Famed figurer maker Texas Instruments' prototypic stab at the home computer commercialize arrived in 1979 with the flawed TI-99/4, which included a poor keyboard, no reenforcement for small letter characters, and the requirement that it habituate a bespoken Television monitor. Two years advanced, TI determinate those issues with the TI-99/4A (banknote the "A")—seen Hera—which retailed for $525 (or so $1,368 today when adjusted for rising prices). That was pretty flashy at once when the Apple II cost complete twice that a lot.
TI's revised model fared much better in the U.S. house computer market and created a fairly popular alternative to Atari, Commodore, and TRS-80 Coconut tree machines. Many kids in the US Government grew up leaning to program BASIC on a TI-99/4A and utilized IT to experience video games for the first time, which they could do through plug-in program cartridges. In the slides forrade, I'm going to look inside this 1980s standard and fancy what makes information technology tick.
A closer look
I've been aggregation computers for over two decades and I have seen hundreds of machines, and yet the original Afro-American and silver gray TI-99/4A is tranquillise one of my deary examples of home PC business design. The motorcar is compact and feels homogeneous, its keyboard is welcoming, and its metal trim feels professional contempt its discount retail price.
The large black country to the ethical of the soothe unit accommodates a single slide-in ROM cartridge, which plugs into the whole horizontally. The TI-99/4A was a very cartridge-centric system; hundreds of programs, from games to utilities to productivity apps were available in secure-in physique. More advanced users could encumbrance programs from cassette tape or floppy disk—if they could afford such luxuries. Otherwise, cartridges did the fox quite nicely.
Cracking the case
After removing five screws from the bottom of the unit and pull out the plastic power switch, the bottom of the TI-99/4A comes off well. Most of the internal assemblies are screwed upside inoperative into the top of the computer's case.
Freeing the national assemblies
Once inwardly, the first subassembly to come out is the power issue, the green electric circuit display board seen in the depress left of the photo. I wealthy person also removed the motherboard, which is encased in effortful sheet-metal RF shielding. The greens board remaining in the case is the bottom side of the keyboard assembly. This matter is built like a tank—it could likely call for a good pounding from an angry kid losing at Munch Man.
Mostly apart
Hither I rich person taken the trey subassemblies (power supply, motherboard, and keyboard) out of the chassis, and now you can see the keyboard assembly sitting by itself. Look at how cute and compact the keyboard is. We'll subscribe a closer look at that in a minute.
Removing the shielding
Judgment by the thickness of the Releasing hormone shielding and how tightly IT wraps more or less every beginning, Texas Instruments must make had close to trouble with RF emissions from its motherboard. Per FCC regulations, consumer electronics that might interpose with radio operating theatre TV receipt must be protected to block range RF emissions, which are generated of course by any athletic circuit. Removing completely that shielding wasn't insignificant. Deuce large metal clips and three screws with compression-proper cracked held it tightly collectively. Once it was off, withal, I could finally see the motherboard in all its unripened, IC-laden glory.
The keyboard up close
The keyboard inside the TI-99/4A is notably small—close to 8.5 inches in width and 4 inches in depth. Its small size and low fundamental count were No doubt the product of cost-cold measures. I personally possess always lamented the Ti's lack of a holy backspacer—that would have made typing happening the computer vastly more roomy.
Just, oh healthy—the things we take off for granted these days. When I was a kid, we walked uphill both ways to school without a backspace.
The motherboard
In that close-prepared of the ethical uncomplete of the motherboard, we see a huge Ninety-nine chip (the CPU), a striking connector (the cartridge port), and several blue patch wires running here and there. Wires suchlike this oftentimes signify last-minute design fixes that were soldered in past paw at the factory. It's never reassuring, in my opinion, to determine them in a shipping product—but hey, IT works.
On the right slope of the board is the peripheral expansion coach connector, of which you can just see its copper shielding here. Ti created more peripherals for the 99/4A which plugged into the right side of the computer, making for a awkward expansion process. Later, they released a unified expansion box to simplify things, but it was still uneasy.
A unique 16-bit CPU
It may surprise many an folks to discover that the TI-99/4 and 4A were the first home computers to ship with a 16-bit microprocessor. Its 3MHz TMS9900 cow dung was a shrunken down, incorporated circuit adaptation of the CPU in TI's heavy-duty Atomic number 2-990 minicomputer job.
Those specs might secure impressive on paper, but the CPU's awkward computer architecture coupled with the 99/4A's low-monetary value supporting chips meant that the altogether assembly was non notably faster or more powerful than any early home information processing system at the time. On top of that, the 99/4A's Grassroots language was itself written in an interpreted language, GPL, which made the machine look slow as molasses.
Playing Alpiner
When you put it complete together, the TI-99/4A was a distinctive, somewhat hamstrung machine that nonetheless enjoyed a big following in the United States during the early 1980s. After a fierce price war with Commodore, Titanium released a lower-be achromatic plastic exemplary of the 99/4A in 1983, but lost quite a fleck of money in the marketplace and discontinued the platform entirely in 1984.
As for me, the Cordyline terminalis-99/4A was one of the first vintage computers in my collection, and I have always had a wooly spot for it. Over the years I have gathered up dozens of cartridges, and I still love how easy it is to simply plug them in and make for games OR use software system; it seems amusive, in-person, and immediate in a way that other home computers frequently don't. The 99/4A's intimate feel is perhaps the machine's greatest legacy—that and the generation of kids who became programmers by victimisation it.
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