Wow! That is amazing. You did that in BASIC?

I hope you find some time to finish it.

BTW... Ranman loves this movie and series

I agree, the Apogee font looks great. I don't think 20 characters is terribly strict of a limit anyway

The levels you have look amazing. I didn't even realize you were doing exact clones until you mentioned that the Walls level was part of Jumpman Junior, but now that I've looked up screenshots, I have to say you did an insanely good job at replicating them!

Thanks so much Deep Thought. I'm doing my best to recreate the levels from the original C64 versions. I have to trim a bit vertical wise -- the TI-89 LCD is effectively about 15% shorter than the C64 for my remake.

With that said... Things have been progressing (a little slower than I would like) mostly on some behind the scenes things such as the creation of all of the level packs (8 level packs in all). I can now compile/make all my levels packs with a simple double click on a single BAT file -- you gotta love BAT files.

Here are some screenies:



Here is a snippet from my BAT file:

tprbuilder -v -DJM_BEGINNER_1_4 jm_levels.tpr
ttpack jm_levels.z89 jm_beg_1_4.tt
copy /b jm_level_marker.txt + jm_beg_1_4.txt + jm_pad_4.bin + jm_beg_1_4.tt jm_beg_1_4.bin
tovar -89 jml jm_beg_1_4.bin jmb1

Line 1: tprbuilder -DJM_BEGINNER_1_4 jm_levels.tpr
This line uses a command line tool called tprbuilder from the GCC4TI & TIGGC IDEs to build my project called jm_levels.tpr (tpr is the file extension for GCC4TI/TIGCC project files) The -D option passes in a macro called JM_BEGINNER_1_4 (essentially the same thing as #define JM_BEGINNER_1_4 in C source code). This macro is used by the C preprocessor; and it allows me to specify at compile time which C code (in this case, level data) will and will not be included in the output file. It outputs a file named jm_levels.z89.

Line 2: ttpack jm_levels.z89 jm_beg_1_4.tt
This line uses a tool called TTPack v1.03 in the TIGCC Tools Suite v1.31 by Thomas Nussbaumer to compress the contents of jm_levels.z89 into a file called jm_beg_1_4.tt.

Line 3: copy /b jm_level_marker.txt + jm_beg_1_4.txt + jm_pad_4.bin + jm_beg_1_4.tt jm_beg_1_4.bin
This line basically uses the DOS copy command to concatenate 4 files in binary mode. Jm_level_marker.txt contains a magic number to mark the location of the long name of the level pack. The name of the level pack is contained in jm_beg_1_4.txt. Jm_pad_4.bin contains a 4 byte padding of zeroes. This simply provides separation of the level pack name and the compressed level pack contents (it also gives me a NULL just in case the level pack name is not NULL terminated). And jm_beg_1_4.tt contains the compressed level pack from the previous line. This is all copied/concatenated into a a file called jm_beg_1_4.bin.

Line 4: tovar -89 jml jm_beg_1_4.bin jmb1
This line uses a utility called "tovar" (aka TTBin2OTH) also in the TIGCC Tools Suite by Thomas Nussbaumer to convert the binary file output from the previous line to a variable (file) that the calculator will understand. The output file will be named jmb1.89y. On the calc, the file will have the name jmb1.jml.

All of that to generate a single level pack file. I have to repeat all 4 lines for every level pack.

I hope these details will help someone in the future.
 

Philips videopac+ 7400 with manuals and catalog. (aka magnavox odyssey2)
€17,50

Now all I need is a game to test it. I fired it up without a game in it and I just got a garbled screen, but it shows a picture in color. Peeked inside trough the air vent and everything appears to be ok.  I will probably make an adapter to be able to plug in my atari joystick

Nice pickup! I remember one of my friends had one of those when i was a youngster.

I made a cable that allows me to connect my pc via the printer port to the c64's floppy drive's serial. Now I can use physical floppies with my winvice emulator. So I can edit, write and read files from them. It's a good way to back up old homebrew software or my SID music files. It's also great for pirating games (and playing new releases such as canabalt64 and vvvvvv64 )

I made a cable like that too. I think it is called the X1541 cable. Very useful cable. Which utility do you use to make use of the drive on the PC? I use an old program called Star Commander.

Oh, and I also found a ZX Spectrum at my grandparent's house. Still need to find a 120v AC adapter for it, though.

I still have my old Timex Sinclair 1000. It's basically the USA version of the Sinclair ZX-81 but with twice the RAM -- a whopping 2KB. LOL!

Wow at the 2nd one

Anyway thanks for the info

The C128 is quite a cool computer... It contains 2 completely different CPUs: a 2 MHz MOS 8502 (100% compatible with C64's MOS 6510) and a 4MHz Z80.

The C128 had 3 modes of operation: C128 mode, C64 mode, and CPM mode (using the Z80). Very cool!

Quote from: Juju on February 10, 2013, 09:20:09 pm

Getting the Commodore 64 would be pretty awesome. That is, if you don't mind typing all the games by hand each time you wanna play them.

I still have my Commodore 64 (2 of them, both SX-64s) and a Commodore 128. Yes, you can hook up 5.25", 3.5", HDDs, and Tape drives up to them. I used to buy Compute's Gazette (a magazine) and type in the programs contained within it. But... once you got a floppy drive... no more typing in games. There are well over 10000 games produced for the C64. Check out Arnold's website. You could also buy 100s of cartridges for the C64 too.

Aren't there tapes and floppy disks?

Yes they are. For tapes, I wonder if you could plug in a computer in the speaker port instead of the tape drive.

LOL... Wut?
The C64 had a serial port (a precursor to today's USB). You could daisy chain up to 4 devices (printers, floppy drives, etc) to this port. The regular C64 had a different port specifically for the tape drive.

These do not look like the same calculator. The screen on the originally advertised version fills up (larger) the front face much more than the actual calc. 

And what happened to the high contrast "black" LCD? The actual calc LCD appears to have the old blueish tone to it. 

I love the new color scheme though!!