My first computer. My mom was able to afford one in 84 when they put them on a deep discount after they were discontinued. I loved it and used it for years. We eventually got a printer for it and my mom wrote her master’s degree papers with TI Writer.
I got mine the same year when they were being sold off cheap for £50 new with tombstone city and a set of joysticks. Became my favourite computer as it was the only one I could program.
The power supply that plugged directly into the outlet had an isolated transformer. The power supply that had two cords into the transformer had a jumper from the input coil to the secondary coil. This was a problem because 120 volts could pass through and cause the computer case to become hot. If you touched the computer and grounded yourself, you would experience a shock. They glued on a fuse pack with a polarity plug to prevent shock.
What a coincidence! I just bought this computer because I make chiptunes and this thing has both the SN76489 soundchip and a speech synthesizer. I just coded my first song in extended basic and saved it to a cassette today. I had no idea it was this computer's birthday! So cool! I love this thing and the possibilities for making chiptunes using speech synthesis and the soundchip together makes it so perfect for what I do.
Love Parsec! The different lift settings are used for the refuelling tunnel. Some parts of the tunnel are really hard and you need to slow your ship down so you don't crash into the cave sides. Interesting feature before you start the game, didn't know about that one. Great vid!
@@retrobitstv Same here - I played parsec so much as a kid... Duh.. Probably in the direction but who reads that.... (The TI was my first computer..) Btw - when I was a kid I always thought it say It's basic.. It wasn't until I was older that I noticed that it actually said TI basic.. dyslexia... mabye?
@@retrobitstv same, I always played the Milton Bradley games, they were more fun, I had baseball which was a 2 player game but I always pitched to myself. The second game was bigfoot which can be played with or without the Milton Bradley game box, the third game was sewer mania which the guy had to remove the bomb before it exploded. Then the last game was a child's game called I'm hiding. There were other games I didn't have. When Triton took over the sale of TI they offered the expansion box for three hundred dollars which I bought and I bought extended basic which was much better than TI basic. I recorded some old main frame music programs and played them on the TI computer. I just took the data and wrote a program to play the songs. Ti had two good qualities one was the sound module and the tone for writing three part harmony. I was going to write a program to play Bach's two and three part inventions but never got around to it and I only have the computer to play games now. I gave away the expansion box and just have the main console. Maybe I may write music programs on my raspberry pi 4. Not a priority right now.
@@ronb6182 My family never owned the expansion box or a disk drive, just the cassette tape player. I never played around with music composition on the machine, but did a fair amount of stuff in the TI Logo cart.
Just stumbled upon this while looking for some TI machine language music. The first computer I bought (for my son) was super expensive, the second one (for me) was still very pricey .. then the price dropped to $99! I showed my son how to program sprites and we typed in a few programs from magazines. We had lots of fun with it. For a few years I sold and servicde the the TI-99-4A (taking over a friend's business when he called it quits). Our favourite games were the Adventure ones, Parsec (I still remember that female voice: 'Good shot pilot!'), TI Invaders and Fathom. Many years later my son chose IT as a profession. Thanks for the memories!
The Ti 99/4a will always hold a special place in my heart. It was our family's first computer, due to the fact they were being fire-saled out at only 50 USD. As a bonus from the discounted rate, we ended up with loads of great games! I still don't get how "TI Invaders" wasn't sued into oblivion by Taito - graphics and gameplay were pretty one-to-one - the only difference was the bonus stage! Parsec was the best use of the Speech Synthesizer - felt like you were commanding a spaceship bridge with the alert voice warning you of hazards ahead. Munch Mobile may be the only home port of the arcade game, "Joyful Road" ever released, and a cartoonish blast to play! Though the greatest benefit of the TI was proving to my parents that we kids were gentle enough not to ruin the hardware, and the family ended up getting decked out C64 in less than a year!
I own one too Robin. I got this computer in 1982 as a 10 year old. It was the foundation of my eventual computer career. I owe everything to my parents for buying it and this computer for learning basic, how to type, etc. I have the voice synth that works with Parsec and a lot of other games, along with a converter to allow using two atari-style joysticks (starfighter types) as I couldn’t stand the standard joysticks. Great video. Thanks for sharing this one with your viewers.
I'd love to get one of those joystick converters and play Parsec with a good joystick! And yeah, back in the early '80s we were thrilled to have any computer available to us at home. I had a Timex/Sinclair 1000 which in hindsight was TERRIBLE but I still loved it at the time; being able to learn BASIC at home was the best. So a TI-99/4A would have been incredible in 1982. I had to wait until 1984 to get a C64.
@@8_Bit I thought about taking the diodes out of the TI joy stick and install them on my atari joy stick. It would work better. The new Atari joy stick don't work well without the mod.
I bought a used one from a college student for $50 in 1984. He saved all the manuals and everything was in pristine condition. It was my first computer. My brother and I thoroughly used that thing. We especially liked the extended basic cartridge and made a lot of games. There was a cassette with games on it that was authored by two very talented Vietnamese fellas. Good times.
That's a computer I was always curious about. I remember seeing it when I was a teen and I always liked the look of it. After some research I discovered the C64 was a far more capable and better supported machine. There's just something about the look of the TI-99 I liked.
The keyboard was better than a lot that are made today. TI did make a cheap keyboard on their white or off white machines. The original is better all the way around.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the C64 was far more capable, the problem was that for whatever reason, TI decided that most of the built-in ROM would contain a higher level (but not very efficient) byte-code interpreter called GPL. Most everything that came on command modules (cartridges) was written in GPL, probably as a matter of convenience and/or minimizing on the space required for these programs. To make matters slightly worse, the built-in BASIC interpreter was also written in GPL. Yes, that meant that anything run through TI-BASIC had to be triple interpreted, which made it run embarrassingly slow. BASIC being the very popular default language of every home computer put the TI at a perceived disadvantage, because at the time, most of us who were relatively new to computers were cutting our teeth on the BASIC language. But really, if this stuff runs through your veins, and it was truly what you were meant to do, then you don't stop at BASIC, you pick up a book and spend the whole summer studying TMS9900 assembler language! This is where I truly believe that "The 16-bit Home Computer" outshined them all! Unfortunately however, to utilize more than simple gameplay and other foolery on the TI, one needed to make a full investment in a line of peripherals that would nearly consume your whole desk and possibly fall off the edge! For the longest time, I used to think that I was the absolute last serious TI user (who did not do it for nostalgic reasons), but before I had called it quits and moved on to PC architectures, I had amassed somewhat of a Frankenstein TI system, consisting of all custom components, four high-density floppy drives, a hard drive, 256K memory expansion, real time clock (in the form of a Hayes Chronograph), 4 serial ports and 2 parallel ports... Ended up authoring the world's first (and probably only) multi-line TI BBS. Yes, pseudo-multitasking on a single threaded machine, using the single programmable interrupt that TI allotted to programmers. 40 years later, I still think very highly of TMS9990! But in these days, if I'm ever feeling nostalgic, I just run one of the many emulators out there.
@@CaptainCattywampus I always liked the extended basic and the only side car I had was the speech box then later I got the expansion box which had 32 k of memory, a disk drive and four more slots for a printer card and more memory. If l remember right you could have 80 k of memory more than the commodore 64. What I didn't like with the C64 everything ran on a serial output the printer, disk drive modem etc.
The TI-99/4a was the machine I've learnt my first BASIC commands on. The other computers like the VIC20, C64 and ZX Spectrum were always occupied by the stronger guys not letting me use them. Luckily no one wanted to check out the TI.
My father bought a TI-99/4A at the end of 1981. I never realized it was a 16 bit machine at the time as it clearly had 8-bit quality graphics and sound, with slower performance than C64 or Atari 8-bits. To me 16 bits were the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST which appeared in 1985.
I have made some games for c64. "Use only screen size of code" =) . Finnish Facebook commodore group has competition for that some time a go. I don't use FB anymore. So I don't know if there are this anymore available...
The TMS9900 processor has a very PDP-11 style architecture but its registers are virtual - they are a block of external memory pointed to by the internal W register. That makes it easy to get a new group of registers on subroutine calls and to restore the registers on a return. Unfortunately this takes up most of the 256 bytes of RAM so the programmer only had a fraction of that to use. There was an additional 16KB of DRAM connected to the video chip but that processor could not address that directly. You had to access a control register in the video chip twice to give it the two halves of the address you wanted and then read to write to a different control register. So it was more like an extremely fast disk than memory.
The 256 bytes was basically used as registers. Actual programs were put in the video ram, which naturally can’t be accessed directly by the processor. Think of it as running programs on a Commodore 128 in the VDP ram instead of main ram and you have a pretty good idea how it works.
@@jecelassumpcaojr890 That makes it sound like one of the reasons this 16 bit machine was as slow as it was. The whole point of registers was to have working places for manipulating data that worked at the speed of the processor. If it had to slow down to make use of a "register" then that's enough to kill the machine. I'd have fired the guy who thought that was a good idea. At the very minimum, I would have had them build "register RAM" devices which would have been essentially the same thing the CPUs had. But then the problem of going outside of the die to access it and that would have been the same problem unless they could have overcome that somehow. But since they made their own flipping processors, why didn't they just put the addressable registers on die!?
