The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (as seen in Terry Stewart's computer collection)
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- Опубликовано: 1 ноя 2023
- Terry Stewart (tezza) talks about vintage/classic computers in his collection: The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. A further description can be seen here: www.classic-computers.org.nz/.... This video replaces an earlier copy which had very poor audio. See the View Numbers and Comments before the refresh at www.classic-computers.org.nz/...
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I was one of the (six) designers of the TMS9918/28/29, the graphics chip in the 99/4. I came up with how the DRAM interface worked as well as architecting and designing the sprites hardware.
Very cool. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Very, very cool! 👍
Which is still a very handy chip for homebrew computers!
You are a legend. Sprites was revolutionary back in the 80s and introduced the world to home gaming.
The magic of sprites cannot be understated. Once I got TI Extended BASIC, I felt I unlocked access to an alternate universe.
Nowadays it is one of the best vintage computers to own. I never had one as a kid. I don't even think I ever saw one as a kid. And I am in the USA. I had a VIC-20 up until I upgraded to a C64.
But, as most people nowadays curious about what they had missed as a kid, I scored a TI99/4A some years back after hearing about the FlashROM99 cartridge which allows software to be run from an SD card. Later in the years that was upgraded to the FinalGROM99 which added much more compatibility. Then simple 32K expansion boards were released, and now Tipi..an expansion that allows floppy drive emulation and even connects the computer to the net. Pretty amazing stuff.
And, because of the FinalGROM99 and the 32K addon I have been able to experience a whole slew of great games I never played before. This computer has a ton of great titles.
Really love this computer....so much so that I have three of them now ;)
Haha. It's always good to have more than one of the computer you love (-:
I'm 55, this was my first PC...
You first PC is usually a special PC (-:
Mine as well! Venezuela 1982…nice times. Extended Basic cartridge was a kick
I’m 57 and it was also my first home computer, it started my journey into working in the computer industry. Such happy times.
I just turned 54 and it was my first PC.
I'm in that club too, I still have it, and I have it ready to go, when I get nostalgic.
My Dad worked at Ti for 10 years and had many great memories testing some old games on the 99 4A! Great video
Thanks for sharing this. Having serious flashbacks right now. We were the first family to own one in our neighborhood and my friends and I were simply awestruck 😅. My Dad still has the base unit but sadly, some years ago we lost all the peripheral expansions.
You're welcome
That was my first computer when I was a teenager in the 80's. I taught myself to program on the TI 99/4A. My career path would have been severely impacted without the influence this computer had on my interests and technical skills.
I still have mine from the early 80’s. I hooked it up to a plasma tv about 5 years ago. I remember staying up all night as a kid typing code from the books. Half the time it didn’t work but was fun anyway.
fun fact: My neighbour’s father worked on the marketing material for this PC. The one in the commercial, with all the software, he took home to his son, so we had all the games. We played the hell out of it. Hunt the Wumpus was my favourite for some reason. :)
By and large those graphics were superb for that time. Here I am in 2023 and I'm actually impressed. I played a lot of Atari and Intellivision.
Thanks for the comment.
I had one of these, my uncle passed it down to me in like 1984, and I played Parsec on it nonstop, and I am pretty sure I wrote some simple BASIC on it as well. I never really had a way to follow my tech interests super far as a kid but I wish I had. I also had a Commodore 64 later on. I just turned 49 today and I downloaded the Classic99 simulator and had fun with that today. Fun memories.
Thank you Mr. Stewart. I loved my TI-99/4A. I got it with Extended Basic and added on from there, eventually picking up that humongous Peripheral Expansion Box (not easily transportable), Speech Synthesizer and numerous cartridges including "Alpiner" which was one of my favorites. Though I no longer have the unit, I do have a working emulator on my PC with several cartridges (including "Alpiner") built in to relive the good old days...and to show my children just how lucky we had it back then. :) Great video.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.
Loved playing Parsec on this. First computer I recall having a talking synthesiser.
Thanks for the memory
i remember this computer. though it was physically attractive and tempting, it was expensive.. we eventually got a commodore 64.... a great buy!
