On Wed, 29 Sept 2021 at 17:45, John Many Jars <j...@yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote: > > I had a TI 99/4 when I was a kid. It was my first computer (although I used > my friend's Apple ][ much more). > > All I can say is, what a piece of garbage. It was horrible in every way, and > it overheated if you left it on too long. SLOWEST BASIC EVER!
Harsh but not entirely unfair. It had, IMHO, a lot of foolish compromises, including the BASIC in an interpreted bytecode and a crippled memory bus. But if there hadn't been a price war, most of its defects would have been fixed in the announced, demonstrated but cancelled, TI-99/8. https://www.99er.net/998.html 10MHz 16-bit machine with Extended BASIC _and_ Pascal included, speech synthesis, expandable to 16MB RAM... all before the Mac, let alone the Amiga. And a relative of that *did* ship, later on, in the form of the Geneve 9640, a replacement motherboard that fitted into the 99's Peripheral Expansion Box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneve_9640 -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven • Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702-829-053
