.IF DSK3.C3 JACK'S JOTTINGS by Jack Sughrue Box 459 East Douglas, MA 01516 It's been a long time between Jottings. Almost a year ago I was in a car accident that resulted in lots of metal plates in my head to hold it together, and I'm still in the throes of recovery. But I'm extraordinarily lucky: the EMTs were fast, the doctors incredible, the support from so many people (including my wonderful TI Family Worldwide) just unbelievable. I want to thank all the ASGARD NEWS readers and all the other 99ers everywhere for their caring and support. It certainly made me a lot better a lot quicker. But while I was sitting on the sidelines cursing the tree that leaped out in front of my new car, I had ample opportunity to think about my TI and what it means to me and, I assume, to a lot of other people. Like the vast majority of the 2 1/2 million purchasers, I wanted a toy. Now we can SAY we wanted this machine for our businesses or for our professions or for our kids' education or for something specific (like wordprocessing or database activities). But I truly think the majority of us purchasers wanted to play. I don't mean games, necessarily. I mean PLAY! Have a computer just for the FUN of it; for no particular reason, though we had to justify it to our spouces or parents or friends or kids by giving all the practical reasons why home computing with our 99s was essential "in this Electronic Age." My biggest argument almost a decade ago when I couldn't think of any legitimate reason for my early (expensive) purchases was, simply, "We are almost into the 21st Century, for crying out loud! Don't you realize that?" As if that were an answer to everything. It certainly was an effective deterrent to further discussion on the matter. Fun is why I still keep my TI. At work (I teach fifth grade.) we have Apple and IBM and TS machines. I also have a couple TIs. The kids inevitably choose the TIs for their free computer time. Sometimes the Apple, if there is something software specific they'd like to do. Never the IBM. The TSes they use strictly for wordprocessing. Why the TIs? More options, for one thing. They can load something up from tape (like Turtle Tracks or Square Pairs or Tiny Logo or any of the Moonbeam Software or piles of Jim Peterson's great educational/fun stuff or Romeo [still one of my favorites] or any number of excellent TAPE programs, including the Tunnel of Doom and Adventure tapes. Or they can throw in a cartridge. The kids love the robotic talk of the Spelling series. They never tire of Yahtzee or Othello or Video Chess. They play the arcade cartridges like Parsec and Munchman and the educational modules like Reading Rally and Stargazer and the math series. Or perform LOGO II activities for hours. All of the above options (still available) are on the basic machine with tape recorder. No disk drive. (I have speech and a 32K sidecar on one machine, the P-Box and works on the other. Speech and 32 are not necessary for 99% of the good stuff on tape, though Extended BASIC is.) Besides the options of tape and module on the basic setup are the options to learn how to program and how to create programs. The TI with so many built-in subprograms (CALL SOUND, CALL COLOR, etc.) and a powerful resident BASIC is easy to learn, particularly as TI provided so many simple, direct text and tape materials for learning how to use the machine. So simple even adults can do it. There are still lots of commercial textware and tape software available. In the latest Triton catalog, for example, the following are offered for UNDER $3!: BEST OF 99er (with over 80 articles and massive amounts of type-in programs, still the best way to learn programming techniques); PROGRAMMER'S REFERENCE GUIDE TO THE TI-99/4A by Regena, the book I really grew on; COMPUTE'S FIRST BOOK OF TI GAMES, over 200 pages of dynamic programming; COMPUTE'S GUIDE TO TI-99/4A SOUND AND GRAPHICS, besides being extremely good at what the title says, it is loaded with programs; SAM'S TI-99/4A GAMES, includes 13 games, programming techniques, and a TAPE of all the programs; COMPUTE'S CREATING ARCADE GAMES FOR THE 99/4A, which provide additional programming techniques for the learner; and many more. I have all these books in my classroom and at home. The kids at school and I still use them, still refer to them, still type in programs. So there are a pile of options on the TI that Apple and IBM do not provide for computer buffs seeking fun and learning and hobby opportunities. Remember, if you turn on an Apple or an IBM there is nothing there. Literally. There are no tapes, no modules. You have to pop in a disk to even get BASIC. Once you have BASIC, you don't have the efficiency of the TI. Nor do you have the powerful speaking, coloring, character-making tools. Nor do you have automatic numbering. Nor resequencing. Nor... These things we 99ers take for granted. Oh, I also forgot the other option, the only one that those other machines have: disk drives. The TI has all kinds of disk controllers, including hard drive. There are all kinds of artificial drives, too: Ramdisks, Supercarts, Zenoboard chips that make operation instantaneous and a joy. Supercarts, of course, are not part of those others, either. But, apart from 40 megabyte hard drives and all the high-tech wizardry that can be a part of any TI upgrading (including the very powerful GENEVE), what about the normal, non-techie, fun-loving 99er? Once he or she decides there is a necessity to get into disk drives (and I don't think there needs to be for all the applications mentioned above and many more not mentioned), of course, another whole, large world opens up. People with modems tell me that other TI worlds are out there to explore, too. I'm quite overwhelmed with the one I got. My imagination doesn't extend to what else is out there for our little machine. Don't get me wrong about disks: I would never want to go back to my pre-disk computing for a few good reasons: FUNNELWEB, PLUS!, ARCHIVER, DISK UTILITIES, TI PRINT SHOP (TIPS), MUGLOADER, MAX-RLE, DM-1000, to name a few. All of the above are Fairware or Public Domain. FUNNELWEB is an environment that includes the best version out of TI-Writer (with so many options not on ANY other version that it would be impossible to list). It also includes an Editor-Assembler version I prefer to the cartridge and loaders for Forth and C and supercarts, among other things. PLUS! is an