@@anjinmiura6708 They did put the 256 bytes inside the chip when the technology made it possible to do so: TMS9995. In the early days the RAMs were fast compared to the processors so this was a reasonable design.
I remember A-Maze-ing, Parsec and The Attack. I recall you could occasionally get "crash with ground" from hitting the top of the screen. There was a Star Trek game I loved to play and my brother loved a TI compatible version of Pole Position that had a weirdly shaped cartridge and required full power off for insertion and removal to work right. My brother and I had different joysticks though I don't remember the types we had; I remember min having a bulb-top handle and two round fire buttons and his being more pistol-grip style. Also we had the speech synth module. A lot of fond memories.
If memory serves, the 256 bytes are the processor stack space. The TI 9900 was NOT the originally planned processor. The original processor was delayed and TI was trying to compete with the VIC 20. The RAM accessed through the VDC and it had 16K shared with the VDC. Although the BASIC was not fast, it was pretty complete. Although C-64 users became adept at using poke/peek to to a lot of things via video/audio, it has no commands in BASIC for this. The TI has these commands to handle video/audio (but if I remember right it has no peek/poke). The worst aspect is that in order write in assembler, you almost required the RAM expansion, and this required the Peripheral Expansion Box (PEB) which cost a RIDICULOUS amount of money - more than the computer if I recall correctly. RAM wasn't cheap at the time. Disk drives (required for significant programming like assembler) were expensive for pretty much all platforms. The TI does have an expanded BASIC cart. The largest issue for TI was that all carts were required to get approved by TI and had to use a special ROM called a GROM. This added cost and most developers either went the route of diskettes OR skipped the machine entirely. Given the various costs that did NOT exist on other machines, the computer dropped sales rapidly. There is a cost reduced version made with beige plastic. Today, there is a cart called "The Final GROM" and a 32K RAM expander for the side of the machine. There's a variety of TI stuff here (not sponsored, just own some of it): thebrewingacademy.com/collections/ti-99-4a I haven't had a chance to explore mine fully yet.
I remember thinking that TI had made all the cartridges for the platform, at the time. Of course I was just a kid, not even 10, who had a friend with the system. I also remember seeing in a book on BASIC that I used a few years later because it covered the Apple II which we were now using basically (heh) showed the TI stuff to be pretty limited. It was often Apple, Atari, Commodore, do something like this. Then maybe TRS-80 and then at the bottom TI and Timex-Sinclair. (This would have been 1986 or so, so after the platform was EOLed, of course.)
from all the videos on youtube none ever was any good at it or even covered the refueling part. I remember I managed to finish it (in fact it doesn't finish, it gets more and more difficult up to a level and then repeats ad infinitum).
The add on on the cable is a fuse/RF filter, I had a hard time finding anything about it as well. Apparently the power brick didn't meet North American safety standards on possible over voltage and RF interference so they had to add the extension, very little is mentioned about it but most of what I found said it was an RF filter, a fuse or both and using a power strip has the same effect.
It's a primary transformer fuse. The transformer can (and did) short out. with millions sold there were bound to be some very unlucky buyers. Also without a fuse the transformer can overload and catch on fire if the secondary side is shorted as well.
@@whickervision742 the fuse is for the electrical installation protection (read your house cabling), not for people not for internal components; in fact, in almost 99% of power supply units (even current switching ones) every time PSU is dead the fuse is ok
It was part of a very large safety recall. As I understand, it wiped the divisions entire profits for 1982. The RF problem was a different one. The FCC didn't approve TI's RF modulator for the 99/4. Faced with the prospect of yet another delay to a system which had already seen over a year of delays in a rapidly-changing market, they opted to ship the 99/4 in a box with composite cables and a monitor. A very expensive box.
3rd party support and accessibility probably had a lot to do with it. By the time 3rd party games were made it was towards the game crash. A few really good arcade ports were made for the computer, some never released. Imagic had awesome ports for the TI. c64 continued to make awesome games like The Last Ninja while TI discontinued making titles. I was able to collect the games I didn’t already have because they were cheap.
Loved your video, I have a Ti-99/4A in the shed in it's original Cardboard box with joysticks, Extended Basic cartridge and the expansion text to speech module. It was amazing for the early 1980's
I believe the NTSC version of the graphics chip in the TI 99/4A had the ability to take an external video signal and overlay the computer´s own graphics on top of that. THis could have been handy for adding subtitles to home videos, for instance.
Thank you so much for playing parsec that’s my all time favorite game, it’s better with the speech synthesizer, it would say “enemy ship approaching” I miss this!!
This computer is still the pride and joy of Texas. In the capital we still use over 100 of these in the records department. Thank you and have an Amico day!
Fascinating. I'd love to hear how they're implemented. Are they somehow attached to shared storage or networked? Seems to me that either would require the sacrifice of several small mammals.
educational titles, simple accounting apps, and a few games including "Hunt the Wumpus". We had a 99/4A for a while alongside our Vic 20, and I gave it to my cousin when I got a C64... he was one of those goofballs who bought the TI expansion chassis, and blew thousands of bucks on memory upgrades, a modem, etc... for a machine that even when fully upgraded was far less capable than a stock C64. :D I felt sorry hanging onto my 99/4A when he could use mine as a hot spare, so I passed it along.
@@chouseification yeah but the expansion had separate ports for the printer, disk drive and memory. The commodore shared one port I which everything needed to be connected for it to work right. I only spent 300 dollars on my box and it included the disk drive, 32 k of memory and the monster cable. I should have bought the rs 232 then a printer could be installed. I really didn't need to print to play music on my computer. I knew someone that had the modem and went on the billboard. No internet at that time. You can use the system on the internet now if you have everything needed. There is You Tube on that subject.
@@ronb6182 yeah we were stuck to cartridge and the official TI tape drive... haha, not even a real tape drive as it wasn't full motor control, but it worked. Yes, the chassis made the TI a much more capable machine, yet it was still a case of "whoa" on those rare occasions when you spotted one; almost like running into somebody who had a Vectrex or the Dark Tower board game... random and always neat. :D We had a Vic20 and then got the 99 soon afterwards; neighbors went all out and got an Apple II, so I got to mess around with that after school. That was a fun era sort of... we had VHS and they had Beta. We had Atari 2600 and they had Intelivision. Of course opposite computer brands as well. They each had more "personality" but it's nice to just buy commodity parts and plop them together then install OS of choice. :P
@@chouseification most all computers back then used a cassette player recorder to save programs. Then came 8 inch floppy disks, then came 5 and a half inch floppy disk. The three inch ones came with IBM clones. Then came hard drives and so on. I remember the old Wang computer that did basic and it used a special cassette to save programs, a regular audio cassette would not work in their machines. Them computers also had plotters to draw drafting papers. I used one in my electronic drafting class. It was kinda neat to draw schematics on.
@@ronb6182 yep, used all of those formats at one point or another, although 8" floppy only a couple of times. The sizes were 5 1/4" and 3.5" for floppies. I had a really low res digitizer on my C64, and a Koala pad too (early trackpad) both were intended for art although it was simple art. Dot matrix printer in our house - plotter would have been fun to have, and I do remember the little portable ones.
Home computers was where it was at in the early days of gaming. I had a TI994a. My friends had Atari 800 and C64. I guess the speech synthesizer and games like Parsec and Alpiner were the reason why everyone wanted to play video games at my house. When 3rd party games were available I had arcade ports of Donkey Kong, Burgertime, and Congo Bongo. Imagics Microsurgeon blew everything away. Definitely the most intriguing Ti99 cart ever.
The green "safety checked" sticker and related pigtail on the power cord addressed a transformer fault with some models of the power supply. You're correct in noting the pigtail is designed to lock on to the original power cord and not be removable. Apparently these were supplied to retailers (who opened computers in their stock and added the adapter prior to sale) and existing owners, to be installed immediately, to avoid a recall of the computer/power supply. My guess is that the original power plug on the transformer isn't polarized (or not polarized correctly) to ensure the computer isn't at line voltage and the pigtail, once correctly installed, ensures the computer isn't referenced to line (assuming your wall outlets are wired correctly). See US Consumer Products Safety Commission, 1983 notice related to Texas Instruments Providing Adapter For TI 99/4A Computer, Release # 83-071.
I remember it had an odd way of reading the plug-in rom… it didnt map to system memory like most systems, it was a sequential read - i think the rom got loaded into ram system memory before getting run.
I had been trying to figure out for years that Parsec was the game I played once or twice in the classroom in 5th grade. I had already figured out that the computer was a TI-99/4 because that silver and black look was pretty one-of-a-kind. There were two computers in that 5th grade classroom: this and an Apple II of some sort. Also, this was in '94/'95. Had no idea how old those machines were. Enjoyed the video. Did not expect to see that game, really, ever again. Wow!
That was a fun trip down memory lane! The TI 99/4A was my first compter and Parsec and Car Wars were the first two cartridges I got for it. After crashing in Car Wars I liked to hold down quit - the car pieces would continue flying away forever until you stopped holding FCTN =
My first computer as well. Got in new in 1982 for christmas. Had a lot of fun with it and it helped me learn Basic. Spent countless hours playing Parsec on it.
