The TI-99/4A was my first computer. It was a christmas gift when prices dropped in 1983. I spent many many hours together with my father writing programs for this wonderful machine. My father and I even published a few of these programs in journals for computer nerds at this time. Probably because of that I am connecting wonderful memories with this computer. Looking at this video I realize that also the simple and still modern design of the machine has not lost its fascination to me. Thanks a lot for your great work!
This was my very first computer, I bought it in 1982, the year I was married. I had it compete with the expansion box and printer. I learned word processing, database management and I believe a Lotus type spread sheet program. I spent hours learning basic on that little machine, I learned a lot and loved it right up until that famous Superbowl commercial came out introducing the Macintosh. A year later, 1985, the year my first child was born, I bought my first Mac, a the Mac 512ke and it helped me with my first business start up. I still have that old Mac, but I never forgot the TI99, which is why I guess I'm here looking at this video, now I wished I never had given it away to my brother in-law. I guess when you grow old you start thinking like this. Thanks for the video and memories.
June 12th, 1982. I went out ro buy a 2600, I came home with a TI-99/4A and an Odyssey2. I still use the 4A to this day (emulation suffices for Odyssey2 nostalgia). In 1983 I inherited a small amount ($800) from my grandmother and within hours of receiving it I was coming home with a Peripheral Expansion Box, 2 half-height SSSD drives (a whopping 96K each), an RS232 and acoustic coupler, and 32K Ram expansion. $800 sounds cheap, but in 2022 $'s that's about $2300. At the time I had a really good job, and made about $600/wk before deductions. So it was a HUGE expense. A few weeks later the 4A was killed by TI (it was ACTUALLY killed by TI at the design stage, and then again when devising 3rd party licensing agreements) and I moved on to the Atari XL (and eventually STe). But for years I continued to pine for the 4A. The XL was faster (despite a slower clock), had a functional BASIC (TI BASIC was too slow to be practical) and had a unique take on sprites, but it was just not an equal experience to the TI. Today, I once again have a fully expanded TI (now with 1MB memory as opposed to 32K, and rasberry PI backed wifi file server access, a Expansion Box that fits in the palm of my hand with three drives, and hundreds of CF mounted virtual disks). Thanks to AtariAge.com the TI has a huge enthusiast community releasing new hardware and software daily. It was slow, it was gerry-rigged from available components under a dubious architecture, it was hobbled by TI who discouraged 3rd party software development, and did not compensate for the small library in house. And 40 yerars later it is among the greatest collectible retro hobbies you're likely to take on. And I continue to turn it on at least once a day. Although with command prompts, mountable CF drives, and SD-backed multicarts, the experience has changed consideraqbly from the day I brough the first one home. (nearly 40 years ago to the day!)
I had one of these with the German 80 character display which was more like VGA using an analog RGB monitor. I also had a 40mb hard drive (which was big at the time), 4 DSDD floppies, 512K ram memory, clock card, and it also ran a CPM computer through the RS232 port along with all the CP/M software at the time. I ran a BBS on it for about 5 years. There was some good software for it, Microsoft Multiplan (think Excel before Excel), for instance. The console could be bought cheap but everything else was quite expensive. One thing nice was that it would use the drives from IBM computers at the time.
The video had 16KB of memory but the processor only had 128 words (256 bytes) of RAM. The processor could access the video memory, but that was indirect and slow and that memory was already mostly filled up with video. So adding 32KB to the processor itself (even if only 8 bits wide) was a really big deal.
Here in southamerica they sold the beige plastic TI-99/4A; I was 11 when my school recommend private lessons in computer science (I was lazy in maths, computer class was 2 hours/week) and my teacher tought me to program cool things like sprites design from scratch with paper little squares coding the rows and putting that into DATA lines in basic to display the favorite arcade characters of the time: pacman, asteroid spaceship, frogger.Super nice memories from your video, very comprehensive showing the PEB and its inside, thumbs up!
This was our first home pc when I was a kid. We had all devices shown plus the digital tape deck and education cartridges. I also seem to remember the ability to write very simple code for games that ran off the digital tape deck?
5 лет назад
This is a quality channel that will soon become a giant! and even more is Rhode Island, very nostalgic place for me!
I still have one of those expansion units brand new in the box. I bought it like 15 years ago from a guy that worked for TI back in the day and had a hoard of NOS stuff he was selling on a little website. Think I have some NOS joysticks and stuff too, plus a couple tubs full of cartridges. I always loved the 4a. They had two of them set up at the public library in Grand Forks, ND when I was a kid in the early 90's, and I spent hours playing around on there. I specifically remember playing Parsec and Tomb Stone City.
