TI Extended BASIC

TI Extended BASIC is a discontinued implementation of the BASIC programming language interpreter for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer.

TI Extended Basic cartridge

Features

TI produced an Extended BASIC cartridge that greatly enhanced the functionality accessible to TI BASIC users. Sprites could be generated and set up to move automatically with simple one-line commands. Custom "CALL" subprograms, access to memory expansion for larger programs, multiple statement lines (with the statement separator ::), Boolean logic in IF statements, assembly language linkage, as well as the ability to display text at any location on the screen, were all added while largely retaining compatibility with TI BASIC.[1]

Speech synthesis

When equipped with the TI Speech Synthesizer, TI Extended BASIC users could also generate speech from a predefined vocabulary as easily as writing text on-screen. For example, the following line of text entered after the ">" command-line prompt would cause the speech synthesizer to identify the computer: 

>CALL SAY("HELLO I AM A #TEXAS INSTRUMENTS# T I NINETY NINE FOUR A HOME COMPUTER")

Multi-word phrases are delimited with the # symbol, as #TEXAS INSTRUMENTS# in this example. Using a word not included in the speech synthesizer's built-in vocabulary of 338 words and phrases would cause it to slowly spell out the word. TI's Terminal Emulator II cartridge provided text-to-speech functionality.

TI Extended BASIC also provided raw access to the speech synthesizer, but very few developers had the resources to generate the speech data and this function was rarely used.

Elements of TI Extended BASIC

Statements

TI Extended BASIC has several statements not present in TI BASIC: ACCEPT, IMAGE, LINPUT, ON BREAK, ON ERROR, ON WARNING, SUB, SUBEND, SUBEXIT

References
  1. Shaw, Stephen (1983). "Extended Basic". Getting Started with the Texas Instruments TI99/4A. Phoenix Publishing. ISBN 978-0-946576-04-3.
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