Updated 20190619


What is The Cyc?

The Cyc is delivered with CaDD PC99 Suite — digital download, DVD, or USB drive. It is also included with a CaDD 99/5C. The Cyc contains the following material relating to the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Home Computer:

    • TI PHM module manuals in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format.
      Example: PHM3013 Personal Record Keeping.
      Example: PHM3026 Extended Basic (with corrections).
      Example: PHM3055 Editor/Assembler manual (with corrections).
      Example: PHM3057 Mini Memory (with corrections) + Line-by-Line Assembler.
      Example: PHM3066 Buchungsjournal (German).
      List of Texas Instruments PHM module manuals.
    • TI PHD diskette manuals in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format.
      Example: PHD5005 Programming Aid II.
      Example: PHD5015 Oldies but Goodies — Games I.
      Example: PHD5063 UCSD-Pascal Compiler.
      Example: PHD5066 TI Pilot (unreleased).
      Example: PHD5098 TI Forth (with corrections).
      List of Texas Instruments PHD disk manuals.
    • Texas Instruments technical documentation pdf).
      Example: Technical Data (99/4).
      Example: TI-99/4A Console and Peripheral Expansion System Technical Data (99/4A).
      Example: “Orange” manuals: TMS9900, TMS9901, TMS9902, TMS9902A.
    • Articles by noted authors (pdf).
      Example: Interviews of TI personalities, such as David Levy, Don Bynum, and Tony McGovern, by Dan Eicher.
      Example: The TI-Base User’s Guide, by Bill Gaskill.
      Example: TI-101, Impact-99!, and New-Age/99, by Jack Sughrue.
      Example: XB Tutorial series, by Tony McGovern.
    • Full text of selected books (pdf) and a comprehensive list of books relating to the TI-99/4A.
      Example: The Orphan Chronicles, by Ron Albright.
      Example: Simplified TI-99/4A Assembly Language, by Ken Culp.
      Example: Assembly Language Primer, by John T. Dow.
      Example: Collecting Cartridges. by Bill Gaskill.
      Example: Learning TI-99/4A Home Computer Assembly Language, by Ira McComic.
    • The Cyc Alphabetical List (pdf)
    • 1,896 pages of TI references in alphabetical rder.
    • The Cyc PHx lists (pdf)
    • Shows all TI numbered products (PHM modules, PHD disks, PHT cassettes).
    • Many third-party and unreleased TI modules in PC99 format.
    • Indexes to all major TI publications, and full text of selected magazines (pdf).
      Example: Full text of 99’er HCM.
      Example: Full text of MICROpendium.
      Example: Full text of TI articles in Compute! magazine.
      Example: Full text of Genial TRAVelER, including all disks and bonus disks.
      Example: Full text of Texas Instruments Home Computer Newsletters.
    • User group publications and disk collections (pdf and/or PC99 .dsk format).
      Example: Full text of Bits, Bytes & Pixels, newsletter of the Lima 99/4A User Group.
      Example: Full text of TIdings, newsletter of the British group TIHOME.
      Example: All TI disks from the former Boston Computer Society.
      Example: Full text of The News Digest from TIsHUG, Sydney, Australia, from 1984 November through 1993 December.
    • Information, manuals, and disks from TI vendors (pdf and/or PC99 .dsk format).
      Example: J&KH Software. Manuals and disks, includes Super Extended Basic (SXB).
      Example: Joe Ross. Manual and disks for cShell99.
      Example: Mechatronic. Manual and disk for EPROMer.
      Example: Navarone. Manuals and disks for: Astrology, Bug Fixer, Chicken Coop, Console Writer, Disk Fixer, Speed Reading, Sprite Editor, and Topper.
      Example: Many advertisements from various publications. These are scanned as a graphic to display the original artwork, and are followed by the text of the ad so that it can be searched for.
  • Thousands of disks in PC99 .dsk format.
    Example: The Tigercub (Jim Peterson) public domain disks.
    Example: 180 disks from the Chicago TI User Group library.
    Example: Updated disk library from the Lima 99/4A User Group.


What happened to the CD?

During November 2010 the number of files delivered with The Cyc CDROM would no longer fit on a 700 Mb CD-R. From December 1, 2010 The Cyc is delivered on DVD+R media. From November 1, 2016 The Cyc is bundled with CaDD PC99 Suite. You must have at least a DVD-ROM to read files on The Cyc.


How do The Cyc’s pdf files differ from a scan?