My first experience with home computers. My father bought a TI-99/4A at the end of 1981 when I was 9. I didn't realize at the time it was 16-bit because it performed like an 8-bit with 8-bit graphics. Anyways I quite enjoyed the games TI made for it even if they were frequently knockoffs of arcade favorites (TI Invaders = Space Invaders, Munch Man = Pac-Man, Parsec = Defender) or updates of arcade games like Blasto or Car Wars (an update of Head On). I never thought they were second-rate and the updates like Blasto only improved on the arcade original. I do remember in 1983 my father suddenly getting third party software cartridge games from the likes of Atarisoft and Parker Brothers and they were ports of arcade favorites (Q-Bert was done surprisingly well).
BAck in the 80's a tech FM radio station would talk about the tech then would warn people to start recording then the modem sounds over the airwaves would start. I then loaded it on my TI..... lol fun times.
Some third party cards were made for the PEB that allowed an RGB signal output from the card instead of the console and these used TMS9938 and TMS9958 display processors. Like on later MSX computers these would allow better graphics modes as well as being backwardly compatible with the TMS9918A. The European group SNUG produced some nice cards.
If you haven't seen it, the F18A - FPGA Based TMS9918A could be a better bet, but it drives 30kHz monitors, not 15kHz monitors: codehackcreate.com/archives/30
That was cool to see inside the expansion unit. I never did see that..I had one of these in 1982 or so...but the price war dropped all support and never got a expansion unit. I did see one in person...in a store dedicated to these machines back in the day...yea they wouldn't let me touch nothing or even drive prices. I wanted some small item and they was hit here go. Very rude. I now days have two of these. But with modern peb replacments no need for that big desk hog. I also have very limited space for the machines I do have.
5 лет назад+1
2:58 Very, very big HOUSE, for this Big DESK ! hahaha
This was my first computer.... and i still have the original with box and manuals.... i was 7.... and didn't have the PEB obviously... no cartridges or controllers.... every game i wanted to play i had to type in using BASIC.... and then lose when i turned the power off... I picked up 2 more over the years for spare parts.... just in case... there are mods out there to bring these into the 21st century...
The TI-99/4A was my first computer. It was a christmas gift when prices dropped in 1983. I spent many many hours together with my father writing programs for this wonderful machine. My father and I even published a few of these programs in journals for computer nerds at this time. Probably because of that I am connecting wonderful memories with this computer. Looking at this video I realize that also the simple and still modern design of the machine has not lost its fascination to me. Thanks a lot for your great work!
This was my very first computer, I bought it in 1982, the year I was married. I had it compete with the expansion box and printer. I learned word processing, database management and I believe a Lotus type spread sheet program. I spent hours learning basic on that little machine, I learned a lot and loved it right up until that famous Superbowl commercial came out introducing the Macintosh. A year later, 1985, the year my first child was born, I bought my first Mac, a the Mac 512ke and it helped me with my first business start up. I still have that old Mac, but I never forgot the TI99, which is why I guess I'm here looking at this video, now I wished I never had given it away to my brother in-law. I guess when you grow old you start thinking like this. Thanks for the video and memories.
What an amazing connection to have to the TI. Thanks for checking out our video.
June 12th, 1982. I went out ro buy a 2600, I came home with a TI-99/4A and an Odyssey2.
I still use the 4A to this day (emulation suffices for Odyssey2 nostalgia). In 1983 I inherited a small amount ($800) from my grandmother and within hours of receiving it I was coming home with a Peripheral Expansion Box, 2 half-height SSSD drives (a whopping 96K each), an RS232 and acoustic coupler, and 32K Ram expansion. $800 sounds cheap, but in 2022 $'s that's about $2300. At the time I had a really good job, and made about $600/wk before deductions. So it was a HUGE expense.
A few weeks later the 4A was killed by TI (it was ACTUALLY killed by TI at the design stage, and then again when devising 3rd party licensing agreements) and I moved on to the Atari XL (and eventually STe).
But for years I continued to pine for the 4A. The XL was faster (despite a slower clock), had a functional BASIC (TI BASIC was too slow to be practical) and had a unique take on sprites, but it was just not an equal experience to the TI.
Today, I once again have a fully expanded TI (now with 1MB memory as opposed to 32K, and rasberry PI backed wifi file server access, a Expansion Box that fits in the palm of my hand with three drives, and hundreds of CF mounted virtual disks). Thanks to AtariAge.com the TI has a huge enthusiast community releasing new hardware and software daily.
It was slow, it was gerry-rigged from available components under a dubious architecture, it was hobbled by TI who discouraged 3rd party software development, and did not compensate for the small library in house.
And 40 yerars later it is among the greatest collectible retro hobbies you're likely to take on. And I continue to turn it on at least once a day. Although with command prompts, mountable CF drives, and SD-backed multicarts, the experience has changed consideraqbly from the day I brough the first one home. (nearly 40 years ago to the day!)
I had one of these with the German 80 character display which was more like VGA using an analog RGB monitor. I also had a 40mb hard drive (which was big at the time), 4 DSDD floppies, 512K ram memory, clock card, and it also ran a CPM computer through the RS232 port along with all the CP/M software at the time. I ran a BBS on it for about 5 years. There was some good software for it, Microsoft Multiplan (think Excel before Excel), for instance. The console could be bought cheap but everything else was quite expensive. One thing nice was that it would use the drives from IBM computers at the time.
