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

[George, W5YR]

Duane, I was there when all that was happening at TI and you have the story
about right. 

I was one of four engineers who designed and built the first TI digital
computer - a system named DARC that had over 3000 tubes in it and required
80 tons of a/c! Its solidstate brother was the TIAC which used similar
architecture. If you want a good laugh, take a look at Patent No. 3074636
to see what primitive really is!   <:}

I, too, started programming in small computers with the 99/A. My most
ambitious effort was a rather complete transmission line analysis program
which used all available memory! Even calculated hyperbolic functions to
account for line loss, etc. Really a workout but ran like a top. Prior to
that I had written several programs on the TI-59 programmable calculator
that used all memory - that was a bad habit of mine in those days!  <:}

And glad those days are gone forever, although I still have a TI
Professional portable in the closet, along with the NEC 8300 version of the
Radio Shack Model 100, the Commodore 64 with which I developed the TNC64
packet terminal program which financed the early days of the Tex-Net packet
network built by TPRS, a virtually brand new C128, etc. etc. Seems like I
just can never get rid of computer equipment.

Duane, glad you got your problem cleared up. If I have learned anything
useful about Windows in all its incarnations it is that when the problem no
longer makes any sense, it is time to clean everything out and start
re-installing.

73/72/oo, George W5YR - the Yellow Rose of Texas         
Fairview, TX 30 mi NE of Dallas in Collin county EM13qe   
Amateur Radio W5YR, in the 56th year and it just keeps getting better!
QRP-L 1373 NETXQRP 6 SOC 262 COG 8 FPQRP 404 TEN-X 11771 I-LINK 11735
Icom IC-756PRO #02121  Kachina 505 DSP  #91900556  Icom IC-765 #02437


"Duane Fischer, W8DBF" wrote:
> 
> 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