEII capabilities were streets ahead of everyone else, allowing properties such as color and speech to be transmitted.

The undocumented stuff was more interesting IMHO, including the format for the data obtained using CALL SPGET(), provided by the Speech Editor, which, once known and understood, allowed the user to tweak the pronunciation of the inbuilt words and phrases. The PRK/Stats info is commented on here: scroll down to OCT 1982, for example. If I remember rightly, the article in Tidings that's mentioned was put together by me, based on information initially provided by Paul Karis of the Netherlands; sadly I no longer have any of my original materials to draw upon. AncientBrit (talk) 10:16, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

UPDATE: the link I quoted no longer works but the Internet Archive maintains a copy of the page at the URL "http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/8bits/ti99/time1982.htm" (captured November 23, 2006) if anyone's curious. AncientBrit (talk) 04:11, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I do think it is worth mentioning that several cartridges added functionality to TI BASIC, either officially through subprograms (Speech Editor, Editor/Assembler, Mini Memory), through additional device drivers (Terminal Emulator II), or unofficially (Personal Record Keeping, Statistics). TI described in detail how to call the subprograms in PRK and Statistics and provided example programs, so I think it is worth adding. Kitsap1975 (talk) 16:42, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Spelling, "TI BASIC" vs "TI-BASIC"

"TI BASIC" in this article is inconsistent with "TI-BASIC" used in the main article, TI-BASIC. --Mortense (talk) 00:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Image

Which of these is the most representative image, please?

1. File:TI BASIC HELLO WORLD.png
2. File:TI BASIC TI-99.png

I've never used the machine myself, and I'm not sure how reliable an internet search would be. Thanks. -- Trevj (talk · contribs) 14:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't sound right

> Unlike most BASICs of the era, TI BASIC did not provide a full-screen editor

I don't think any provided a full-screen editor. Commodore BASIC had this neat trick where you could arrow around the screen and hitting RETURN would enter the line you were on into memory (so if you listed a short program you could, I guess, pretend you were using a full screen editor), and Sinclair BASIC showed a program listing by default, which you could arrow up and down on and pull lines into the line editor for changing. But none of these I'd characterize as "full-screen editor" by a long shot. Microsoft BASIC's most common implementation was just an EDIT command that would put a single line of code into a line editor.

So what did the writer mean by the above, or did they really seriously think we had QBasic style editors back in 1979-1981? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:584:300:345E:C6F5:2F2:FE32:DB5 (talk) 18:10, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I came to the talk page to make this exact point. I was there, I used these machines. No BASICs of the era had a full screen editor. QBasic was the first I was aware of that did. 47.219.177.120 (talk) 03:38, 26 June 2024 (UTC)