[Ham-Computers] RE: Blind Man's CPU Down For The Count?

Tue, 14 May 2002 00:23:20 -0400

Elden, 	

Hey, the old Radio Shack "trash 80"! I remember those and the early Apple with
that horrible Apple Soft language. 			

TI had some very good chess programs in ROM modules. I enjoyed many games I
loaded in by casette tape. Some great music with graphics to match contributed
by owners.	

The original TI 99/4 had the so called chicklet keyboard, which was a trick to
type on. The later version known as the 99/4a had a more normal keyboard, but
still not typewriter like. I had the PES, peripheral expansion system with
additional 32K of memory (16K was stock, 48K was maximum), disk drive
controller, 90K 5.25 inch disk drive, speech synthesizer and RS/232 card. The
PES cabinet was actually line with Lead! It was a boat anchor! Ah yes, what fun
that was. TI was a decade ahed and they all made fun of TI. Little did they
know.	

Then came IBM. TI had some engineers, J. Fred Bucy was the CEO, design a IBM
compatible computer for TI. They came up with two designs. One was TI's own
design, the other was a barely legal copy of the IBM PC. The powers that were,
decided to use the TI design instead of the legal copy. This made some engineers
very angry, they took their designs and left Texas Instruments. They opened
their own company. They called it Compaq! Yep, a Texas Instruments product.	

TI looked the other way, for a while. When Compaq caught on, TI took them to
Court for stealing the engineering designs that belonged to TI. Which they truly
did. Compaq lost and TI quietly put them back under their corporate control, but
the world never knew this had even happened. It was all kept very very low key
and out of the media whenever possible. Later on TI sold their rights to the
engineers who founded Compaq, along with their stock holders. And now you know
the rest of that story -      	

Duane W8DBF   	

----------
From: Elden P. Laffoon, Sr. <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ham-Computers] RE:  Blind Man's CPU Down For The Count?
Date: Monday, May 13, 2002 11:54 PM

Aaron, Duane, I STILL have a like-new TI-99-4/A in service for chess
matches.  Also own a mint-condition Timex mini-computer, a TRS-80 Model 1
with all external periferals, and two TRS-80 Model 3's plus all the TRS-DOS
programing software.

Elden
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hsu, Aaron" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 2:20 PM
Subject: [Ham-Computers] RE: Blind Man's CPU Down For The Count?

> TI-99, eh?  A TI-99/4A was the first computer I owned.  Still have it in
my closet along with some carts and the cassette recorder.  I also touted
it's 16-bit capabilities while others were playing with the 6502 and Z80.
Alas, Commodore's marketing (and pricing) of the VIC-20 and C-64 eventually
dominated the market.
>
> The '99 was the computer I learned to program in BASIC with.  I also
learned how to type on the thing.  The graphics capabilities of the '99 was
impressive for the time and I crated simple graphics with the "CALL CHAR"
and "SPRITE" commands.  I also had a FORTH cart, but never really got into
FORTH.  First game I owned was "Adventure"...kept me going for hours!  TI
also had the first game with speech (some space game...forgot the name), but
I couldn't afford the add-on speech synthesizer so "speechless" it was.
But, like a lot of 99's, the keyboard eventually went flaky and I caved-in
and bought a C-64 and 1541 drive.  Now that I'm *little* more familiar with
computers, I should dig out the '99 and repair the keyboard.  It'll bring
back a LOT of memories.
>
> Glad you were able to resolve the dial-up problem.  Being a former (and
sometimes current) Customer Support "idiot", I know how it is with Tech
Support phone calls.
>
> 73,
>
>   - Aaron Hsu, NN6O
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> *** snip ***
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>

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