I still have the one I bought in 1981. I later picked up by the peripheral expansion box, two floppies, and memory expansion..As I recall, I wrote software in Basic, Forth, and Assembler. It was a lot of fun back then.
Seeing how underwhelming the performance of the TI-99/4A compared to the 8-bits of the time, I remembered that Bill Cosby was the spokesman for the TI and on those ads he kept saying it was a powerful computer. I now laugh at those ads when he said that. But at that time (early 1980s) our family only had a TI-99/4A so I didn't realize all the 8-bits like the Atari ran much faster. Then in 1985 we got an Atari 800XL and I was amazed how much faster it was and better graphics.
I had one as a kid, handed down from a family friend, but it was in the early 90s after anybody wanted anything to do with TI Home Computers. I initially resented it because it wasn't an Apple II or a Commodore 64, and it was impossible to find software for it. The only games I had for it were Hunt the Wumpus, Munchman, and whatever magazine type-in games I could type into TI Extended BASIC. I eventually learned how to create small animations and I used it to create scrolling titles for my high school's weekly TV show. My parents sold it for scrap metal while I was in college because they needed the money and I never thought I would need it when I had access at the university to Pentiums, Macs, and Silicon Graphics workstations... but I really wish I still had it.
You're lucky. Except for the keyboard, the Atari 400 is better (better graphics, better sound, better games, faster BASIC, SIO port) and supports 4 players/joysticks. An Atari 800 and even the 600XL is better than the TI99/4a.
That's the exact computer I learned Basic on. When grandpa died, we gave to the church thrift store. Loved that machine. It was my babysitter. I got a kick out of you doing worse at Pars than me. Remember "Tumbleweed"
From one TI-99/4A owner to another: If you ever have any problems with the original power supply, a Mean Well PT-65B can be fitted inside the case. A figure 8 connector can easily fit through the original power connector hole in the case as well. Like C64s, those power supplies can fail on one voltage rail. Also, the speech synthesizer can be had for pretty cheap and go into the expansion slot. Some games are improved by having it, but it isn't required. I forget the whole name of the channel, but I think it's "Wayne's Tech Talk". He has a plethora of information on this computer there. I just want to help. 🙂
TI 99/4A wasn't the first 16 bit home computer. At least the swedish home computer Lysator LYS-16 beat it with four years to that title, released in 1975. Sorry for posting a late comment in a one year old video. Really enjoy you channel and the personal atmosphere you create using just one hand (singlehandedly).
My first computer. My Dad and I took an Atari Joystick and a split joystick cable adapter we found at Radio Shack. We basically figured out the pin out on the Atari Joystick to make it work.
I had one of those! The BASIC reference guide had some great examples including a little jumping man demo. It was one of the first machines I'd ever used and learned a lot from them.
Ti had other problems as well. We were in the hobbyist age and TI was focusing on the education system. Having been a government contractor (DOD), TI thought that it was going to sell it computers to schools where price was less important. The TI is well made. You can stand on the expansion box. TI was trying to sell to a market that it could not hope to gain and shrugged off the market that it needed to survive. When the accounting was done, TI made money on the TI 99/4a.
My Mother purchased a TI-99/4A on clearance in the late '80s, but did not acquire a storage device, disk or tape. I remember typing in one of the sample BASIC programs in the book, but had no way to store the program!
I still have a phobia of accidentally holding down the shift key while hitting the backspace key - that will delete the entire line you are on! I lost many lines of code typed in from magazines that way.
I saw one in the computer shop when I went to buy my VIC-20. It was too expensive and didn't seem to have the support of the VIC-20. So I didn't get to try it, and the shop didn't try to sell it to me.
Excellent video! When you pressed number 2,to load the game, an ad popped up for a game. Thought the graphics was great then realized it was an ad lol. Great work, as all your videos
I had one with the attached speech synthesizer and learned how to program in in the basic computer language along with a few games like TI Invaders, Munchman, and Parsec. Those TI joysticks wear out fast.
They had a few of these at the Boy's Club community center I attended as a kid. I loved to use it. I used to type in a simple video game in BASIC from a book they had.
In Parsec - you can use the 1,2 and 3 keys to change the "lift" or speed of the ship. This might come in handy for the refuelling stages that you didn't get to. It is easier to use the keyboard to control the ship as the joysticks are terrible leaf-switch monstrosities.
We had a TI-99/4a. Enjoyed some parsec and a maze game I think might called amaze. We had the speech synthesizer I recall. Some pleasent memories playing with my family. :)
OK. Hours pass and I'm an extreme nerd. I teach CS at uni. The TI gets a lot of flack and some say the BASIC version is slow and run a program with a loop with: print "hello world". I wake up in the middle of the night wondering something. command search sequencing. Put in a way most can understand, each version of BASIC doesn't work the same. Some are converted to tokens. Others keep the command as plain text. Either way, the commands have to be searched for the specific routine to execute. There's three ways to do this. 1. The token/command can be searched in an alphabetic list linearly. This is more efficient for commands at the top of the list like a cls or clear command, rather than a print command. 2. The list can be reordered - put the most often used commands at the top. One might choose to put print high on the list for faster execution. 3. Use the alphabetic list and a binary search. The main issue with this is the resources necessary to pull it off. Tokenization takes a little time up front (when a line is typed in) but when searching for a command's token it's usually faster because it's a numeric search. Now I want to throw the question I had when waking: does this version of BASIC support the use of the "?" instead of "print" and does that provide a significant speed increase? My TI's are stored at the moment as I am moving. Anybody with theirs care to respond? Thanks! :-)
No, you can not use "?" in place of print. That is something i use all the time on C64. L(shift O) in place of LOAD, L(shift I) in place of LIST, etc. TI Basic (and even TI Extended Basic) is indeed pretty strange compared to other Basic versions. The only real TI Basic "shortcut" i know of is you can do PRINT : : : "text" instead of the following: PRINT PRINT PRINT PRINT "text" Basically each ":" tells it to print a newline. TI Extended Basic also has "::" which is used to separate commands on the same program line. In TI Basic you can run the ":" characters back to back like this ":::", but this will not work in TI Extended Basic. Using the ":::" example, TI Extended Basic would treat the first two :'s as the command separator, so the line PRINT ::: "text" in TI Extended Basic would be interpreted like this: PRINT :: : "text" (Which would error. You have a PRINT command that prints a single empty line{default behavior of PRINT when no string or variable is given}, followed by the command separator, then a single ":" which by itself does not mean anything. Then you have a string which is not being used in a command or assigned to a variable) So to use TI Basic's trick of printing multiple empty lines in TI Extended Basic, you need to ensure a space between them, so PRINT : : : "text" instead. You could even do something like PRINT : : : "text" :: PRINT : : "more text" if wanted.
@@ramidavis27 Thanks for the reply. I couldn't remember and all my retro computers are still packed. I know that some computers support it and others not. I also want to know if it was the TI that (in regular BASIC) only allowed on command at a time. I know that many computers licensed from MS, but each had a flavor. I have a thick manual regarding conversion notes I made long ago. However, keeping it all straight is hard. I have the two main TI models (aluminum and beige plastic - yes I know about some ROM revisions). I have the VIC-20, C-64, C-128, C-16, Plus/4. I have an Atari 800, 800XL, 65XE (I want to try my hand at upgrading the RAM since it's fairly simple), and a 130XE. I have a CoCo 1, 2, 3. When the new house is finished I'll have a place to set it all up plus a place for my servers. I can't wait, but rain delays... Thanks again for the answer!
4:49 Are they feeding the 7.5V into a 5V linear voltage regulator? I suppose that's a little better than the early VIC-20s taking 9V AC and feeding it into a 5V regulator and dissipating 4V as heat. What do they need 18V for? 5:41 Did you try calling the 1-800 number about it?! Maybe it's a filter to reduce radio interference that the regulators hit them with in the later stages of production, so they just glued it onto the end of the original power plug. 5:57 I wonder how many units got fried from people plugging Atari joysticks into either of the 9-pin ports. 6:13 So there's a protective door, but the card edge looks like it's caked in dust anyway. 6:40 They did every possible thing to make their powerful computer slow. 7:48 Are the power pins longer than the other pins? 9:13 Is the game changing the colors of the fine lines at the bottom of the screen on purpose, or is that just bad artifacting? 17:43 Shouldn't the credits be running in TI BASIC?
The TI-99/4A CPU (and possibly other components) also need 12V DC, so presumably that's what the 18V AC is for? I didn't call the 1-800 number - why didn't I think of that? The changing colours in the scrolling objects in Parsec appears to just be artifacting; perhaps they thought it looked cool? Or maybe it's just unintended and bad. Like the IBM PCjr, I don't have any solution for transferring data files to my TI-99/4A. On the PCjr, I manually typed in all the credits for that episode. I was hurried for this episode, but I may do it for the follow-up TI BASIC episode.