If you take a page from a publication and scan it, the result is a bitmap file, usually in .tif format. You can display the original text, but the quality of the display depends greatly on the quality of the original, and the quality of the scanner. Since the file is a bitmap, there is no concept of text. If the scan is enlarged, the “text” becomes jagged.

An alternative is to “Scan to PDF”. Depending on the scanner software this can still be a bitmap in a pdf wrapper, or it can be text using built-in OCR software. The latter result is highly dependent on the quality of the original, and the generated text is not usually edited.

CaDD takes each scanned page and uses Caere Omnipage to convert the image to editable text. This text can be corrected, and additions can be made to it. Example: Bruce Harrison wrote a program called Scud Busters. What is the origin of the name “Scud”? In the review of Harrison’s product in The Cyc is a footnote showing the verivation of the name.

The editable text is reformatted using a standard style and output as Adobe .pdf files using scalable fonts. This means you can take any .pdf document in The Cyc and zoom it to the maximum size that a .pdf viewer, such as Adobe Reader, can display, without loss of text quality. CaDD even uses scalable chess fonts so that articles displaying chess positions scale correctly too. By contrast, a bitmap image becomes more “blocky” the larger it gets.

While the CaDD process is tedious and time-consuming, there is a huge over-riding benefit to it: The .pdf files in The Cyc can be searched with a full text search engine. This means, that within seconds, you can find all references in The Cyc’s documents to say “The Gramulator.” You can then click on the reference and display the associated text. CaDD uses a product from dtSearch to do this. However, many of its features have been incorporated in recent versions of Adobe Reader, which is a free download.

To improve the hit rate of a search, CaDD uses a style book
to ensure that all text references to a product are edited to be the same. Example: CaDD style is Extended Basic or XB, not Ex-Bas, Ext. Basic, Xbas, xbas, or X/B. The Cyc includes the style book developed by CaDD.

In some cases, where original drawings are either poor or unclear,
CaDD uses a product called RFFlow to create clear and professional
artwork. In some cases, CaDD will also provide original photographs
of material.


How much does The Cyc cost?

The Cyc is bundled with CaDD PC99 Suite and CaDD 99/5C. Please see the order forms for these products.


Where does the name come from?

One of my other weaknesses is trains and model railroading. I grew up in the steam age and was fortunate to see and photograph 10 years of steam in action. In the United States steam reached its zenith in the early 1940s. Each year the Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation published the standard reference work for steam locomotive users. It was officially called the 19xx Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice, but was usually referred to as the “Cyc.” So I combined the somewhat diverse
hobbies of steam-powered locomotives and computers and assigned the
name “The Cyc” to the TI project.


Copyright information

The Cyc is a labor of love and has a very small, dwindling market.
The charge does not cover the cost of reproduction, mailing, and the upkeep of this web site. The balance is paid out of personal funds. When this is explained, nearly all copyright holders are gracious enough to extend permission to CaDD to include their material in The Cyc on a royalty free basis. We thank the many companies and TI’ers that have done so. Unfortunately, there are some who have refused permission. CaDD’s policy is to only include material in The Cyc for which express permission has been given. In some cases, material is included for which it is no longer possible to obtain permission, such as defunct companies and publications.


Technical information

The Cyc documentation files are generated by scanning original material with Caere Omnipage 10 Pro OCR and/or Caere Omnipage Ultimate software. The text is edited and, if necessary, corrected in Corel WordPerfect X5. Graphics are scanned and inserted using HP Deskscan 2.8 and an HP IIcx scanner or EpsconScan and an Epson 4490 scanner. The WordPerfect file is used to “Publish to PDF”. Because the WordPerfect output is bloated, each file is passed to Adobe Acrobat 9.5 Pro and Advanced | Optimize is used to reduce the file by half ore better without loss of quality. With ut this,
The Cyc files would not fit on a DVD.

Corel has elected not to address this, and neither will Corel address the failure of using Type 1 fonts in WordPerfect X5 equations, something that used to work in WP 8 SP 7.

The collection of files is burned to a DVD+R using Nero 10. The DVD+R is created to be ISO9660 compatible, which can be read under MS Windows 95 and higher, Linux, and any Mac OS which can read DVDs. All files are named using 8.3 format and do not contain spaces or non-ASCII characters.


Is The Cyc complete?

No. New additions are made to The Cyc on an ongoing basis as time permits. With CaDD PC99 Suite you get one free year of updates if you join the CaDD Yahoo Group. Details are provided on purchase.