TI99ers Hall of Fame - Barry Traver

Barry Traver is legendary in the TI99ers community. A prolific writer, his articles and programs about and for the TI-99/4A have been published in MICROpendium, Computer Shopper, 99'er Home Computer Magazine, The Smart Programmer, Super 99 Monthly, and many TI-99/4A User Group newsletters.

Barry's "diskazine" or magazine-on-disk, the Genial TRAVelER, which made its debut in August, 1985, was influential and very popular, as was the software by various authors released by Genial Computerware, his "commercial venture." He has served as a Sysop on CompuServe's "TI Forum" and later as Bulletin Board Manager of the "TI RoundTable" on GEnie. Barry was also involved in the active management of the TI-99/4A software library on GEnie and in the behind-the-scenes management of the TI-99/4A software library on CompuServe.

On his own site, Traver Table Talk, Barry had created a TI-99/4A Discussion Group. Barry, in addition to his Traver Table Talk site, is currently running a Blog on REALbasic at http://traverrbti.blogspot.com/ which has some of its roots in Barry's days on the TI-99/4A.

Barry was a frequent featured speaker at TI Faires in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Ohio (Lima), Ottawa, San Diego, Tucson, and elsewhere. Barry received recognition with a number of awards, including the John Birdwell Memorial Award at the Chicago TI Faire in 1991 and a similar award from the Ottawa, Ontario TI-99/4A Users Group. In June 1989, the Users Group of Orange County, CA (UGOC) elected Barry to their Hall of Fame.

Barry was instrumental in developing eXtended eXtended Basic (XXB). This added about 45 commands not available in normal Extended Basic. Barry also developed GRAPHICOMP (for GRAPHICs COMPiler) which lets the user build a complicated screen display (which can be slow in XB), and then the program just reads and saves the information in the screen table so that later it can be more or less instantaneously be poked into the screen table in memory.

Barry pioneered what became the standard ARCHIVER program for the TI. He is especially known for his utility programs, such as GRAPHICOMP and game programs such as "Giant and Dwarfs" and his "Coney Games" series, many of which were based on Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. CONEY GAMES, a disk of games from the first two volumes of The Genial Traveler diskazine, was released in June, 1990.

Barry wrote the introductory article for Dr. Ron Albright's book, "The Orphan Chronicles", a brief history of the years after Texas Instruments' abandonment of the TI-99/4A. The article was entitled "We CAN do it! Principal Survival Principles for Life in the Orphanage" and explained his three principles of operation: "_C_ottaging, _A_rchiving, and _N_etworking".

In addition to his activities in the TI-99/4A Community, Barry, a holder of three master's degrees (a Master of Arts in English, a Master of Divinity, and a Master of Theology in New Testament), is an ordained Orthodox Presbyterian minister. Barry is married to Sharon Traver, who holds a Ed.D. (i.e., a Doctor of Education degree), and they have one son, John Calvin.

Barry, during his son's growing years, also showed the importance of the TI-99/4A and its software capabilities in the educating of children. Barry was a firm believer in home schooling and recognized what a TI Home Computer could contribute in achieving this goal.

Click below to view a video of Barry Traver doing a 'How XB programmers can easily "add" assembly language to their programs' presentation at the Lima MUG Conference in 1990. (Courtesy of Bruce Maret of Video 99 - About 50 Minutes)

- Low Quality (16.7 MB)
- Medium Quality (162.6 MB)