@@8_Bit If you can get your hands on a TI Extended BASIC cartridge, you might find the experience programming on it a bit easier than TI BASIC. Extended BASIC supports almost all of the graphical features of the TI 99/4A whereas TI BASIC only supports a subset (no sprites, for example). This was my first computer, though mine was the newer beige style case, and is what got me interested in computers in 1983. It has a very interesting and somewhat bizarre architecture. The assembly language is excellent. The Editor/Assembler package included an actual game that TI released on cartridge, complete with the source code, as an example. You could assemble and link this code and play the game. Almost anything "cool" requires a 32K memory expansion. The folks at AtariAge have a lively discussion group for the TI, and there are lots of new things still being produced. (Memory expansions including 1 MB, Raspberry PI interfaces, known as the TIPI, which, among other things, acts like a hard disk, but allows mouse support and internet access, a cartridge known as the FinalGROM that allows all cartridge based software to run from an SD card, etc). Worth checking out if you have interest in the TI.
That green labeled extension was because there was a problem with the original P/S. That was the cheap fix. I remember getting a nub version in the mail.
my first computer as well. spent endless hours plsying parsec, tunnels of doom and scott adams return to pirate isle. first intro to programming in basic. then it was onto the c64, amiga and assembler. great days :))
Looking at those (not hideous, albeit shifted) cursor key layouts just makes me marvel again at the inverted-T. What finally inspired someone to say "y'know how we always seem to do this diamond-shape thing and nobody's totally happy with it? WHAT IF--"?
I'll probably get into it in the follow-up TI BASIC episode, but the TI-99/4A does NOT have a backspace! You have to hit option, cursor left, option, delete :O I'll take this opportunity to point out that the C= cursor keys are actually a more efficient version of the inverted-T: down and right are identical, and up doesn't require the middle finger to laboriously move position. The small cost is needing to shift, but you've already got a finger over it, and we gotta shift all the time anyway!
This was my first computer. Got the expansion pack. Was a very good machine for its day, it was 16bit when the others were 8bit. But it came down to software along with losing the price war. My next computer was the C64 (about 3 of them including the SX-64) and then a C128, then Amiga 500, Amiga 2000. After that I had a Mac laptop, then my first PC. But I fondly remember my first computer.
Despite being slower in basic and having limited memory and bus speeds I think this looks like a cool machine especially for it’s time. I’m the same age as it and would love to play around with a TI-99. Maybe own one. It just looks awesome for one thing and the games don’t seem too slow despite limited memory.
My memory of it was mostly peripheral, saw it around, tried here and there in the late 80s. Have decent pile of gear for the platform now that I enjoy, solid uh... 12-bit computer. ;) TI-99/4A, a name very easy to forget lol. Oh yeah those are terrible, terrible joysticks, I thought 2600 ones were stiff. ^_^ Not the only single joystick port system made but not a great standard on any platform. Got a speech module for a song and that is pretty novel peripheral. With all the voice boxes around then they could have been used more effectively bitd but I love those robot voices. :D Solid video, Happy Birthday. ;)
the TI joysticks were the best I used. They were really small and fitted in the hand really well. The 99/4A is very much underestimated and was really ahead of its time which has contributed to its large following today. The machine is a lot more powerful than ALL of its contemporaries but unfortunately TI BASIC is slow because the interpreter is interpreted, which if you think about it shows how powerful the machine was.
Bought my 99/4a for $99 when they were blowing them out in Canada. Still have that unit, but my Stepfather got right into it and bought a disk drive and also the bus module which has some memory expansion. Going to do a video on that setup one day.
After seeing TRS, TI and even Commodore with their VIC20 and C64 I think the most advanced 8bit machine from the late 70s and early 80s was the 8 bit Atari. It was released in 1979 (400) and still had enough power to go head to head with all-mighty C64. I know, SID vs Pokey, call me biased but I like raw and loud Pokey just a bit more, SID although great sounded fizzy to me. Full disclaimer, I own 2 old real C64s and The C64 mini and no 8bit Atari anymore, but I'm actively looking for one.
I used to program fruit machines and we used the same processor which was a weird beast. I think the manufacturer of the fruit machines had to get TI to do a last batch before they became obsolete.
The TI-99 series of machines were so weirdly underpowered and overpowered. It kind of deserved to fail purely based on the strange choices made around how its RAM worked, that were better suited to a console than an actual computer. And even then, it had 16kB of dedicated video RAM and it _really_ didn't look like it did. I know that was shared between a whole bunch of different things, but still! The TMS9918A didn't give you all that much over what people were doing in ULAs later, and was blown away by the VIC-II could do not soon afterwards. It very much feels like a reference design for a chipset that somebody slapped a keyboard on.
Had a custom new TI chip that allowed more colors to be displayed on a game like Pac Man, static screen games. Non scrolling so to say. The killer was some demand by TI for cash, per cartridge sold. They controlled the cart supply, or something. A bit like what Nintendo's seal of authority had, enforcement. Atarisoft paid and then no one else seemed to.
It was originally planned as a video game console but they changed plans half way through, which is why it feels like that. The 16K of video ram technically isn’t dedicated because unless you have expansion ram, the 16k is used for programs as the actual ram is only 256 bytes. It’s a weird design!
@@Doug_in_NC Deeply weird. And then there was the whole GROM/GPL thing, which was similarly both overpowered and underpowered. While I'm aware they're part of a (deeply flawed) copy protection scheme, GROMs would make _some_ kind of sense if they were at least _fast_, but they weren't.
Thanks for this nice video - now I was able to show my kids how i started in computing. Actually I sold off my TI-99/4A and bought a TRS-1 workalike computer as it gave me more possibilities (eg. CP-M as operating system)
I was wondering if I was the only one with this, still I still have my TI-99/4A, from when it first came out. Including the emulator module and disk drive. Have all the games too. Munch Man (Pac-Man parody, and TI Invaders are my favorite still. Have the Scott Adams collection of Adventure games too. Wow, and my Wife called me nuts. 😝
I did a temporary trade with a friend at the time, his TI with expansion modules with my 800xl. Took forever to trade back. 🤭 The TI did have a nice case design, but the chipset within wasn't always as good as the 800's, despite the speech synthesizer. Pros and cons to each...
I bought beige one of these from a garage sail for $5. At the time I also had an Atari 600XL and used Apple IIe's at school and the local library. I couldn't get myself interested in the TI and never seeked out software or peripherals to expand it.After a couple years I sold it to a family member for $15.
6:55 looks almost as slow as a Commodore 128 ;-) 7:45 I did a double take to make sure I was on the right channel. Robin plays a game instead of programming. Huh. 13:50 Still can't get over that you have to put the cartridge right where your coffee cup usually goes.
I'm sure you're mostly joking, but you've seen me playing games before, right? Super Mario Bros. 64, Neutron, Realms of Quest V, Nox Archaist. Gaming has always been a large part of my motivation for programming.
My first computer. My mom was able to afford one in 84 when they put them on a deep discount after they were discontinued. I loved it and used it for years. We eventually got a printer for it and my mom wrote her master’s degree papers with TI Writer.
Same. My mom got ours on major discount.
I got mine the same year when they were being sold off cheap for £50 new with tombstone city and a set of joysticks. Became my favourite computer as it was the only one I could program.
@@mrgonk871 They were going for $50 in the US. I guess TI just picked a number to get rid of them.
That's how my family was able to afford ours, on deep discount
I never saw these on sale in the US. Maybe by the time my parents took me to stores, the TI994A was long gone from the shelves.
The power supply that plugged directly into the outlet had an isolated transformer. The power supply that had two cords into the transformer had a jumper from the input coil to the secondary coil. This was a problem because 120 volts could pass through and cause the computer case to become hot. If you touched the computer and grounded yourself, you would experience a shock. They glued on a fuse pack with a polarity plug to prevent shock.
What a coincidence! I just bought this computer because I make chiptunes and this thing has both the SN76489 soundchip and a speech synthesizer. I just coded my first song in extended basic and saved it to a cassette today. I had no idea it was this computer's birthday! So cool! I love this thing and the possibilities for making chiptunes using speech synthesis and the soundchip together makes it so perfect for what I do.
Love Parsec! The different lift settings are used for the refuelling tunnel. Some parts of the tunnel are really hard and you need to slow your ship down so you don't crash into the cave sides.
Interesting feature before you start the game, didn't know about that one. Great vid!
I can't believe I never knew this until now. I had Parsec as a kid and could never make it through refueling. Now I know why!
@@retrobitstv Same here - I played parsec so much as a kid... Duh.. Probably in the direction but who reads that.... (The TI was my first computer..) Btw - when I was a kid I always thought it say It's basic.. It wasn't until I was older that I noticed that it actually said TI basic.. dyslexia... mabye?
@@MakersEase Heh, the manual, what's what? 🤷♂️ Haha "It's Basic", awesome!
@@retrobitstv same, I always played the Milton Bradley games, they were more fun, I had baseball which was a 2 player game but I always pitched to myself. The second game was bigfoot which can be played with or without the Milton Bradley game box, the third game was sewer mania which the guy had to remove the bomb before it exploded. Then the last game was a child's game called I'm hiding. There were other games I didn't have. When Triton took over the sale of TI they offered the expansion box for three hundred dollars which I bought and I bought extended basic which was much better than TI basic. I recorded some old main frame music programs and played them on the TI computer. I just took the data and wrote a program to play the songs. Ti had two good qualities one was the sound module and the tone for writing three part harmony. I was going to write a program to play Bach's two and three part inventions but never got around to it and I only have the computer to play games now. I gave away the expansion box and just have the main console. Maybe I may write music programs on my raspberry pi 4. Not a priority right now.
