TI-99/4A Floppies

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: TI-99/4A Floppies
>   From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net>
>   Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:11:42 -0400
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote:
>> Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor
>> right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box
>> and third-party software that used it.
>
>I remember back when we were talking about getting a computer for the first 
>time...
>
>She called my attention to the fact that there was this local place 
>advertising that machine "for only $149"...  So we went up there and talked 
>to them about it.
>
>My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at 
>least two floppy drives.  I also thought that more memory than what came in 
>the basic unit wasn't a bad idea,  either.  The sales dude did some figuring,  
>and when the expansion box,  the memory,  and the drives were all added in 
>the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked 
>like,  at the time.  :-)
>
>I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen,  either.  Having 
>done a bunch of work on C64s,  and having gotten (eventually) an Osborne 
>Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column screen, I 
>think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well.

The Ti though color was a step down from the smallest screen I'd had at 
the time and that was the PT VDM1 at 64charx16 lines which was at least
useful.


>I suspect that that machine was an attempt to make a "computer appliance" 
>which would provide a platform for commercial software or similar,  and it 
>wasn't even that good at that.  <shrug>
>
>I never got one,  never played around with one,  but I don't think I'm missing 
>much.
>

I have one I bought back in the big sell off so I got it all for under 
$150 floppies and what not as well. Still have that. Since then I've 
aquired two more.   However the screen size 40x anything is painfully
short for me. At the other end the software was decent and the time 
(1981-2ish) it wasn't a bad machine to use off the serial port with
a real terminal (you could do that with some software).  

I still enjoy bugertime and some fo the games on it. 


Allison