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WHOA 2
Mar 8, 2009 18:05:30 GMT -5
Post by racob on Mar 8, 2009 18:05:30 GMT -5
"Whoa" has new meaning to me today!
I went and picked up my "last" missing model of my Commodore Stuff (C128 and 1571 drive plus lots software/joystick for $25) and with my purchase, the guy gave a me a box of a Texas Instruments TI99/4A computer. In it were a few cartridges. I didn't know they had cartridges for these computers. Ihave not found time yet to look at it but the guy said it is in working condition.
As I never had a TI99/4A, can someone (before I do some Googling) give me some directions where do I start. Is there a good website for TI99/4A for newbies..
Thanks R. Acob
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ogma
Newbie
Posts: 34
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WHOA 2
Mar 9, 2009 10:15:39 GMT -5
Post by ogma on Mar 9, 2009 10:15:39 GMT -5
Well, Googling will give you a few good sites to visit, so you might want to just start there.
I acquired a TI-99/4A a few weeks ago (my first one, as well) and I've been having fun with it, though I currently only have the computer, a couple joysticks, about 10 cartridges and, of course, the Speech Synthesizer. It's a nifty little machine. Not blowing me away and I can see again why I wasn't really interested in it at the time, but as an addition to my slowly growing retro computer collection, it is certainly welcome!
And regarding that Speech Synthesizer... GET ONE! I'm very impressed by what I've heard so far! I have 3 titles that use it: Parsec, Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator and Micro Surgeon.
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WHOA 2
Mar 9, 2009 10:24:05 GMT -5
Post by relayer on Mar 9, 2009 10:24:05 GMT -5
www.99er.net is an excellent place to start. Every other resource seems to branch out from there. Cartridges were a BIG thing with TI99s. It was Texas Instruments biggest push. They wanted the buyer to realize that software to make your computer do anything was available from convenient Solid State Software (tm) modules. Kind of like Radio Shack pushed Program Paks (I think) for their CoCo. Personally, I think TI put a lot of their eggs in one basket with the cartridges. The pricing for them turned out to be quite high compared to disk based software for other computers. Plus, you still needed some sort of storage mechanism to save data created with their cartridge software. I bought the one of the Adventure cartridges once. I needed a cassette player to load the game. The cartridge just "ran the show" while the game loaded from cassette. IIRC, if you bought an (expensive) disk drive for the TI99, you still needed to buy a Disk Manager cartridge to do anything useful with the drive. Extended Basic (the cartridge, of course) gave some rudimentary disk commands. Atarisoft made a good collection of arcade game ports for the TI (and other computers). I actually feel the TI versions were much better, graphically, as they took advantage of the high quality graphics built into a TI99 (that the average user couldn't program for without, you guessed it, some sort of specialty cartridge) BTW, TI lost money in the home computer industry and almost literally gave them away. I was able to get my first TI99 for $50 in 1983 because of that.
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ogma
Newbie
Posts: 34
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WHOA 2
Mar 10, 2009 10:10:32 GMT -5
Post by ogma on Mar 10, 2009 10:10:32 GMT -5
One thing you will quickly discover is that there is NO shortage of TI-99 hardware and software available on ebay or via craigslist. I just received a box yesterday, in fact, containing a TI-99 Extended Basic cartridge (and the chunky manual), a Navarone Cartridge Expander (in box) and Disk Manager 2 (catridge)! And just for a nice list of TI-99 cartridges, check out this list from 2001: pagesperso-orange.fr/fabrice.montupet/ti99carts/TI-99-4A%20Cartridge%20List2.htm
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