@@ronb6182 My family never owned the expansion box or a disk drive, just the cassette tape player. I never played around with music composition on the machine, but did a fair amount of stuff in the TI Logo cart.
Always thought TI-00/4A match the design of a DMC DeLorean, and they are both from 1981.
This beast has been called the DeLorean of computers
Just stumbled upon this while looking for some TI machine language music. The first computer I bought (for my son) was super expensive, the second one (for me) was still very pricey .. then the price dropped to $99! I showed my son how to program sprites and we typed in a few programs from magazines. We had lots of fun with it. For a few years I sold and servicde the the TI-99-4A (taking over a friend's business when he called it quits). Our favourite games were the Adventure ones, Parsec (I still remember that female voice: 'Good shot pilot!'), TI Invaders and Fathom. Many years later my son chose IT as a profession. Thanks for the memories!
The Ti 99/4a will always hold a special place in my heart. It was our family's first computer, due to the fact they were being fire-saled out at only 50 USD. As a bonus from the discounted rate, we ended up with loads of great games! I still don't get how "TI Invaders" wasn't sued into oblivion by Taito - graphics and gameplay were pretty one-to-one - the only difference was the bonus stage! Parsec was the best use of the Speech Synthesizer - felt like you were commanding a spaceship bridge with the alert voice warning you of hazards ahead. Munch Mobile may be the only home port of the arcade game, "Joyful Road" ever released, and a cartoonish blast to play! Though the greatest benefit of the TI was proving to my parents that we kids were gentle enough not to ruin the hardware, and the family ended up getting decked out C64 in less than a year!
I own one too Robin. I got this computer in 1982 as a 10 year old. It was the foundation of my eventual computer career. I owe everything to my parents for buying it and this computer for learning basic, how to type, etc. I have the voice synth that works with Parsec and a lot of other games, along with a converter to allow using two atari-style joysticks (starfighter types) as I couldn’t stand the standard joysticks. Great video. Thanks for sharing this one with your viewers.
I'd love to get one of those joystick converters and play Parsec with a good joystick! And yeah, back in the early '80s we were thrilled to have any computer available to us at home. I had a Timex/Sinclair 1000 which in hindsight was TERRIBLE but I still loved it at the time; being able to learn BASIC at home was the best. So a TI-99/4A would have been incredible in 1982. I had to wait until 1984 to get a C64.
@@8_Bit I thought about taking the diodes out of the TI joy stick and install them on my atari joy stick. It would work better. The new Atari joy stick don't work well without the mod.
I bought a used one from a college student for $50 in 1984. He saved all the manuals and everything was in pristine condition. It was my first computer. My brother and I thoroughly used that thing. We especially liked the extended basic cartridge and made a lot of games. There was a cassette with games on it that was authored by two very talented Vietnamese fellas. Good times.
That's a computer I was always curious about. I remember seeing it when I was a teen and I always liked the look of it. After some research I discovered the C64 was a far more capable and better supported machine. There's just something about the look of the TI-99 I liked.
Brushed metal, black plastic, bold lines, that big ol' cartridge slot, what's not to love?
The keyboard was better than a lot that are made today. TI did make a cheap keyboard on their white or off white machines. The original is better all the way around.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the C64 was far more capable, the problem was that for whatever reason, TI decided that most of the built-in ROM would contain a higher level (but not very efficient) byte-code interpreter called GPL. Most everything that came on command modules (cartridges) was written in GPL, probably as a matter of convenience and/or minimizing on the space required for these programs. To make matters slightly worse, the built-in BASIC interpreter was also written in GPL. Yes, that meant that anything run through TI-BASIC had to be triple interpreted, which made it run embarrassingly slow. BASIC being the very popular default language of every home computer put the TI at a perceived disadvantage, because at the time, most of us who were relatively new to computers were cutting our teeth on the BASIC language. But really, if this stuff runs through your veins, and it was truly what you were meant to do, then you don't stop at BASIC, you pick up a book and spend the whole summer studying TMS9900 assembler language! This is where I truly believe that "The 16-bit Home Computer" outshined them all! Unfortunately however, to utilize more than simple gameplay and other foolery on the TI, one needed to make a full investment in a line of peripherals that would nearly consume your whole desk and possibly fall off the edge! For the longest time, I used to think that I was the absolute last serious TI user (who did not do it for nostalgic reasons), but before I had called it quits and moved on to PC architectures, I had amassed somewhat of a Frankenstein TI system, consisting of all custom components, four high-density floppy drives, a hard drive, 256K memory expansion, real time clock (in the form of a Hayes Chronograph), 4 serial ports and 2 parallel ports... Ended up authoring the world's first (and probably only) multi-line TI BBS. Yes, pseudo-multitasking on a single threaded machine, using the single programmable interrupt that TI allotted to programmers. 40 years later, I still think very highly of TMS9990! But in these days, if I'm ever feeling nostalgic, I just run one of the many emulators out there.
@@CaptainCattywampus I always liked the extended basic and the only side car I had was the speech box then later I got the expansion box which had 32 k of memory, a disk drive and four more slots for a printer card and more memory. If l remember right you could have 80 k of memory more than the commodore 64. What I didn't like with the C64 everything ran on a serial output the printer, disk drive modem etc.
The TI-99/4a was the machine I've learnt my first BASIC commands on. The other computers like the VIC20, C64 and ZX Spectrum were always occupied by the stronger guys not letting me use them. Luckily no one wanted to check out the TI.
My father bought a TI-99/4A at the end of 1981. I never realized it was a 16 bit machine at the time as it clearly had 8-bit quality graphics and sound, with slower performance than C64 or Atari 8-bits. To me 16 bits were the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST which appeared in 1985.
I've never been able to figure out how people wrote code for the TI with only 256 bytes of CPU RAM.
I have made some games for c64. "Use only screen size of code" =) . Finnish Facebook commodore group has competition for that some time a go. I don't use FB anymore. So I don't know if there are this anymore available...
The TMS9900 processor has a very PDP-11 style architecture but its registers are virtual - they are a block of external memory pointed to by the internal W register. That makes it easy to get a new group of registers on subroutine calls and to restore the registers on a return. Unfortunately this takes up most of the 256 bytes of RAM so the programmer only had a fraction of that to use. There was an additional 16KB of DRAM connected to the video chip but that processor could not address that directly. You had to access a control register in the video chip twice to give it the two halves of the address you wanted and then read to write to a different control register. So it was more like an extremely fast disk than memory.
The 256 bytes was basically used as registers. Actual programs were put in the video ram, which naturally can’t be accessed directly by the processor. Think of it as running programs on a Commodore 128 in the VDP ram instead of main ram and you have a pretty good idea how it works.
@@jecelassumpcaojr890 That makes it sound like one of the reasons this 16 bit machine was as slow as it was. The whole point of registers was to have working places for manipulating data that worked at the speed of the processor. If it had to slow down to make use of a "register" then that's enough to kill the machine. I'd have fired the guy who thought that was a good idea. At the very minimum, I would have had them build "register RAM" devices which would have been essentially the same thing the CPUs had. But then the problem of going outside of the die to access it and that would have been the same problem unless they could have overcome that somehow. But since they made their own flipping processors, why didn't they just put the addressable registers on die!?
@@anjinmiura6708 They did put the 256 bytes inside the chip when the technology made it possible to do so: TMS9995. In the early days the RAMs were fast compared to the processors so this was a reasonable design.
I had one of these as a kid. We had "Munch Man" and "Hunt The Wumpus" as well as the games you featured here.
I remember A-Maze-ing, Parsec and The Attack. I recall you could occasionally get "crash with ground" from hitting the top of the screen. There was a Star Trek game I loved to play and my brother loved a TI compatible version of Pole Position that had a weirdly shaped cartridge and required full power off for insertion and removal to work right. My brother and I had different joysticks though I don't remember the types we had; I remember min having a bulb-top handle and two round fire buttons and his being more pistol-grip style. Also we had the speech synth module. A lot of fond memories.
Parsec, Star Trek & Jawbreaker were our family favorites
If memory serves, the 256 bytes are the processor stack space. The TI 9900 was NOT the originally planned processor. The original processor was delayed and TI was trying to compete with the VIC 20. The RAM accessed through the VDC and it had 16K shared with the VDC. Although the BASIC was not fast, it was pretty complete. Although C-64 users became adept at using poke/peek to to a lot of things via video/audio, it has no commands in BASIC for this. The TI has these commands to handle video/audio (but if I remember right it has no peek/poke).
The worst aspect is that in order write in assembler, you almost required the RAM expansion, and this required the Peripheral Expansion Box (PEB) which cost a RIDICULOUS amount of money - more than the computer if I recall correctly. RAM wasn't cheap at the time. Disk drives (required for significant programming like assembler) were expensive for pretty much all platforms.
The TI does have an expanded BASIC cart.
The largest issue for TI was that all carts were required to get approved by TI and had to use a special ROM called a GROM. This added cost and most developers either went the route of diskettes OR skipped the machine entirely. Given the various costs that did NOT exist on other machines, the computer dropped sales rapidly. There is a cost reduced version made with beige plastic.