The video had 16KB of memory but the processor only had 128 words (256 bytes) of RAM. The processor could access the video memory, but that was indirect and slow and that memory was already mostly filled up with video. So adding 32KB to the processor itself (even if only 8 bits wide) was a really big deal.
Here in southamerica they sold the beige plastic TI-99/4A; I was 11 when my school recommend private lessons in computer science (I was lazy in maths, computer class was 2 hours/week) and my teacher tought me to program cool things like sprites design from scratch with paper little squares coding the rows and putting that into DATA lines in basic to display the favorite arcade characters of the time: pacman, asteroid spaceship, frogger.Super nice memories from your video, very comprehensive showing the PEB and its inside, thumbs up!
I had one of those TI-99A with P-Box back in the day, sold it to a Korean company while I was stationed in Korea in May of 1983
This was our first home pc when I was a kid. We had all devices shown plus the digital tape deck and education cartridges. I also seem to remember the ability to write very simple code for games that ran off the digital tape deck?
This is a quality channel that will soon become a giant! and even more is Rhode Island, very nostalgic place for me!
I still have one of those expansion units brand new in the box. I bought it like 15 years ago from a guy that worked for TI back in the day and had a hoard of NOS stuff he was selling on a little website. Think I have some NOS joysticks and stuff too, plus a couple tubs full of cartridges. I always loved the 4a. They had two of them set up at the public library in Grand Forks, ND when I was a kid in the early 90's, and I spent hours playing around on there. I specifically remember playing Parsec and Tomb Stone City.
My first experience with home computers. My father bought a TI-99/4A at the end of 1981 when I was 9. I didn't realize at the time it was 16-bit because it performed like an 8-bit with 8-bit graphics. Anyways I quite enjoyed the games TI made for it even if they were frequently knockoffs of arcade favorites (TI Invaders = Space Invaders, Munch Man = Pac-Man, Parsec = Defender) or updates of arcade games like Blasto or Car Wars (an update of Head On). I never thought they were second-rate and the updates like Blasto only improved on the arcade original. I do remember in 1983 my father suddenly getting third party software cartridge games from the likes of Atarisoft and Parker Brothers and they were ports of arcade favorites (Q-Bert was done surprisingly well).
The last laugh is on TI's side. TI is still around, Commodore not so much.
BAck in the 80's a tech FM radio station would talk about the tech then would warn people to start recording then the modem sounds over the airwaves would start.
I then loaded it on my TI..... lol fun times.
Second computer I ever owned, and still the prettiest.
Brand new computer ! amazing ! and 2 guys very cool and smart !
Hi
I am considering getting my 7 year old a Texas Instruments TI-994A for basic and educational cartridges. Any opinion on a better choice for her?
Even though the TI is moderately popular now-a-days, I would probably go with something very well supported in modern times like the C64 or Apple II.
I have 2 six yr olds and a 7yr old.... they have 10+ year old laptops running Linux....
Can a p box use a send out an RGB signal?
As far as i know, all video will still come from the main TI-99 unit itself.
Some third party cards were made for the PEB that allowed an RGB signal output from the card instead of the console and these used TMS9938 and TMS9958 display processors. Like on later MSX computers these would allow better graphics modes as well as being backwardly compatible with the TMS9918A. The European group SNUG produced some nice cards.
www.s-n-u-g.de/evpc/index_en.php Expensive and difficult to get hold of though.
If you haven't seen it, the F18A - FPGA Based TMS9918A could be a better bet, but it drives 30kHz monitors, not 15kHz monitors: codehackcreate.com/archives/30
That was cool to see inside the expansion unit. I never did see that..I had one of these in 1982 or so...but the price war dropped all support and never got a expansion unit. I did see one in person...in a store dedicated to these machines back in the day...yea they wouldn't let me touch nothing or even drive prices. I wanted some small item and they was hit here go. Very rude. I now days have two of these. But with modern peb replacments no need for that big desk hog. I also have very limited space for the machines I do have.
2:58 Very, very big HOUSE, for this Big DESK ! hahaha
This was my first computer. I remember that for a time, you could use it as the keyboard for an IBM XT. But eventually we just switched to the IBM XT.
Me, too, then a Tandy RLX 1000, then IBM compatibles, then, the Mac!(retro!)
This was my first computer.... and i still have the original with box and manuals.... i was 7.... and didn't have the PEB obviously... no cartridges or controllers.... every game i wanted to play i had to type in using BASIC.... and then lose when i turned the power off...
I picked up 2 more over the years for spare parts.... just in case... there are mods out there to bring these into the 21st century...
Aaesome.
I had one of those...mom and dad couldn’t afford the couple grand $$$ for the floppy so I had to use a Meranz tape recorder for my data 😜😂
Well now I want to play some Tunnels of Doom.
I guess there was no bug in the chip as you said. It was poorly designed tough...