TI99ers Hall of Fame - Paolo Bagnaresi

Paolo Bagnaresi is a well known Italian TI programmer. His emulators and programs have been available to the TI community since 1985 and are still in use by many TI enthusiasts. In 1982 he bought a TI-99/4A with Extended Basic for his son Giacomo and this made him want to get involved in programming the TI. But he found out that the speed of Extended Basic programs was not great, so he later added a PE Box and the Editor-Assembler Module to his installation and started programming TI Assembler as a challenge. During the period 1984 to 1986 Paolo wrote a monthly column dedicated to the TI-99/4A for the computer-related Italian magazine “Micro and Personal Computer”. He was also active in teaching young Italian TI users the secrets of TI Assembler. In the following years Paolo has continued to write a large number of utility programs for the TI-99/4A and Myarc Geneve.

Paolo Bagnaresi developed the following software:

BEAXS (1985). An emulator of the TI Editor/Assembler Module. It had to be launched from the TI Extended Basic Module. Once BEAXS took over, it was like having a TI Editor-Assembler Module inserted into the console slot.
BA-WRITER (1986). An emulator of the TI-Writer Module, to be launched from the Extended Basic Module. This program was quite a success. Although you could run BEAXS from BA-Writer and vice-versa, the two programs came as two different packages.
BASIC BUILDER (1987). An assembly utility for the Extended Basic Module, which allows transforming a txt file containing lines of Extended Basic code into a real Extended Basic program, that can be saved and run.
BAG-BUG (1989). An advanced debugger for the Geneve in the MDOS mode. The debugger had source level support, single step, conditional breakpoint, and remote control via RS232. The program was aborted because of later changes in the Geneve memory specifications.
EPROM, PAL and GAL PROGRAMMER. Paolo Bagnaresi wrote the software part of a nice hardware programmer for those devices, while Roberto Maffioletti, from Bergamo, Italy developed the hardware part. The project was never fully completed.
GENEVE MEMORY EXPANSION FIX (1989). A fix to transform a Myarc 500 Kb RAM disk for the TI-99/4A into a memory expansion for the Myarc Geneve. It was released as a document to assist the Geneve hobbyist.
GENEVE ASSEMBLER (1987). A full TMS 9995 assembler, released for the GPL mode of the Geneve. Basically, this assembler was a replacement for the TI Editor-Assembler module. and It supported the few extra instructions that are available in a Geneve.
TIBM-SECT and TIBM-FORM (1987). Two programs to access both a TI and a PC floppy disk on a TI-99/4A. The programs could format a floppy or transfer sectors from one floppy to the other. Search string and sector edit were enabled.
TI99-PC (2000-2004). A program to read, write and format a TI-99/4A floppy disk on a PC. With this program, data from a disk image file obtained via the internet can be written to a real TI floppy disk using a PC. The program handles V9T9, PC99 and ARC files.

Paolo Bagnaresi was born in Fano, a town in the Marche region of Italy. He graduated as a pharmacist and worked in a pharmacy in Italy for almost his entire working life. He is now retired and lives with his wife in San Donato Milanese, a township near Milan. In 2000 Paolo received the Edgar Mauk Award for his achievements. He is still involved in the TI community and is available for questions and discussions about his programs.

Paolo was born in 1944 and passed away on August 22, 2013.