additional environment I put together that, primarily, enhances wordprocessing, but includes so many other programs that it has gone way beyond. ARCHIVER lets me store MASSIVE amounts of information on disks. It also unloads such disks and does a pile of other functions. DISK UTILITIES is just what it says and is the best of all the disk utility disks I have encountered. TIPS lets you make banners, greeting cards, posters, etc. (slowly), but has provided the largest collection of graphic images (thousands) that have ever been put together for the TI. All of these images can be converted to PAGEPRO and TI-ARTIST formats (see below) for a humongous library. These images include fonts and frames as well as an alphabetical listing that prints out a huge text of pictures 40 to a page. MUGLOADER gives you some fabulous menu options. It loads a screen menu which lets you create and print directories, load more menus, read text files, load E/A and XB programs, and more. MAX-RLE loads graphics, colors them, prints them out, converts them from one form to another (GRAPHX to TI-ARTIST, for example). DM-1000 is a super all-purpose disk manager (1000 times more useful than the disk manager cartridge, which may be how it got its name) that lets you manipulate disks and files in all kinds of ways, such as copy, move, format, delete, rename, protect, and so on. All of the above can be gotten from user groups worldwide. Joining a user group is the best advice I would give anyone. I can't imagine how limited my TI opportunities would be without a user group. These can be joined through the mail. I belong to a few, including one in Australia, and my local MUNCH group in Worcester, Massachusetts. But all of the above Fairware and PD programs came from the Lima, Ohio group. (c/o Dr.^Charles Good, Box 647, Venedocia, OH 45894). Membership there of $15 a year is a best buy, newsletter is excellent, disk and TAPE libraries are extensive (and free to members). But any group, particularly a local with monthly meetings, is almost essential to anyone with an urge to find new ways to enjoy our computer. Options are what we're talking about, and, while on the topic, I do not want to neglect the commercial enterprises that have provided me with more options and with lots of that good old fun, which keeps TI my computer of choice in a world full of such seriousness and intensity and downright hostility. Over all the years of writing columns about the 99, I have always voiced two major complaints: no good cribbage game and no decent Printshop-type software. I complain no more. First, Arcade Action (4122 Glenway, Wawatosa, WI 53222) provides the best cribbage game you can imagine for the TI. For all you cribbage freaks (and there are many, according to the letters I've received) you can send AA $7 and get rewarded instantly. Second, the Printshop-type software. Broderbund made PS the single most-popular piece of software for any computer because it was 1) easy 2) fast and 3) gave professional results. It also had lots of utilities and fonts and images. It made banners and greeting cards and posters and (not very effectively) single-page thingies. So, what kind of commercial software is easy, fast, and gives professional results? For me, PAGEPRO. I have only the original naked version, but it was the dream of a computer lifetime for me. It is easy. It is fast. The results are professional. And it's WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzywig" and means What You See Is What You Get)! I understand the newer versions and the PP companions allow all kinds of things, including rotations for easy greeting-card making and a catalog function. Sounds good. But the original I have is perfect for newsletters, school publications (including those done entirely by students because of the ease of use), dramatic graphic letters, signs, posters, etc. The various fonts are easy to load and can be loaded into the page during creation to change the entire page's fonts in one swoop, making it very easy to test the right font for the right occasion. The graphics (Remember the thousands from TIPS? Well, there is also a converter in PP to use ARTIST graphics for thousands more. Also, there are PP compansions.) can be placed anywhere on a full page, can be surrounded by text of two sizes, two different fonts, anywhere on that same page, including right across graphics, and so on. Except for the word processor itself (FUNNELWEB), I have found nothing so valuable to me as PAGEPRO. I use it even to write letters now. Add to PP the latest TI-ARTIST PLUS (for the creation and manipulation of art work) and you'll have a very effective publishing system. I have to add CSGD to that package for banners and labels, though I'm sure some of the utilities for PP and ARTIST will eventually permit these to operate out of the same systems. I used to use GRAPHX forever, but the latest ARTIST is preferable. Some friends of mine have written to me about PICASSO, but I have never seen any version of it to date. It has been highly praised by all users. I found The Printer's Apprentice to difficult to work with, and I have not seen the Comprodine stuff, which I understand is excellent, also. The only other essential commercial item necessary to my limited computing is TI-BASE, the best data base I have ever used on this machine. BASE and ARTIST are sold by Texaments, PICASSO and PAGEPRO by Asgard. Now let's say you really didn't need a large data base. Just something simple, for a class list. Let's say you only needed a word processor for screen work (or you had a sidecar printer). And you liked playing good games or want to teach your grandchild subtraction. And, let's say you were perfectly happy with very simple block graphics or LOGO for art work. Well, all these things are still available in tape form. Let's say you just want this machine for the simple pleasures of life. Tapes, books of programs to type, cartridges all can be purchased (at a tiny price) or borrowed from user groups. We're back to where we started. A TI with a TV set and a tape recorder and a book or two and some new, inexpensive cartridges (XB is under $30, LOGO II under $15, Personal Record Keeping under $10, TI Invaders, MUNCHMAN, Parsec for under $3, for examples) can still do a lot more for you and your desire for fun and learning than any number of IBMs, ATs, IIGSes, BLFSPKs, or any other very expensive non-option. Հ