I'm 58, The TI99/4A was our first family PC. I learned how to write basic programs on this machine. I wrote a variation of PACMAN with twice the number of Ghosts. Good times :)
I wrote my own version of Super Breakout in TI BASIC. It ran OK using only character graphics for the ball and paddle. This was 40 years ago and I'm 54 now.
Thank you for your video ... My first PC in 1983 ... in Canada. I was young and excited to learn about "programming" on that machine. My daughter's fist computer and for a when we lived in the undeveloped, at the time, T& C Islands, where some of those educational/game programs were important to my 2 year old... ;).
Loved the machine and wrote lots of original software, making my own games up with BASIC and Extended BASIC I acquired a good used one a few years back, and when the grandkids come over it's a Parsec Time LOL! No guts no "R" rating... Just the occasional "Good shot pilot!" ...
This was my first computer as a kid. The killer app was a dungeon crawler game called Tunnels of Doom. It was fantastic.
Thanks for the comment.
Thank you for showcasing this important piece of history that often gets overlooked by the commodores, TRS 80s, and early apples.
I had one of these in the 80s. It was a great little machine. I taught myself BASIC. I did video as well as text games for my sons. Those were the days…
A truly revolutionary PC that deserves more recognition for its contribution. Back then I had a Commodore Vic 20 which was competing with the TI 99 but Commodore was priced cheaper with better marketing. TI really was a better computer and they should have followed it up with a sequel.
There's a modern release for the TI994a that is pretty amazing and that's a full motion video (FMV) version of Dragon's Lair, the laser disc animated movie game. What's even more amazing is that it is officially licensed. I think it was released in like 2018. If you want to really amazed at what these old machines can do, there's a couple of videos of the game being played beginning to end on youtube.,
While it is true that all the old 8 bits got ports of the game back then, they were all video games and not full motion video games. IOW, they were sprite and tile graphics based, not animated clips of a movie.
This feat was accomplished after a TI994a enthusiast came across a couple hundeed 128 megabyte chips. he contacted the IP owner and got permission and then digitized the laser disc and created the controls for it. I think it runs in 8 frames per second, but it still looks good. Then he put the game on the 128MB chips in a cartridge and sold them.
Why do I remember seeing this video at least 10 years ago?
Far as I know, TI used "OLD" for loading a program, because it comes from the Mainframe computers, OLD meaning something that has been saved previously, so it's literally old. This is the only computer I've seen use that word.
Yea, it's the only one I've come across using that word too. I gather that's where it came from.
The TI99/4A most certainly does have sprites, it can display 28 on screen at the one time (not bad when compared to the 8 of the CBM64). It's maximum graphics resolution of 256 x 192 can also display all 16 available colours with no loss of resolution unlike the BBC Micro or Dragon 32. It uses the same graphics chip as the Colecovision, Spectravideo SV318/328, Memotech, the early Sega computers and a few others besides. It was a good solid machine but was a complete pain in the arse to use if you wanted to develop software on as it was prohibitively more expensive to expand and be able to use assemby. The homebrew scene has now shown what the machine is truly capable of and had the quality of software been as good back in the day as it is now-things might have been very different.
Opps, Yes, you are right. It does have sprites. Thanks for the correction.
I had the version without any extensions, and apart from the game cartridges, the internal BASIC didn't support sprites. You needed an Extended BASIC cartridge for that. For me that was too expensive so I was stuck with typing in long listings only to think "is THAT it??" The Parsec cartridge made up for that though... I played that almost till my fingers bled 😁
It actually has 32 sprites. The 28 limit of TI Extended BASIC is because all BASIC implementations of that day used video memory to store data. It's incredible that any of these machines could store a BASIC interpreter and a BASIC program at the same time and be useful.
I just got 2 of them at a auction the other day. Saw the joy sticks sticking out of the box so I bought it without know what els was in the box. Kinda random lol
Hard to believe I've had mine for 44 years
The chipset of mine overheated and died in 1988. Unsurprising, it got hotter than a ZX Spectrum if you played games on it for more than an hour. The overheating problem rarely gets a mention, but it certainly claimed mine.