Today, there is a cart called "The Final GROM" and a 32K RAM expander for the side of the machine. There's a variety of TI stuff here (not sponsored, just own some of it): thebrewingacademy.com/collections/ti-99-4a
I haven't had a chance to explore mine fully yet.
I remember thinking that TI had made all the cartridges for the platform, at the time. Of course I was just a kid, not even 10, who had a friend with the system. I also remember seeing in a book on BASIC that I used a few years later because it covered the Apple II which we were now using basically (heh) showed the TI stuff to be pretty limited. It was often Apple, Atari, Commodore, do something like this. Then maybe TRS-80 and then at the bottom TI and Timex-Sinclair. (This would have been 1986 or so, so after the platform was EOLed, of course.)
Got one of these in the first grade because my uncle had one when he was a kid. Still taught me programming pretty well as a zoomer.
I loved Parsec, and I'm so glad someone finally covered it on CZcams!
My dad bought the TI99/4A forr my brother and I in 81. We played Parsec constantly and we had the speech module Parsec spoke .
from all the videos on youtube none ever was any good at it or even covered the refueling part. I remember I managed to finish it (in fact it doesn't finish, it gets more and more difficult up to a level and then repeats ad infinitum).
The add on on the cable is a fuse/RF filter, I had a hard time finding anything about it as well. Apparently the power brick didn't meet North American safety standards on possible over voltage and RF interference so they had to add the extension, very little is mentioned about it but most of what I found said it was an RF filter, a fuse or both and using a power strip has the same effect.
It's a primary transformer fuse. The transformer can (and did) short out. with millions sold there were bound to be some very unlucky buyers. Also without a fuse the transformer can overload and catch on fire if the secondary side is shorted as well.
@@whickervision742 the fuse is for the electrical installation protection (read your house cabling), not for people not for internal components; in fact, in almost 99% of power supply units (even current switching ones) every time PSU is dead the fuse is ok
And mine is removable! Not that I ever run it without it.
That’s right. I had an original TI-99 without it, and then they sent the additional fuse when the overload problem was identified.
It was part of a very large safety recall. As I understand, it wiped the divisions entire profits for 1982.
The RF problem was a different one. The FCC didn't approve TI's RF modulator for the 99/4. Faced with the prospect of yet another delay to a system which had already seen over a year of delays in a rapidly-changing market, they opted to ship the 99/4 in a box with composite cables and a monitor. A very expensive box.
When the shops put out to demo a Commodore or Spectrum they would gather crowds of kids, but this computer was always deserted 😞
never played any of the games on this. but i learned to program on it.
3rd party support and accessibility probably had a lot to do with it. By the time 3rd party games were made it was towards the game crash. A few really good arcade ports were made for the computer, some never released. Imagic had awesome ports for the TI. c64 continued to make awesome games like The Last Ninja while TI discontinued making titles. I was able to collect the games I didn’t already have because they were cheap.
I used to play parsec on one of those at school of all places and it hooked up to this huge old TV with knobs on it.
Loved your video, I have a Ti-99/4A in the shed in it's original Cardboard box with joysticks, Extended Basic cartridge and the expansion text to speech module. It was amazing for the early 1980's
Hands down one of the best videos I have ever seen for the TI99 4a. Excellent
I believe the NTSC version of the graphics chip in the TI 99/4A had the ability to take an external video signal and overlay the computer´s own graphics on top of that. THis could have been handy for adding subtitles to home videos, for instance.
The TI-99/4A was my first computer (of many). I remember playing Parsec a lot. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Thank you so much for playing parsec that’s my all time favorite game, it’s better with the speech synthesizer, it would say “enemy ship approaching” I miss this!!
This computer is still the pride and joy of Texas. In the capital we still use over 100 of these in the records department. Thank you and have an Amico day!
Fascinating. I'd love to hear how they're implemented. Are they somehow attached to shared storage or networked? Seems to me that either would require the sacrifice of several small mammals.
Before we owned a c64, we had a TI-994a. I don't remember much more than educational titles for it, and I was only about 6 or 7 at the time.
educational titles, simple accounting apps, and a few games including "Hunt the Wumpus". We had a 99/4A for a while alongside our Vic 20, and I gave it to my cousin when I got a C64... he was one of those goofballs who bought the TI expansion chassis, and blew thousands of bucks on memory upgrades, a modem, etc... for a machine that even when fully upgraded was far less capable than a stock C64. :D I felt sorry hanging onto my 99/4A when he could use mine as a hot spare, so I passed it along.
@@chouseification yeah but the expansion had separate ports for the printer, disk drive and memory. The commodore shared one port I which everything needed to be connected for it to work right. I only spent 300 dollars on my box and it included the disk drive, 32 k of memory and the monster cable. I should have bought the rs 232 then a printer could be installed. I really didn't need to print to play music on my computer. I knew someone that had the modem and went on the billboard. No internet at that time. You can use the system on the internet now if you have everything needed. There is You Tube on that subject.
@@ronb6182 yeah we were stuck to cartridge and the official TI tape drive... haha, not even a real tape drive as it wasn't full motor control, but it worked. Yes, the chassis made the TI a much more capable machine, yet it was still a case of "whoa" on those rare occasions when you spotted one; almost like running into somebody who had a Vectrex or the Dark Tower board game... random and always neat. :D
We had a Vic20 and then got the 99 soon afterwards; neighbors went all out and got an Apple II, so I got to mess around with that after school. That was a fun era sort of... we had VHS and they had Beta. We had Atari 2600 and they had Intelivision. Of course opposite computer brands as well. They each had more "personality" but it's nice to just buy commodity parts and plop them together then install OS of choice. :P
@@chouseification most all computers back then used a cassette player recorder to save programs. Then came 8 inch floppy disks, then came 5 and a half inch floppy disk. The three inch ones came with IBM clones. Then came hard drives and so on. I remember the old Wang computer that did basic and it used a special cassette to save programs, a regular audio cassette would not work in their machines. Them computers also had plotters to draw drafting papers. I used one in my electronic drafting class. It was kinda neat to draw schematics on.
@@ronb6182 yep, used all of those formats at one point or another, although 8" floppy only a couple of times. The sizes were 5 1/4" and 3.5" for floppies.
I had a really low res digitizer on my C64, and a Koala pad too (early trackpad) both were intended for art although it was simple art. Dot matrix printer in our house - plotter would have been fun to have, and I do remember the little portable ones.
Thank you, great childhood memory. My 1st computer my dad bought me from ACE hardware store. Thank you dad... RIP
Home computers was where it was at in the early days of gaming. I had a TI994a. My friends had Atari 800 and C64.
I guess the speech synthesizer and games like Parsec and Alpiner were the reason why everyone wanted to play video games at my house. When 3rd party games were available I had arcade ports of Donkey Kong, Burgertime, and Congo Bongo. Imagics Microsurgeon blew everything away. Definitely the most intriguing Ti99 cart ever.
The green "safety checked" sticker and related pigtail on the power cord addressed a transformer fault with some models of the power supply. You're correct in noting the pigtail is designed to lock on to the original power cord and not be removable. Apparently these were supplied to retailers (who opened computers in their stock and added the adapter prior to sale) and existing owners, to be installed immediately, to avoid a recall of the computer/power supply. My guess is that the original power plug on the transformer isn't polarized (or not polarized correctly) to ensure the computer isn't at line voltage and the pigtail, once correctly installed, ensures the computer isn't referenced to line (assuming your wall outlets are wired correctly).
See US Consumer Products Safety Commission, 1983 notice related to Texas Instruments Providing Adapter For TI 99/4A Computer, Release # 83-071.
Thanks for the great info!
I remember it had an odd way of reading the plug-in rom… it didnt map to system memory like most systems, it was a sequential read - i think the rom got loaded into ram system memory before getting run.
It's not a plug polarization issue, it's a primary fuse.
I had been trying to figure out for years that Parsec was the game I played once or twice in the classroom in 5th grade. I had already figured out that the computer was a TI-99/4 because that silver and black look was pretty one-of-a-kind. There were two computers in that 5th grade classroom: this and an Apple II of some sort. Also, this was in '94/'95. Had no idea how old those machines were.
Enjoyed the video. Did not expect to see that game, really, ever again. Wow!
That was a fun trip down memory lane! The TI 99/4A was my first compter and Parsec and Car Wars were the first two cartridges I got for it.
After crashing in Car Wars I liked to hold down quit - the car pieces would continue flying away forever until you stopped holding FCTN =
My first computer as well. Got in new in 1982 for christmas. Had a lot of fun with it and it helped me learn Basic. Spent countless hours playing Parsec on it.
I still have the one I bought in 1981. I later picked up by the peripheral expansion box, two floppies, and memory expansion..As I recall, I wrote software in Basic, Forth, and Assembler. It was a lot of fun back then.
Seeing how underwhelming the performance of the TI-99/4A compared to the 8-bits of the time, I remembered that Bill Cosby was the spokesman for the TI and on those ads he kept saying it was a powerful computer. I now laugh at those ads when he said that. But at that time (early 1980s) our family only had a TI-99/4A so I didn't realize all the 8-bits like the Atari ran much faster. Then in 1985 we got an Atari 800XL and I was amazed how much faster it was and better graphics.
