TI-99/4A Floppies

[Roy J. Tellason]

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.

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.

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
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