TI Calculator Programming Alliance (TCPA)

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Site URL

http://tcpa.calc.org

Founders

Patrick Wilson(?)
Laine Walker-Avina(?)

Founding Date

September 23, 1998

Years Active

1998 to 2001

Programmed For

TI-82, TI-83/+, TI-86, TI-89, TI-92+

Languages

Assembly, Flash

Aliases

TCPA

Affiliations

Detached Solutions
Dimension-TI
TI World

The TI Calculator Programming Alliance (TCPA) was one of the most prominent programming groups in the TI community while they were active. They were responsible for releasing some of the best programs and games for the z80/68k calculators, as well as porting several programs and games written by other people in the TI community.

Group Significance

They created several high-quality assembly games, including Yoshi, Pegs, Lode Runner, and Tempest, just to name a few. They were the first programming group that got into programming Flash applications for the TI calculators. In particular, Dan Englender created the first third-party flash application for the TI-83+ called CalcSys, while Jason Kovacs bundled four of their popular games into one flash application for the TI-83+ called Puzzle Pack. A second version of Puzzle Pack was created when Jason Kovacs, Dan Englender, and Brandon Sterner were part of Detached Solutions.

Some of the programs released by TCPA received the Program of the Month (POTM) award given out by ticalc.org from 1999 to 2000. In particular, Tetris Attack by Brandon Sterner, Yoshi 68k by Brandon Sterner, Block Dude by Brandon Sterner, The Puzzle Pack by Jason Kovacs, and NECalc 68k by Scott Dial.

Group Staff

There were many members in the TCPA, although only about half actually released any programs or games while a member of TCPA. Several of the members were involved with other TI sites and programming groups.

• Patrick Wilson — founder
• Laine Walker-Avina — founder
• Jason Kovacs — admin
• Dan Englender — admin
• Brandon Sterner — admin
• Tim Anderson — admin
• Paul Robson
• Fred Coughlin
• James Vernon
• Andrew Magness
• Scott Dial

• Matthew Landry
• Brandon Engelberth
• Ahmed El-Helw
• Markus Klisics
• Ross Palmer
• Brett Barwick
• Andreas Finne
• Erik Davidson
• Ian Marshall
• Darien Brown

• Pat Carter
• Haroon Iqbal
• Laurens Holst
• Chris Hiszpanski
• Miles Raymond
• Shane Popham
• Gérald Gamain
• Sean Reed
• Jeff Chai
• Joe Flint

Site URLs

TCPA has used various site URLs over the years. The first site URL for TCPA was http://tcpa.homeboard.com utilizing the free third-level domain through the hosting company Homeboard, and they used that URL from September 1998 to November 1998(?). They then switched to http://tcpa.somewhere.net, which they used until their first program Yoshi was released on December 21, 1998. The TCPA then got site hosting through Adam Berlinsky-Schine and his site Dimension-TI (URLs: http://www.dimension-ti.org/tcpa and http://tcpa.calc.org), which they utilized for the remainder of their existence until Dimension-TI shut down in late 2002. Note: TCPA was the first site hosted by Dimension-TI.

• http://tcpa.homeboard.com
• http://tcpa.somewhere.net
• http://www.dimension-ti.org/tcpa
• http://tcpa.calc.org

Site Screenshots

(Screenshot of TCPA homepage circa 2000)

(Screenshot of TCPA homepage circa 2001)

Group History

(Taken from the TCPA page on Dimension-TI circa 1999)

The TCPA was formed when Patrick Wilson wrote an article titled "The TI Programming Alliance" (URL: http://www.ticalc.org/community/articles/19.html) for ticalc.org, and this group was formed soon after on September 23, 1998. Since then, both the president and vice-president have resigned due to lack of time, so Tim Anderson and Brandon Sterner have assumed their respective positions. The TCPA soon established its own IRC channel (#tcpa on EfNet), a mailing list, and a web page. The TCPA released its first game, Yoshi v1.0 for the 83 on December 21, 1998. This game is currently being ported to other platforms. On December 28, 1998 the TCPA and Dimension-TI agreed to a merge.

The most prominent and active members of TCPA decided to form their own programming group in May 2000 called Detached Solutions. The group focus was on making sophisticated commercial-quality Flash applications, which would give them a more professional software company appearance and lend them more recognition outside of the TI community.

Miscellaneous

For Dan Englender's 17th birthday, Jason Kovacs arranged a virtual birthday card with graphical signatures collected from all of the TCPA staff and some friends on IRC and put them into one image.

The names on the birthday card included: detached (IRC Bot), Eric Sun, Eric Greening, Matthew Landry, Joe Wingbermuehle, Brandon Engelberth, Scott Dial, Adam Brooke, Patrick Davidson, Ross Palmer, Shane Popham, JdgDredd (IRC bot), Andrew Magness (Wing), fissured and KingCold (IRC Bots), Stephen Denney (WarHawk), Fred Coughlin, Scott Novek, Jon Taylor ("AKA da JET"), solenoid (IRC Bot), James Vernon, Sean Reed (SMaRt), Erik Davidson, Jason Kovacs, calc (IRC Bot), Brandon Sterner, Jimmy B. (ashbar), Juan Corral, Markus Klisics, and David Phillips.

Gérald Gamain, who was known by the alias of "Wormhole", died in a tragic car crash on August 26th, 2000, at the age of 20.