I had one as a kid, handed down from a family friend, but it was in the early 90s after anybody wanted anything to do with TI Home Computers. I initially resented it because it wasn't an Apple II or a Commodore 64, and it was impossible to find software for it. The only games I had for it were Hunt the Wumpus, Munchman, and whatever magazine type-in games I could type into TI Extended BASIC. I eventually learned how to create small animations and I used it to create scrolling titles for my high school's weekly TV show. My parents sold it for scrap metal while I was in college because they needed the money and I never thought I would need it when I had access at the university to Pentiums, Macs, and Silicon Graphics workstations... but I really wish I still had it.
If K-Mart hadn't been sold out of TI's when my mom was looking for a Christmas present, I'd never have gotten my Atari 400. :)
You're lucky. Except for the keyboard, the Atari 400 is better (better graphics, better sound, better games, faster BASIC, SIO port) and supports 4 players/joysticks. An Atari 800 and even the 600XL is better than the TI99/4a.
Tunnels of Doom was my favorite game.
That's the exact computer I learned Basic on. When grandpa died, we gave to the church thrift store. Loved that machine. It was my babysitter. I got a kick out of you doing worse at Pars than me. Remember "Tumbleweed"
I remember I got the TA 99 for Christmas from my dad in 1983. I was so happy
From one TI-99/4A owner to another:
If you ever have any problems with the original power supply, a Mean Well PT-65B can be fitted inside the case. A figure 8 connector can easily fit through the original power connector hole in the case as well. Like C64s, those power supplies can fail on one voltage rail. Also, the speech synthesizer can be had for pretty cheap and go into the expansion slot. Some games are improved by having it, but it isn't required.
I forget the whole name of the channel, but I think it's "Wayne's Tech Talk". He has a plethora of information on this computer there. I just want to help. 🙂
TI 99/4A wasn't the first 16 bit home computer. At least the swedish home computer Lysator LYS-16 beat it with four years to that title, released in 1975.
Sorry for posting a late comment in a one year old video. Really enjoy you channel and the personal atmosphere you create using just one hand (singlehandedly).
My first computer. My Dad and I took an Atari Joystick and a split joystick cable adapter we found at Radio Shack. We basically figured out the pin out on the Atari Joystick to make it work.
My buddy just gave me his TI99 from his parents attic. Looking forward to cleaning it up and giving it a go.
I had one of those! The BASIC reference guide had some great examples including a little jumping man demo. It was one of the first machines I'd ever used and learned a lot from them.
Ti had other problems as well. We were in the hobbyist age and TI was focusing on the education system. Having been a government contractor (DOD), TI thought that it was going to sell it computers to schools where price was less important. The TI is well made. You can stand on the expansion box. TI was trying to sell to a market that it could not hope to gain and shrugged off the market that it needed to survive.
When the accounting was done, TI made money on the TI 99/4a.
First computer in my family. Good buy for 6 kids... Parsec was the favorite. Thank you for the video, well done!
My Mother purchased a TI-99/4A on clearance in the late '80s, but did not acquire a storage device, disk or tape. I remember typing in one of the sample BASIC programs in the book, but had no way to store the program!
I still have a phobia of accidentally holding down the shift key while hitting the backspace key - that will delete the entire line you are on! I lost many lines of code typed in from magazines that way.
I saw one in the computer shop when I went to buy my VIC-20. It was too expensive and didn't seem to have the support of the VIC-20. So I didn't get to try it, and the shop didn't try to sell it to me.
Excellent video! When you pressed number 2,to load the game, an ad popped up for a game. Thought the graphics was great then realized it was an ad lol. Great work, as all your videos
I had one with the attached speech synthesizer and learned how to program in in the basic computer language along with a few games like TI Invaders, Munchman, and Parsec. Those TI joysticks wear out fast.
They had a few of these at the Boy's Club community center I attended as a kid. I loved to use it.
I used to type in a simple video game in BASIC from a book they had.
In Parsec - you can use the 1,2 and 3 keys to change the "lift" or speed of the ship. This might come in handy for the refuelling stages that you didn't get to. It is easier to use the keyboard to control the ship as the joysticks are terrible leaf-switch monstrosities.
We had a TI-99/4a. Enjoyed some parsec and a maze game I think might called amaze. We had the speech synthesizer I recall. Some pleasent memories playing with my family. :)
OK. Hours pass and I'm an extreme nerd. I teach CS at uni. The TI gets a lot of flack and some say the BASIC version is slow and run a program with a loop with: print "hello world". I wake up in the middle of the night wondering something. command search sequencing.
Put in a way most can understand, each version of BASIC doesn't work the same. Some are converted to tokens. Others keep the command as plain text. Either way, the commands have to be searched for the specific routine to execute. There's three ways to do this.
1. The token/command can be searched in an alphabetic list linearly. This is more efficient for commands at the top of the list like a cls or clear command, rather than a print command.
2. The list can be reordered - put the most often used commands at the top. One might choose to put print high on the list for faster execution.
3. Use the alphabetic list and a binary search. The main issue with this is the resources necessary to pull it off.
Tokenization takes a little time up front (when a line is typed in) but when searching for a command's token it's usually faster because it's a numeric search.
Now I want to throw the question I had when waking: does this version of BASIC support the use of the "?" instead of "print" and does that provide a significant speed increase? My TI's are stored at the moment as I am moving. Anybody with theirs care to respond? Thanks! :-)
No, you can not use "?" in place of print.
That is something i use all the time on C64. L(shift O) in place of LOAD, L(shift I) in place of LIST, etc.
TI Basic (and even TI Extended Basic) is indeed pretty strange compared to other Basic versions.
The only real TI Basic "shortcut" i know of is you can do PRINT : : : "text" instead of the following:
PRINT
PRINT
PRINT
PRINT "text"
Basically each ":" tells it to print a newline. TI Extended Basic also has "::" which is used to separate commands on the same program line.
In TI Basic you can run the ":" characters back to back like this ":::", but this will not work in TI Extended Basic.
Using the ":::" example, TI Extended Basic would treat the first two :'s as the command separator, so the line
PRINT ::: "text"
in TI Extended Basic would be interpreted like this:
PRINT :: : "text"
(Which would error. You have a PRINT command that prints a single empty line{default behavior of PRINT when no string or variable is given}, followed by the command separator, then a single ":" which by itself does not mean anything. Then you have a string which is not being used in a command or assigned to a variable)
So to use TI Basic's trick of printing multiple empty lines in TI Extended Basic, you need to ensure a space between them, so PRINT : : : "text" instead. You could even do something like PRINT : : : "text" :: PRINT : : "more text" if wanted.
@@ramidavis27 Thanks for the reply. I couldn't remember and all my retro computers are still packed. I know that some computers support it and others not. I also want to know if it was the TI that (in regular BASIC) only allowed on command at a time. I know that many computers licensed from MS, but each had a flavor. I have a thick manual regarding conversion notes I made long ago. However, keeping it all straight is hard. I have the two main TI models (aluminum and beige plastic - yes I know about some ROM revisions). I have the VIC-20, C-64, C-128, C-16, Plus/4. I have an Atari 800, 800XL, 65XE (I want to try my hand at upgrading the RAM since it's fairly simple), and a 130XE. I have a CoCo 1, 2, 3. When the new house is finished I'll have a place to set it all up plus a place for my servers. I can't wait, but rain delays...
Thanks again for the answer!
Thanks for sharing, my first computer!
What a coincidence this video is released the same day Bill Cosby was released from prison.
And ironically, Bill Cosby who was in TI99 commercials was released from Jail today
great timing!
I recently got one for free from my piano teacher with a whole bunch of games, it’s crazy seeing how they used it and everything
4:49 Are they feeding the 7.5V into a 5V linear voltage regulator? I suppose that's a little better than the early VIC-20s taking 9V AC and feeding it into a 5V regulator and dissipating 4V as heat. What do they need 18V for?
5:41 Did you try calling the 1-800 number about it?! Maybe it's a filter to reduce radio interference that the regulators hit them with in the later stages of production, so they just glued it onto the end of the original power plug.
5:57 I wonder how many units got fried from people plugging Atari joysticks into either of the 9-pin ports.
6:13 So there's a protective door, but the card edge looks like it's caked in dust anyway.
6:40 They did every possible thing to make their powerful computer slow.
7:48 Are the power pins longer than the other pins?
9:13 Is the game changing the colors of the fine lines at the bottom of the screen on purpose, or is that just bad artifacting?
17:43 Shouldn't the credits be running in TI BASIC?
TI BASIC credits +1
The TI-99/4A CPU (and possibly other components) also need 12V DC, so presumably that's what the 18V AC is for?
I didn't call the 1-800 number - why didn't I think of that?
The changing colours in the scrolling objects in Parsec appears to just be artifacting; perhaps they thought it looked cool? Or maybe it's just unintended and bad.
Like the IBM PCjr, I don't have any solution for transferring data files to my TI-99/4A. On the PCjr, I manually typed in all the credits for that episode. I was hurried for this episode, but I may do it for the follow-up TI BASIC episode.
