TI92 and the Amiga

Since I'm an old Amiga owner/coder I have to cover this topic.

When I first got Fargo, I did not own a PC so I had to write programs on my amiga to handle and send Fargo programs. I had already written a program that could send variables and screendumps, but it could not read backups (it always crashed when I experimented with this). So I made a small program that listens on a serial.device compatible device and sends everything it gets through the $4-parallel-cable. Running this program in the background using nullmodem.device, and then starting Shapeshifter (the popular Mac Emulator for the Amiga), I could use Texas Instruments Graph Link program (mac version) to send & recieve backups.

My second problem was putting Fargo in the backup, but since I had the pascal-source for all Fargo-utils, I could port them. So after rewriting the utils i needed in C, I could send backups and fargo programs, as well as assemble them on the Amiga.

The nice thing is that the Amiga and TI92 has the same processor, so the only important differences was reading the keyboard and the position of the screen. So a small include file in two versions (one for the Amiga and one for Fargo) made it possible to write and test the programs on the Amiga before running them on the calculator.

Right now, I'm using my newly bought laptop PC for Fargo, mostly because Fargo software is written for Intel, but if anyone else is using (or intends to use) Fargo from the Amiga, please let me know. It's really the ultimate computer to have at the other end of a TI92.

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