TI99ers Hall of Fame

Fred Kaal studied Computer Technology at the HTS (Institute of Technology) in Alkmaar from 1982 until 1987. At this school the programming language Pascal was taught on a Pr1me One mini computer. That was the main reason why Fred bought the TI-99/4A home computer in 1983: you could buy USCD-Pascal for that machine. Fred currently is employed as a Software Engineer for Vialis Traffic, a Dutch company for traffic control. His main hobby, other than reading, is programming for the TI-99/4A and Myarc "Geneve" 9640 computers.

Fred is currently one of the most productive Assembler and C programmers for the TI-99/4A and Geneve. His contribution for the SCSI-card and the IDE-card projects was very important. He wrote a number of utility programs to get the most out of these cards and other existing disk- and hard disk controllers and an IDE-DSR as well. He also wrote a few useful PC programs for the TI community.

Fred's hardware and software projects are available on his own website, "My TI-99/4A and Geneve Web Pages". These pages contain information about hardware and software he made for the TI-99/4A and Geneve home computer since 1983. The software section of the website contains some of the software he has written for the TI-99/4A and Geneve 9640.

LL - Linking Loader
In the period 1987 till 2000 he wrote LL. It is a program to quickly load and run an assembly program in tagged object form. Also it is possible to create a program file of the loaded code. The LL program is build to use with 8Kb extra RAM in the E/A module and was important for all of his other software development.

DM2K - Diskmanager 2000
Diskmanager 2000 is a disk manager for the TI-99/4A or Myarc 9640 home computer which can be used to manage your files on devices with a directory structure like a SCSI- or IDE-disk. GDM2K is the Geneve MDOS version of this program. DM2K is written in an optimized form of Clint Pulley's C and Assembly. For this purpose he developed a mixed C and Assembly library and a C99 optimizer for MDOS.

DU2K - Diskutilities 2000
Diskutilities 2000 is a disk utility program for the TI-99/4A or Myarc 9640 home computer which can be used to Format and Initialize SCSI, IDE and DSK devices. This utility makes it possible to create a mirror from the disk structure. With the program it is also possible to create a partition table on IDE drives.

SIM99
SIM99 is an implementation of the interactive simulation language THTSIM for the TI-99/4A home computer. Fred started the TI-99/4a implementation of SIM99 in 1986 and finally finished it in 2001. THTSIM is a language for interactive simulation of continuous and hybrid systems and was developed at the Technical University of Twente on a PDP11 minicomputer.

Ti99/4W - Ti99 for Windows
This program is Fred’s own TI-99/4A emulator which can be used for testing and debugging. Ti994W emulates many functions of the TI-99/4A and also the IDE-card with the latest version of the DSR.

TiDir
Fred’s program TiDir is a Windows utility to browse through TI-99/4A files in V9T9 format, archived files created with Barry Boone’s Archiver, .DSK files for v9t9 and PC99 or .IMG files (HFDC, SCSI or IDE) on a PC. It is also possible to view monocolor and multicolor TI-Artist files and to view GIF87 files with an external viewer like Irfanview. Tidir is equipped with a double browse window and supports CF7a+ cards and images.

IDE DSR
Fred wrote a new DSR for the IDE card designed by Thierry Nouspikel. This DSR works in combination with the latest version of DM2K (for file managing) and DU2K (for initializing).

Fred’s work is appreciated worldwide by the TI community and he has been honoured with the Edgar Mauk Award (three times), the Jim Peterson Achievement Award (twice) and the John Birdwell Award. He is a member of the board of the Dutch TI Users Group and is a regular visitor at European TI Meetings. He still has many ideas for new developments in our TI hobby.