@@8_Bit If you can get your hands on a TI Extended BASIC cartridge, you might find the experience programming on it a bit easier than TI BASIC. Extended BASIC supports almost all of the graphical features of the TI 99/4A whereas TI BASIC only supports a subset (no sprites, for example).
This was my first computer, though mine was the newer beige style case, and is what got me interested in computers in 1983. It has a very interesting and somewhat bizarre architecture. The assembly language is excellent. The Editor/Assembler package included an actual game that TI released on cartridge, complete with the source code, as an example. You could assemble and link this code and play the game.
Almost anything "cool" requires a 32K memory expansion.
The folks at AtariAge have a lively discussion group for the TI, and there are lots of new things still being produced. (Memory expansions including 1 MB, Raspberry PI interfaces, known as the TIPI, which, among other things, acts like a hard disk, but allows mouse support and internet access, a cartridge known as the FinalGROM that allows all cartridge based software to run from an SD card, etc). Worth checking out if you have interest in the TI.
That green labeled extension was because there was a problem with the original P/S. That was the cheap fix. I remember getting a nub version in the mail.
i always reply "hi robin" at the beginning
my first computer as well. spent endless hours plsying parsec, tunnels of doom and scott adams return to pirate isle. first intro to programming in basic. then it was onto the c64, amiga and assembler. great days :))
I spent so many hours playing Parsec! One of the very few modules I had.
Thank you for the childhood memories
Always wanted one of these. So beautiful 😍
Looking at those (not hideous, albeit shifted) cursor key layouts just makes me marvel again at the inverted-T. What finally inspired someone to say "y'know how we always seem to do this diamond-shape thing and nobody's totally happy with it? WHAT IF--"?
I’m rather fond of the 64 cursor keys. Used it for so long I don’t think about it
Many of us have been numbed by the trauma, yes.
I'll probably get into it in the follow-up TI BASIC episode, but the TI-99/4A does NOT have a backspace! You have to hit option, cursor left, option, delete :O
I'll take this opportunity to point out that the C= cursor keys are actually a more efficient version of the inverted-T: down and right are identical, and up doesn't require the middle finger to laboriously move position. The small cost is needing to shift, but you've already got a finger over it, and we gotta shift all the time anyway!
Yes, yes, we all have our own ways of coping with that trauma.
This was my first computer. Got the expansion pack. Was a very good machine for its day, it was 16bit when the others were 8bit. But it came down to software along with losing the price war.
My next computer was the C64 (about 3 of them including the SX-64) and then a C128, then Amiga 500, Amiga 2000. After that I had a Mac laptop, then my first PC.
But I fondly remember my first computer.
If you plug in the speech synthesizer, Parsec will speak when you play it.
My Father got one in early 82 and i do remember both games. ;-)
Despite being slower in basic and having limited memory and bus speeds I think this looks like a cool machine especially for it’s time. I’m the same age as it and would love to play around with a TI-99. Maybe own one. It just looks awesome for one thing and the games don’t seem too slow despite limited memory.
My memory of it was mostly peripheral, saw it around, tried here and there in the late 80s. Have decent pile of gear for the platform now that I enjoy, solid uh... 12-bit computer. ;) TI-99/4A, a name very easy to forget lol.
Oh yeah those are terrible, terrible joysticks, I thought 2600 ones were stiff. ^_^ Not the only single joystick port system made but not a great standard on any platform.
Got a speech module for a song and that is pretty novel peripheral. With all the voice boxes around then they could have been used more effectively bitd but I love those robot voices. :D
Solid video, Happy Birthday. ;)
the TI joysticks were the best I used. They were really small and fitted in the hand really well. The 99/4A is very much underestimated and was really ahead of its time which has contributed to its large following today.
The machine is a lot more powerful than ALL of its contemporaries but unfortunately TI BASIC is slow because the interpreter is interpreted, which if you think about it shows how powerful the machine was.
Bought my 99/4a for $99 when they were blowing them out in Canada. Still have that unit, but my Stepfather got right into it and bought a disk drive and also the bus module which has some memory expansion. Going to do a video on that setup one day.
The TI-99/4A was our first family computer
I had one before the Commodore 64 with the "speech synthesizer", a good computer in it's day despite the limitations, especially the digitized speech.
After seeing TRS, TI and even Commodore with their VIC20 and C64 I think the most advanced 8bit machine from the late 70s and early 80s was the 8 bit Atari. It was released in 1979 (400) and still had enough power to go head to head with all-mighty C64. I know, SID vs Pokey, call me biased but I like raw and loud Pokey just a bit more, SID although great sounded fizzy to me. Full disclaimer, I own 2 old real C64s and The C64 mini and no 8bit Atari anymore, but I'm actively looking for one.
Agreed. I have owned 800, 800XL, 130XE, VIC-20, C-64 and the 8-bit Atari is the best EXCEPT for audio.
I used to program fruit machines and we used the same processor which was a weird beast. I think the manufacturer of the fruit machines had to get TI to do a last batch before they became obsolete.
Good looking machine!
My first machine was a TI-99/4. I was so unhappy with it I got a VIC-20 as soon as it was available, and then the C64.. C128..
Wow upgraded from a 16-bit 3MHZ computer with 16KB of ram to a 1MHZ 8-bit computer with 3.5K of ram!
I’m really looking forward to the TI Basic episode :)
Tunnels of Doom!!!!
I still have my and it still works:) Have over 30 cart games.
The TI-99 series of machines were so weirdly underpowered and overpowered. It kind of deserved to fail purely based on the strange choices made around how its RAM worked, that were better suited to a console than an actual computer. And even then, it had 16kB of dedicated video RAM and it _really_ didn't look like it did. I know that was shared between a whole bunch of different things, but still! The TMS9918A didn't give you all that much over what people were doing in ULAs later, and was blown away by the VIC-II could do not soon afterwards.
It very much feels like a reference design for a chipset that somebody slapped a keyboard on.
Had a custom new TI chip that allowed more colors to be displayed on a game like Pac Man, static screen games. Non scrolling so to say. The killer was some demand by TI for cash, per cartridge sold. They controlled the cart supply, or something. A bit like what Nintendo's seal of authority had, enforcement. Atarisoft paid and then no one else seemed to.
It was originally planned as a video game console but they changed plans half way through, which is why it feels like that. The 16K of video ram technically isn’t dedicated because unless you have expansion ram, the 16k is used for programs as the actual ram is only 256 bytes. It’s a weird design!
@@Doug_in_NC Deeply weird. And then there was the whole GROM/GPL thing, which was similarly both overpowered and underpowered. While I'm aware they're part of a (deeply flawed) copy protection scheme, GROMs would make _some_ kind of sense if they were at least _fast_, but they weren't.
Thanks for this nice video - now I was able to show my kids how i started in computing.
Actually I sold off my TI-99/4A and bought a TRS-1 workalike computer as it gave me more possibilities (eg. CP-M as operating system)
Robin, did you notice at 8:35 in the bottom terrain of the Parsec game there is something that looks like a Texas Instruments logo?
oo! OO! my first computer ! :D
I was wondering if I was the only one with this, still
I still have my TI-99/4A, from when it first came out. Including the emulator module and disk drive.
Have all the games too. Munch Man (Pac-Man parody, and TI Invaders are my favorite still.
Have the Scott Adams collection of Adventure games too.
Wow, and my Wife called me nuts. 😝
I did a temporary trade with a friend at the time, his TI with expansion modules with my 800xl. Took forever to trade back. 🤭
The TI did have a nice case design, but the chipset within wasn't always as good as the 800's, despite the speech synthesizer. Pros and cons to each...
I bought beige one of these from a garage sail for $5. At the time I also had an Atari 600XL and used Apple IIe's at school and the local library. I couldn't get myself interested in the TI and never seeked out software or peripherals to expand it.After a couple years I sold it to a family member for $15.
My First computer! loved it!
you got to use the speech synthesizer for Parsec homie
It's easy to forget just how much of the Cool Factor of Parsec is provided by the speech until you play it without.
the outro music is really eerie
6:55 looks almost as slow as a Commodore 128 ;-)
7:45 I did a double take to make sure I was on the right channel. Robin plays a game instead of programming. Huh.
13:50 Still can't get over that you have to put the cartridge right where your coffee cup usually goes.
They didn't perfect the coffee holder until the CD-ROM.
@@csbruce true, this was just an early experiment. Did a good job of keeping the cup warm
I'm sure you're mostly joking, but you've seen me playing games before, right? Super Mario Bros. 64, Neutron, Realms of Quest V, Nox Archaist. Gaming has always been a large part of my motivation for programming.
@@MichaelDoornbos It actually does get pretty warm on that cartridge runway :)
Sir Robin, you know by now that I’m ALWAYS mostly joking ;-)
Steve Jackson Games eventually bought the Car Wars trademark from TI (or whoever owned it by then) some year later.
👌👌👍👍
P.S. I'm wondering why the prices of these computers are not higher taking into consideration age and very limited availability...
The TI-99/4A had the best functional design from all. It's sad that it didn't pick up against Commodore, since it had great peripherals too.
The TI-99/4 was TI's first 4a into the home computer market. 😅 Two years later they dropped the TI-99/4a.