RE: A89: This is important

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RE: A89: This is important


Hey I just wanted to let you know that not everyone on the mailing list is
stupid.  I agree version 2.03 is much better, and going to be even better as
more things are figured out. All any one cares about is there stupid little
games. Just because your games don't work for 2.03 does NOT mean they will
never work for it just chill out and they will get ported.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-assembly-89@lists.ticalc.org
[mailto:owner-assembly-89@lists.ticalc.org]On Behalf Of Johan
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2000 7:32 PM
To: assembly-89@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: A89: This is important



On Sun, Feb 06, 2000 at 18:40:56 -0500, Croachrose@aol.com wrote:
>
> I am in aw of most of you people and of every single programmer who can
break
> the code that the TI programmers spent hours doing. I wish I knew assembly
as
> much as these guys do but i haven't taken the time to do it. Anyway, I
have a
> question. When is someone gonna break all the necessary codes in ams 2.0x
to
> get highscore capability and when are people gonna start writing better
games
> for it. I know there is some turmoil in the fact that this new rom sucks
but
> if someone breaks the coding then all that memory is usefull. I have some
> games for the 89 hw1 ams 2.0x but i just don't know enough to port my own
> games or to write any or to create highscore capability. If no one out
there
> wants to take the time to do all this then at least someone help me learn
> asm, or write a good begginners tutorial for 89 programming. I just wish
> somebody out there would come up with some good *new* stuff for the TI-89
> (2.0x).
>
> Pat
>

To answer your question: I've already "broken" it.

Why are all people asking for tutorials when their local library is full of
'em? (At least in Sweden!) I learned BASIC, Turbo Pascal, C, x86-asm and
Z80-asm that way!

But don't start with asm if you're a beginner. Start with a high level
language with reasonable debugging facilities. Personally I think that
QuickBasic (yes!) is a great language for beginners.


And for the rest of your mail:

AMS 2.03 doesn't suck. It's AMS 1.xx that sucks, AND IT SUCKS A LOT!!!

AMS 1.xx is something TI put together *very* quickly. They knew that they
would have to rewrite most of it, but wanted to be able to sell their calcs
as soon as possible. They could do this because the calc has Flash ROM, a
feature that makes them able to sell calcs now and write a real OS later.

I started disassembling/studying/hacking 1.00 as soon as I had bought my
TI89, sometime in fall 1998. I wanted to know about the ROM calls etc. But
as I figured out more and more, I saw that the function list didn't make any
sense. Many "important" functions (from my point of view) were missing and
many functions in the list were completely useless! The function list felt
very incomplete.

I've been studying 2.03 for about a month now and I already know about
more than half of the additional functions in 2.03. (Most of them are in
fact math functions, used by the command interpreter. Mostly useless for
games.)

It's very sad that almost all of you are completely unaware of the  H U G E
improvements from AMS 1.0x to AMS 2.0x. I really do understand why it takes
so long time for TI to complete the SDK. It's a *very* complex system and
there's *very much* to document. AMS 2.03 is a *math* platform and the the
SDK will focus on creating *math* extensions and applications, *not* games.
(But there are a few functions in the ROM pointer list that seem quite
strange, they don't seem right for math programs anyway... for example,
there's one function that reinitializes the keyboard system (emptying
buffer, zeroing flags etc). Like why?!?)


Remember! 1.0x will die! 2.xx is the future OS!


/Johan


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