Interesting!
Thank you 👍
You're welcome!
As an 80's kid I desperately wanted an Apple 2 (and later a Macintosh) of my own. But was handed down one of these instead. /:
Le miens ma jeunesse
I've got the TI-99/4's previous generation, called the TI DS990 Model 1. Imagine a Commodore PET sized machine, with monochrome text only display, but with an external dual 8" floppy drive unit. It uses TI's 9900 CPU as well!
Unfortunately, my system does not work correctly, and it requires system disks to boot and use. I do have some disks from the previous owner, but the two bootable disks have worn tracks. I've backed them up using a Greaseweazle device, and I can get some data off the disk images created, but not enough to recover the bootable sections.
I like to think the TI-99/4 (and A) are the successors of the DS990 Model 1. It is a shame it didn't find more traction in the market!
Thanks for those comments.
I hated this machine as a child because, unlike my friend's C64 (or any other pc), you couldn't program it in assembly code or pascal. Architecturely, running machine code (or GROM) as a user it is impossible without a hardware hack. It was graphically primitive compared to most other contemporary computer,s and had very limited software. The only reason we had it was because we were poor and this was sold at a sharp discount. This was introduced in 1981 and by 82 the Commodore 64 would be out at a comparable price level, which was so advanced compared to this that it's unsurprising TI lost millions on it.
The graphics were comparable to the Colecovision. I seem to recall an Assembler module/cart for this machine? I think UCSD Pascal was available for this computer but it required the expensive Peripheral Expansion Box, extra RAM and a disk drive. The TI99/4a was better than a Commodore VIC-20 but couldn't compete against the C64.
The graphics are more or less on par with a Colecovision/MSX computer. I'm pretty sure it uses the same graphics and sound chips. You should see what it can do today. Someone made a dragon's lair game for it in full FMV if you can believe it. It's only 8 or 12fps, but it's all there both sound and video. No special hardware needed. Just plug the cartridge in. There is video of the game on youtube. Just search for Dragon's Lair ti994a.
Also, Ti fought with the games makers. They wanted a fee for every cartridge sold. They eventually lost and right at the end of the TI994a's life a whole slew of 3rd party cartridges came out, many of which are pretty good. The Donkey Kong port has all 4 screens for example and looks close enough to the arcade. That's probably the main thing that held it back.
Though I'm a lifelong 64 fan, it's not all that powerful either. The mode most games are in is only 160x200 (the TI is 256x192), though the 64's sound is much better.
There was an assembly cartridge for the 99/4A called Editor Assembler. In 1982-'83 our family subscribed to 99er Magazine and they did have some assembly programs. We never owned the cartridge because it was expensive.
The TI does have sprites
@@LanceHall Yes it does. It uses the same graphics chip as a Colecovision and MSX. It has 32 single color sprites, plus some rules. IIRC, it's 4 sprites per scanline.
How difficult was it to repair the system to fully functional condition? I just found one in a public auction but am afraid to turn it on for fear that I might damage something.
It had sprites. They were just very bad and you couldn't have more than four on the same scan line at the same time (Burger Time Cartridge really show this error!)
Yes, they did. That's an oversite in the video. Sorry about that.
Hi Tezza, how do you hook up the computer to an HDMI tv? What cables, adapters, please? I am thinking of buying a TI 99 4a but need to set it up to a newer tv. Info; please. Thanks. Jackie
Sorry, but I have no idea how to do this Jackie. Goggle might be your guide here
Thanks.
Il existe encore?
Not in my collection now, no.
Yes one! 1th. Are you okay?
The prompts were not annoying to me at 15 years old. High School had one computer for the entire student body in the computer lab. I stood in a line across from a second line to purchase mine. I took it home with the tape deck and played Pirates Cove and Hangman. The second line was for Cabbage Patch Dolls. I bought the discounted computer and played and always remember it fondly.
I'm glad, you took the time to share. I might have been 14 years old if I bought it in 1981. ❤🎉
God Bless you 💖
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